10'" 8. V.MARCH 31, 1906.] NOTES AND QUERIES.
259
Petroni Cena Trimalchionis. Edited, with Critical
and Explanatory Notes, and translated into
English Prose, by VV. L). Lowe. (Cambridge,
Deighton, Bell & Co. ; London, Bell & Sons.)
THE present reviewer has studied Petronius for
some years in a French edition, no English one
being available. Petronius is not what is called
- 'a lecture-subject," and consequently he has been
generally neglected by the large body of classical teachers, tutors, and professors, who go the old round of familiar things, and save themselves the trouble of investigating fields which to the literary mind are remarkable alike for flowers and weeds. Petronius is memorable for many reasons. His rambling novel, for such it is, recalling the picaresque gaiety of 'Gil Bias,' has given us such popular cliches as "joining the great majority," such exquisite criticism as " Horatii curiosa felici- tas." and such a picture of the " nouveau riche" as might make the most vivacious of novelists of to-day envious. The time is Nero's: that can hardly be doubted ; and the profusion of the banquet is quite in accordance with the vulgar dis- plays of the sort which our present daily press chronicles at length. If we could have the re- marks of the writers and sycophants of last season or the next, they would probably remind us of the language of the slaves and hangers-on of Petronius.
- ; What a nice frost we've been having!" is the
beginning of a conversation. And from the greatly daring and semi-educated we have heard just such distortions of grammar and mythology as proceed from Trimalchio. It has been complained that nobody has any conscience in Petronius, as if all literature must be " improving," and a decadent society must be credited with non-existent re- straints. En revanche, our author makes people almost as superstitious as they are to-day. They do not, it is true, believe the same things, but their credulity is about the same in quality and signifi- cance as that of the drones of the twentieth centu ry.
Mr. Lowe is disappointingly brief in his Intro- duction, but he states that the writer of the ' Cena ' was "most probably" the Petrouius of Tacitus, who lounged into a reputation, and went through the usual course of being the favourite and victim of Nero. We should have had, we think, a fair statement of some of the difficulties involved in that view, with the answers to them ; and we expected further some note as to the date of the MSS. on which the text is based, and as to the scraps of poetry interspersed in the narrative, which have occasionally a touch of Persius. The author's style alone is o'f the highest interest to the student of language; but perhaps the average reader cannot be expected to take much trouble with a difficult subject ; at any rate, he will hardly be enlightened by a reference to the * Apoco- locyntosis' of Seneca. We find a (/nod which approaches the sense of the modern French que, and a vides standing by itself like the French roila. There are, top, some striking examples of that want of connexion which makes the lingo of the uneducated both invertebrate and forcible.
The belief that Trimalchio was intended as a caricature of Nero was hardly worth contradict- ing ; it would, we think, have been more to the point to explain in the Introduction that wealthy and tolerably worthless freedmen such as Pallas, the favourite of Claudius, who was dis-
carded by Nero, offer an obvious prototype for the-
aforesaid chief character.
But while we endorse all the b-ief remarks made about the object of the author and his deficiencies- on the moral side (on which we have already lightly touched), we must add that Petronius deserves praise for taste and powers of criticism which he does not get here. It is true that the idiots of his romance often say his best things in a spirit of mockery or irreverence ; but that does not prevent us from thinking these things very good. His best verse is not in the 'Ceni' by any means,, and, probably on account of its inaccessibility, has been but scantily reproduced in Latin anthologies.
To turn to the translation and notes, we are well satisfied with both. Mr. Lowe has steered clear of the literalness of the pedant, and, thanks largely to German erudition, has been able to supply many illuminating parallels in his notes, which are printed in the best possible place for the s-tudent, at the bottom of the page. The student of folk-lore is well served both by author and editor, for here he will find one of the most famous stories in the world that of the Ephesian matron ; a were-wolf legend told in thrillingly veracious style ; and a Sibyl in a bottle, who, Dr. James says in The Classical Review, represents, like Tithonus, an immortal shrunk to the proportions of an insect, and so answers, " 1 want to die." It is satisfactory to find that the majority of the references in the notes are given in full, for the best of Latir* dictionaries available in England are incomplete as^ regards Petronius.
We hope that Mr. Lowe's very capable editing will increase the readers of a most enlivening, record, which is almost a little guide to Roman, antiquities. Those who have toiled, for purpose of "cram" generally, through 'Gallus,' the jejune collection of Becker, itself a ghastly pretence of a story, cannot fail to be surprised and delighted with Petronius. Some satirist might take him as a basis for a survey of manners and education in this present year of grace. But a story comprising purposeful and tolerably lurid caricatures could hardly be a novelty or a distinguished affair to-day.
" Whatever you learn is so much market value
there is a mint of money in a good education." Do> not these practical sentiments sound like adver- tisements of a certain 'Self-Educator' ? They are,, as a matter of fact, in Petronius the illiterate- utterances of a rag-dealer.
The Gladiators. By G. J. Whyte -Melvillp. Glaciers of the Alps. By John Tyndall. Plays and Poems. By William Shakespeare. Edited by Charles Knight. Vols, 1. and IE. Golden Treasury of American Sou ys and Lyrics. Edited by Frederick Lawrence Knowlea. Literary Essays. By Lord Macaulay. The. Dissolution of the Monasteries, and other E^sai/s. By James Anthony Froude. (Routledge & Sons.) A FURTHER and characteristically excellent con- tribution to Routledge's "New Universal Library " reaches us in these volumes, most of which are the first of separate series. * The Gladiators,' a stirring tale of Rome and Judas, a good specimen of a difficult class of composition, is the first of a reissue of what may or may not be confined to the serious romances of Whyte- Melville. Tyndall's classical work 'Glaciers of the Alps' stands alone, and is not likely, perhaps, to lead to the republication of his more rigidly scientific writings. Two volumes
