The Satyricon — Complete, Petronius Arbiter [read book txt] 📗

difficulty in recalling a few of these heavily endowed examples to mind, and our author, in choosing Marsyae, adds a touch of sarcastic realism, for statues of Marysas were often set up in free cities, symbolical, as it were, of freedom. In such a setting as the present, they would be the very acme of propriety.

“The figures,” says Gonzala de Salas, “formerly placed at fountains, and from which water took exit either from the mouth or from some other part, took their forms from the several species of Satyrs. The learned Wouweren has commented long and learnedly upon this passage, and his emendation ‘veretriculis’ caused me to laugh heartily. And as a matter of fact, I affirm that such a meaning is easily possible.” Professor E. P. Crowell, the first American scholar to edit Petronius, gravely states in his preface that “the object of this edition is to provide for class-room use an expurgated text,” and I note that he has tactfully omitted the “wineskins” from his edition.

In this connection the last sentence in the remarks of Wouweren, alluded to above, is strangely to the point. After stating his emendation of “veretriculis or veretellis” for “utriculis,” he says: “Unless someone proves that images of Marsyas were fashioned in the likeness of bag-pipers,” a fine instance of clarity of vision for so dark an age.

CHAPTER 40.

“Drawing his hunting-knife, he plunged it fiercely into the boar’s side, and some thrushes flew out of the gash.”

In the winter of 1895 a dinner was given in a New York studio. This dinner, locally known as the “Girl in the Pie Dinner,” was based upon Petronius, Martial, and the thirteenth book of Athenaeus. In the summer of 1919, I had the questionable pleasure of interviewing the chef-caterer who got it up, and he was, at the time, engaged in trying to work out another masterpiece to be given in California. The studio, one of the most luxurious in the world, was transformed for the occasion into a veritable rose grotto, the statuary was Pompeian, and here and there artistic posters were seen which were nothing if not reminiscent of Boulevard Clichy and Montmartre in the palmiest days. Four negro banjo players and as many jubilee singers titillated the jaded senses of the guests in a manner achieved by the infamous saxophone syncopating jazz of the Barbary Coast of our times. The dinner was over. The four and one half bottles of champagne allotted to each Silenus had been consumed, and a well-defined atmosphere of bored satiety had begun to settle down when suddenly the old-fashioned lullaby “Four and Twenty Blackbirds” broke forth from the banjoists and singers. Four waiters came in bearing a surprisingly monstrous object, something that resembled an impossibly large pie. They, placed it carefully in the center of the table. The negro chorus swelled louder and louder--“Four and Twenty Blackbirds Baked in a Pie.”

The diners, startled into curiosity and then into interest, began to poke their noses against this gigantic creation of the baker. In it they detected a movement not unlike a chick’s feeble pecking against the shell of an egg. A quicker movement and the crust ruptured at the top.

A flash of black gauze and delicate flesh showed within. A cloud of frightened yellow canaries flew out and perched on the picture frames and even on the heads and shoulders of the guests.

But the lodestone which drew and held the eyes of all the revellers was an exquisitely slender, girlish figure amid the broken crust of the pie. The figure was draped with spangled black gauze, through which the girl’s marble white limbs gleamed like ivory seen through gauze of gossamer transparency. She rose from her crouching posture like a wood nymph startled by a satyr, glanced from one side to the other, and stepped timidly forth to the table.

CHAPTER 56. Contumelia--Contus and Melon (malum).

All translators have rendered “contus” by “pole,” notwithstanding the fact that the word is used in a very different sense in Priapeia, x, 3: “traiectus conto sic extendere pedali,” and contrary to the tradition which lay behind the gift of an apple or the acceptance of one. The truth of this may be established by many passages in the ancient writers.

In the “Clouds” of Aristophanes, Just Discourse, in prescribing the rules and proprieties which should in govern the education and conduct of the healthy young man says:

“You shall rise up from your seat upon your elders’ approach; you shall never be pert to your parents or do any other unseemly act under the pretence of remodelling the image of Modesty. You will not rush off to the dancing-girl’s house, lest while you gaze upon her charms, some whore should pelt you with an apple and ruin your reputation.”

“This were gracious to me as in the story old to the maiden fleet of foot was the apple golden fashioned which unloosed her girdle long-time girt.” Catullus ii.

“I send thee these verses recast from Battiades, lest thou shouldst credit thy words by chance have slipped from my mind, given o’er to the wandering winds, as it was with that apple, sent as furtive love token by the wooer, which out-leaped from the virgin’s chaste bosom: for, placed by the hapless girl ‘neath her soft vestment, and forgotten--when she starts at her mother’s approach, out ‘tis shaken: and down it rolls headlong to the ground, whilst a tell-tale flush mantles the cheek of the distressed girl.” Catullus 1xv.

“But I know what is going on, and I intend presently to tell my master; for I do not want to show myself less grateful than the dogs which bark in defence of those who feed and take care of them. An adulterer is laying siege to the household--a young man from Elis, one of the Olympian fascinators; he sends neatly folded notes every day to our master’s wife, together with faded bouquets and half-eaten apples.” Alciphron, iii, 62. The words are put into the mouth of a rapacious parasite who feels that the security of his position in the house is about to be shaken.

“I didn’t mind your kissing Cymbalium half-a-dozen times, you only disgraced yourself; but--to be always winking at Pyrallis, never to drink without lifting the cup to her, and then to whisper to the boy, when you handed it to him, not to fill it for anyone but her--that was too much! And then--to bite a piece off an apple, and when you saw that Duphilus was busy talking to Thraso, to lean forward and throw it right into her lap, without caring whether I saw it or not; and she kissed it and put it into her bosom under her girdle! It was scandalous! Why do you treat me like this?” Lucian, Dial. Hetairae, 12. These words are spoken by another apostle of direct speech; a jealous prostitute who is furiously angry with her lover, and in no mood to mince matters in the slightest.

Aristxnetus, xxv, furnishes yet another excellent illustration. The prostitute Philanis, in writing to a friend of the same ancient profession, accuses her sister of alienating her lover’s affections. I avail myself of Sheridan’s masterly version.

PHILANIS TO PETALA.

As yesterday I went to dine
With Pamphilus, a swain of mine,
I took