[In the following essay, Gill takes issue with J. P. Sullivan's (see excerpt dated 1961) psychoanalytic reading of the sexual scenes in the Satyricon, advocating instead a literary approach which views them in terms of their function of stressing the bizarre and the shocking.]

Scenes in the Satyricon which include a strongly sexual element compose a not inconsiderable amount of the extant text. The actions of the main protagonists outside the Cena, Encolpius and Giton, and of the characters they encounter, involve incidents and adventures in which the erotic drive plays an important part and which are sometimes overtly sexual. The two "Milesian" tales recounted within the main story, the Woman of Ephesus and the Boy of Pergamum, are narratives of sexual seduction. These parts of the Satyricon are written with no less invention and verbal skill than the remainder of the work. Until quite recently, however, they have received little scholarly attention, for obvious reasons. The one modern critic who has considered them closely, J. P. Sullivan, is primarily concerned to use these episodes as psychoanalytic data to reconstruct the sexuality of the author, although his analysis has been subsequently transposed into literary discussions of the Satyricon.¹ It seems worthwhile then to appraise the distinctively literary qualities of these scenes, within the context of the style of the whole work; and that is the aim of this article.

First, however, Sullivan's analysis is worth criticizing in detail. His argument contains logical weaknesses, but more significant is the way in which certain elements in a scene are singled out and given an interpretation which seems unnatural to a reader who is attending to the fictional whole. This trait is perhaps characteristic of studies of literature by followers of Freud,² but it is the more irritating in a critic who, when he is not being psychoanalytic, can be sensitive to the overall tone of the work, and with whose understanding of that tone I largely agree. Furthermore, I share Sullivan's view that there is a kind of "voyeurism" in the Satyricon, though this trait, I shall argue, lies not in the psychosexual, but in the literary, character of the work.

In his analysis of the sexual episodes, Sullivan's main point is that the Satyricon contains an unusually large number of scenes which include examples of two related psychosexual themes, scopophilia and exhibitionism, and "disguised aspects" of these themes, such as castration and sadism (pp. 238 ff.). Since Petronius, in his depiction of actions of the scopophilic-exhibitionist type "is not following any obvious literary tradition, or borrowing the themes from earlier authors," it is argued that his "large use of them is the more striking, and … must therefore be a genuine reflection of his own psychosexual interests, whether these were grounded in his sexual behaviour or in his fantasy life" (pp. 244-45). The scopophilic tendencies of the author of the Satyricon, Sullivan argues, are consistent with the character of Petronius as Tacitus describes him (Ann. 16. 17-20). The historian comments on Petronius' "nocturnal habits and the great interest he showed in the Emperor's sexual life" (p. 251). Since "one of the characteristics of scopophilia is the fear of light," the penchant for nocturnal life shown by Petronius, combined with his voyeuristic curiosity about Nero's erotic activities, add up to a "psychoanalytic argument for the attribution of the Satyricon to the Petronius described by Tacitus" (p. 253).

The exposition of this thesis is open to criticism, most obviously on the grounds that the evidence for the psychosexual themes is slighter than Sullivan admits, and that the argument he bases on that evidence is logically flawed. A recent Dictionary of Psychoanalysis defines scopophilia as a "sexual perversion in which the subject's preferred form of sexual activity is looking at the sexual parts or activities of others."³ In none of the instances Sullivan selects is the act of looking the "preferred form" of sexual activity.⁴ In only one case is stress laid on the pleasure obtained by a character from the act of looking (Sat. 26. 5, Quartilla's observation of the sexual union of Giton and Pannychis), and in that case, as in Sat. 140. 11, the looking is in fact a stimulus to a more overt form of sexual activity which the character apparently "prefers."⁵ The same degree of misrepresentation occurs in the examples of exhibitionism. The exhibitionist finds his preferred form of sexual activity, and his erotic gratification, in deliberately exposing his genitals to someone else (Dictionary, p. 47, cf. p. 116). Of the four examples of exhibitionism given by Sullivan,⁶ only one shows a character deliberately exposing his genitals to someone else (Sat. 140. 12-13), and in this case his aim is not sexual gratification, but the wish to demonstrate that he is no longer impotent.⁷ In the course of maintaining that all four scenes are genuine instances of exhibitionism, Sullivan's reasoning becomes strained. Describing a scene in which a woman touches a boy's penis (Sat. 24. 7), Sullivan comments, "Despite differences—handling rather than looking at a forbidden object—this is surely a sort of exhibitionism" (p. 241, italics mine). In order to strengthen this point Sullivan cites the scene in which a man does expose his genitals (Sat. 140. 12-13) and notes that in this scene it also happens that another person handles the penis. He concludes: "In this exhibitionism there is also the motif of handling the genitals, which seems to argue conclusively that the scene between Quartilla was exhibitionist too in its significance" (p. 241, italics mine). Sullivan is asserting that, since, in a scene of exposure (which he terms "exhibitionism") there was, incidental to the exposure, handling of the penis by another, it follows that handling of the penis (without any self-exposure) constitutes an act of exhibitionism. The flaw in this argument is surely apparent.

In the development of the argument, Sullivan's discussion of one passage is illustrative of the whole style of his application of psychoanalytic method to the literary text. The argument moves from the "uncomplicated examples" of the sexual themes to a "less obvious case" in which Ascyltus finds Encolpius making love to Giton (Sat. 11, p. 242). Ascyltus "rolled me [Encolpius] out of the cloak I was lying in and said, 'What were you up to, you most reverend brother?"' The comment is made: "In the light of earlier instances the scopophilic aspects of this are patent. From the narrator's viewpoint it is exhibitionism … On Ascyltus' side it is voyeurism" (p. 242). This statement raises doubts in the mind of someone who considers the fictional situation as it is presented. Is there in fact any "voyeurism" in Ascyltus' action, any indication that this is his "preferred form of sexual activity"? The situation is that a man finds his sexual rival in bed with someone he is attracted to. Not surprisingly, he wants to find out, and to stop, what is going on. He "rolls" Encolpius "out of the cloak" to do this. Then, with sardonic amusement, combined perhaps with pleasure at having interrupted the consummation of the act, he asks his "most reverend brother" i.e., his friend or (former) sexual partner, what he was up to. One may genuinely wonder if there is any "voyeurism" on Ascyltus' part or "exhibitionism" on Encolpius' part; for the actions seem to be otherwise motivated. But Sullivan, apparently anticipating this objection, attempts to answer it by saying that "the question of the voluntary or involuntary nature of the incident from the character's point of view may be disregarded" (p. 242). To this can be compared a later statement that in fiction, "It is irrelevant whether the characters expose themselves of their own accord, or through force of circumstances" (p. 245). This flexibility in the definition of what counts as voyeurism or exhibitionism enables Sullivan to include in his examples of exhibitionism a scene in which the display of genitals is not deliberate, let alone a "preferred form of sexual activity," namely the scene in which Ascyltus is naked because he is at the baths (Sat. 92. 7-9).⁸ But in all these cases a point is being ignored. If we do not take into account "the voluntary or involuntary nature of the incident from the character's point of view," what possible criterion do we have for deciding whether the artistic depiction of a given act is, or is not, an instance of scopophilia or exhibitionism? If we allow the wide limits that Sullivan recommends, what sexual act is there which could not be interpreted as scopophilic or exhibitionist? For in any sexual act, or in the foreplay to a sexual act, if it is described in any detail, there is likely to be some point at which one character touches or sees another's genitals. It is thus hard to see how pointing out these features in the Satyricon helps to define the distinctive psychosexuality which underlies the work.

Furthermore, there seems to be a certain lack of consistency in the way in which characters are used as indexes of the author's predilections. On the one hand, as in the instance just discussed, what is important is not the intention explicitly put in the mind of the character by the author, but the sexual by-product (which a critic may detect) of a particular scene. But on the other hand, one of the characters at least, Encolpius, is described as being, in his actions and feelings in the story, virtually identical with the author in his psychosexuality, "the main vehicle of the author's fantasy" (p. 249). If one is to make a psychological analysis of a work, does not a choice have to be made between seeing characters as the direct expression of the writer's impulses, and seeing them as units in the construction of a fictional scene which, incidentally, displays the predilections of the author? Apart from attempting this consistency of method in discussing the author's employment of characters, should not the analyst pay some attention to another feature of the literary work, namely tone? Is no account to be taken of the difference between the brisk flippancy of Petronius' depiction of sexual actions (including those which involve Encolpius, the alleged psychosexual alter ego of the author) and, say, the passionate seriousness of Plato's description of the struggle of the mind with physical lust given in Socrates' "palinode" (Phaedrus 251 ff.)? It may be that flippancy of tone is regarded by Freudian critics as a cover, or disguise, for the perhaps unconscious impulses of the author's libido: but if that is the critic's opinion, it should be clearly stated. More generally, it may be doubted whether it is enough for the psychoanalyst to single out only the overtly sexual elements in a work, particularly when they are closely connected with the rest of the book in terms of the plot and the tone of the narrative, and consider them as data on their own. It is quite possible that only a consideration of the story as a whole, or of the stylistic character present throughout the work, can provide the analyst with the material he needs. Freud's analyses of Da Vinci and Dostoevsky attempt a more thoroughgoing analysis of the men and their works, and within that total examination many of the more illuminating details he fastens on, in dreams or artistic works, are not explicitly sexual at all.⁹ But what served as a corrective to undirected speculation in the case of Da Vinci and Dostoevsky, namely biographical evidence about the men in question, is almost wholly lacking in the case of a fragmentary text, whose attribution to the Neronian courtier, while customary, is essentially conjectural. For this reason, a psychoanalysis of the Satyricon of any certainty may very well be impossible.

At all events, such an analysis is not the aim of the present discussion. The view to be stated here is that the sexual elements, and the manner of their presentation, are best explained, not by attempted reconstruction of the author's psychosexuality, but by reference to the literary character of the surviving work and (as far as can be discovered) the intentions of the author in this work. The sexual episodes have not so far been studied in this way. Before examining the specifically erotic scenes, some observations will be made about the general character of the work. The interpretation of the Satyricon given here is largely in agreement with those of P. G. Walsh (who does not give special consideration to the sexual episodes) and of Sullivan himself, in the non-Freudian parts of his book. Not all points of resemblance between their views on this subject and what is stated here will be noted.¹⁰

A reader of the Satyricon today, especially one coming to the book in translation, may feel it to be a peculiarly "modern" work in a number of ways: in the realistic reproduction of ordinary people and their speech in the Cena, in the striking and bizarre quality of the surface action, as well as the almost surrealistic lack of sequence in the plot, and in the amorality and sexual ambivalence of the characters. The last three of these aspects were the ones particularly emphasized by Federico Fellini in his film version of the book. A closer inspection of the Latin text discloses a more complex impression. The effect of discontinuity in the action is fostered by the incompleteness of our text, and, in particular, it seems, by the vagaries of the excerptors who originated the manuscript traditions on which the reconstruction of the work outside the Cena depends.¹¹ Nevertheless, even when the whole of a passage has been handed down more or less intact (as the Cena has), piling of incident on incident within a single context is more common than sequential development and deepening of the human situation. The impression of a deliberately striking surface action is a real one; but the actions, however peculiar, are played out on the more familar terrain of a complex literary background. Pastiche, parody, and juxtaposition of divergent styles compose a continuous literary texture, sometimes closely fitted to the action described and the theme discussed, sometimes ironically at variance with it. The literary works generally seen as underlying the text include the Odyssey, the Greek romance, the Milesian tale, the poems of Virgil and Ovid, Horace's Satires, Lucan's Pharsalia, the Roman mime, Seneca's tragedies and moral epistles. In the relationship of the Satyricon to this literary context, it is especially hard to distinguish pastiche (straightforward imitation of a certain style) from parody (pointed exaggeration of that style), as, for instance, the continued controversy about the level of seriousness of the Bellum civile and Halosis Troiae demonstrates.¹² The sustained allusiveness, so characteristic of Roman literature, is dominant here, but often, it seems, without the purposiveness that would place the allusions within an artistically independent whole. The Cena, with its nonliterary Latin, imitating what we take to have been the speech of ordinary men, is something of an exception. But in this case the mixture of parody and pastiche is derived not from literature but from life, and the same problem, of distinguishing genuine mimesis of a manner of speech (and of a human character) from parody of it, applies with equal force, particularly in the case of Trimalchio.

The Satyricon, in short, is not the type of work commended by theorists such as Horace, in which the author, with a sincerity of artistic purpose, creates out of the parts of his work a unity in which the style is appropriate both to the subject matter and to the chosen genre.¹³ Rather this work, as it proceeds, deliberately juxtaposes examples of different styles, and the aim of the juxtaposition seems not to be to create a unity by accumulation but to exploit the possibilities of each individual demonstration. In its prosimetrical combination of the styles of more cohesive genres, the work resembles the "Menippean" satires of Varro and the Apocolocyntosis of Seneca. But the Satyricon lacks the sustained moral intention we can infer from our remains of Varro's satires (whether these are spoken in the first person or couched in narrative and dramatic form). And in the range and scale of its differing forms of fictional and poetic display, it surpasses both the Varronian works and the (equally allusive) Apocolocyntosis. The second book of Horace's Satires might be thought to stand close to the Cena in providing a series of personal vignettes without explicit comment by the author; but, apart from the stylistic differences, implicit comment and criticism is much closer to the surface in Horace. The "voice" of the Satyricon, the authentic voice of the author, is not expressed in the various formal displays of the work, but lies behind those words; and even when some implicit comment or intention is sensed by a reader, the point is often less than completely clear. Sometimes the author can be heard in the brisk, rhythmically compact, and dispassionate Latin of the narrative, so often ironically at variance with the violence of the characters' actions and passions which that narrative is used to relate.¹⁴ If one had to imagine a historical context for this kind of work, one could hardly imagine a more plausible setting than oral presentation by an educated and observant consular to a group of like-minded associates in or around the Neronian court. The "voice" of the work can thus be seen as precisely that of its discriminating author, periodically trying out on his audience successive experiments in literary and "real-life" styles, each episode combining the temporary impact of the striking or surprising with the intellectual pleasure of a recognizable stylistic context.

The distinctively sexual episodes are not divergent, in their style, from the work as a whole; indeed, the qualities of language and construction in these scenes may be seen as symptomatic, and illuminative, of the literary character of the Satyricon. The element of the striking and bizarre in the action is amply present in the sheer choice of sexual combinations: a eunuch attempting sexual assault on a man (23-24),¹⁵ an attempted seduction of a young man by a girl ending in impotence (126 ff.), a love triangle involving male homosexuals (9-11 and elsewhere), a courtesan sampling a young boy, and then arranging a union between the boy and a pre-pubertal girl (24-26), and so on. Underneath the strangeness of the surface activity lies a more complex literary context than at first appears. Contrary to what one might suppose (in the face of the rich variety of sexual practice described), the language of these episodes contains comparatively few of the words which recur in the "obscene insult poems" of Catullus, the Priapea, and Martial.¹⁶ The literary background drawn on is of a more elaborate kind. Walsh shows how a strident love quarrel between Encolpius and Ascyltus breaks down, under analysis, into pairs of opposing statements, with almost metrical composition, antithesis, and isocolon, drawn directly from the language of the rhetorical schools (p. 87, Sat. 9. 8). In the romantic crises among the three males in the earlier fragments (9 ff., cf. 79 ff.), and especially in the consultations on board ship which precede the "treaty" governing sexual relationships (100 ff.), whole speeches read like declamationes, whether they are couched in the mode of accusation or defense, general reflection, or supplicatio.¹⁷ The love poems placed periodically in the narrative, and the love letters exchanged in the Circe episodes, evoke existing erotic literature, particularly the poetry of Ovid.¹⁸ Within the sexual combinations of the story, names of greater figures from literature are employed, like Circe and Polyaenus, Tarquin and Lucretia,¹⁹ and by allusions to epic poetry we are reminded of romantic and emotional encounters between Zeus and Hera as well as Dido and Aeneas.

This allusiveness, like pastiche, is in part simply characteristic of the practice throughout the work. Thus the tales of the Woman of Ephesus and the Boy of Pergamum represent, we must assume (lacking as we do Sisenna's translation of Aristides' collection of Milesiaka), a Petronian exercise in the type of the Milesian tale, just as the inserted stories in the Metamorphoses represent Apuleius' offerings in the same genre.²⁰ But in addition the very elaborateness of the literary imitations and references lends a certain unreality to the erotic encounters, particularly when it is juxtaposed to the slightness or sordidness of the human protagonists. The verses recalling the environment of the love-making between Zeus and Hera in the Iliad precede the ignominious impotence of a very un-Odyssean Polyaenus.²¹ The response, or lack of response, of the man's inadequate organ to his urgent harangue is described in the same words as Dido's rejection of Aeneas' belated overtures in Hades.²² When characters like Giton speak in a pastiche of rhetorical prose, the effect is not to increase the stature of the figures, but to make the scenes in which the speeches occur commensurately more theatrical.²³

This ironic disparity between style and content has been noted in the contrast between the "short, polished, and rhythmic sentences" of the narrative "and the high degree of excitement, despair, and astonishment" which the words attribute to the characters, including the narrator himself (Sullivan, p. 158). There is often a similar disparity in the description of sexual acts. The more physical and intimate the actions are, the more obliquely they are expressed. Encolpius' desire for privacy is attributed to his wish "ut veterem cum Gitone meo rationem reducerem" (10). Eumolpus tells how an eques, discovering the well-endowed Ascyltus in the baths, led him away, "ut tam magna fortuna solus uteretur" (92). Philomela's daughter, ripe for corruption, is invited to take her seat on the "commendatam bonitatem" of Eumolpus (140). When Encolpius' virility is restored, Eumolpus confirms the restoration by running both hands over the "deorum beneficia" (140). In Quartilla's orgy, Encolpius, battered by the attentions of a eunuch, complains that his friend Ascyltus "solus ferias agit," at which the assailant promptly "equum mutavit" (24). Of the same eunuch, whose perspiration at his sexual labors has removed part of his make-up powder, it is said (in a simile of Lucretian rather than epic character) "ut putares [sc. eum] detectum parietem nimbo laborare" (23. 5). This urbane ornamentation, or periphrasis, in descrbing the physical or the sexual lends an irony, and a degree of unreality, to the event presented, and gives a tone of prurient indirectness to the narrative.

There is also a secondary effect, in some cases, of implicit parody of the literary works whose phrases, or style, are thus incongruously taken out of context. This applies to the allusions to the epic poems as well as to the antitheses and sententiae borrowed from the rhetorical schools. On the level of plot, the homosexual renversement of the heterosexual themes and situations of the Greek romance incidentally satirizes the originals which are adapted.²⁴ Similarly, the rhetorical heightening of the speeches made by the lovers at moments of stress renders the moments themselves more theatrical and burlesques en passant the lamentations of the heroes of romance.²⁵ In cases where the pastiche is of works which are themselves mannered, or which depend on the satiric reversal of existing literary models, the Satyricon reinforces the effect of the original. Thus the allusions to Ovid's poetry heighten the verbal artificiality already present in the model. And the narration of the Milesian tales most probably emphasizes a salient feature of the Milesian tradition, the cynical reversal of accepted moral and literary norms (such as that of pudicitia in wives, maidens, and boys) which were already enshrined in the idealized tradition of historiography and romance.²⁶

The rich artificiality of the language used to describe sexual events, and the disparity between verbal style and physical content (or sometimes between different styles in the same episode), do not reinforce the fictional reality of the action presented. Rather they tend to make each scene a temporary performance or display, the directness of the sexual impact undercut by the self-conscious style of the presentation. This quality of the language of the work is supplemented by the way in which characters are used, in the construction of particular situations, to make scenes into theatrical spectacles. What is characteristic of the Satyricon is the self-conscious presentation by the author (through his characters) of a series of exhibitions of verbal or fictional virtuosity, designed for an audience capable of relishing the contrived grotesquerie of the display. In a number of sexual incidents the same structure of actors-performance-audience is created, with the characters in the story acting as surrogates for author and audience. While some of the characters enact a parody of a normal sexual act—and themselves relish the comic and aesthetic aspects of what they are doing—others serve as the appreciative audience of those parodies. Of this kind is the climax of Quartilla's orgy, the "marriage" of the adolescent Giton and the seven-year-old Pannychis (Sat. 25-26). Quartilla originates this scene, and stage-manages it, using an enthusiastic chorus ("iam embasicoetas praeferebat facem, iam ebriae mulieres longum agmen plaudentes fecerant") and a compliant hero and heroine ("non repugnaverat puer, ac ne puella quidem tristis expaverat nuptiarum nomen") to compose a spectaculum of which she is the most excited spectator. Of this kind, too, is the copulation. engineered by Eumolpus, his slave, and Philomela's the verbal expression itself an object of urbane amusement. The whole scene is essentially a game, played by the fictional characters with their bodies, and by the author with his language. The one, relatively minor, element in this scene which Sullivan singles out, the boy's observation of the sexual act, can now be seen as only one of the units out of which Petronius forms his elaborately perverse construction.

In creating individual spectacles through the agency of the characters, Petronius makes sexual episodes like this one consonant with other sections of the Satyricon. In particular, the Cena, insofar as it is engineered by Trimalchio, consists of a series of incidents of a superficially bizarre or shocking character (slaves threatened with terrible punishments for culinary mistakes, 49; acrobats falling from ceilings, 54; a roof collapsing only to disclose gifts suspended by a pulley, 60), which turn out to have been organized in advance by the host and are enacted by his slaves. The sheer excess of the food, together with the relentless pursuit of novelty by means of elaborate disguises (the work of "Daedalus" the chef), corresponds to the sexual plethora, enlivened by peculiar unions and reversals of ordinary mating roles, in such events as Quartilla's orgy. Above all, in the culmination of the Cena, the scene in which Trimalchio anticipates his end and the others respond with lamentation (71-72), a scene which is virtually a staged "death" of Trimalchio, the way in which characters use their words and reactions to create a travesty of an organic event is analogous to the way characters employ their bodies and responses to construct a grotesque machine for sexual intercourse in Eumolpus' bedroom at Croton. The intermittent, usually sarcastic, comments of the narrator reinforce our disposition to take a detached and aesthetic view of the sights which Trimalchio provides.³⁰

Whether the displays of the Cena and the sexual spectacula mimic the home life of an emperor whose love of personal and artistic exhibition is well attested,³¹ and whose erotic experiments apparently received a similar presentation,³² is not certainly verifiable. What can be said is that this proffering of self-enclosed exhibitions, in which the internal roles adopted by the characters mirror the artistic practice of the author, is consistent with the over-all composition of the Satyricon. The author of this work is consistently the stage manager of the successive episodes of his verbal Cena, in which what is important is the temporary impact of a particular scene rather than any internal thread of connection running throughout the whole. This literary "Daedalus" is more concerned with a series of transformations of the existing diet of Roman literature and language than with the achievement of a new and autonomous work or genre. His work lacks the kind of aesthetic unity which comes from matching of subject matter, genre, and verbal style, a unity whose function is to give to the reader the pleasure and benefit appropriate to the type of mimetic work produced.³³ The "proper pleasure" the Satyricon affords is a detached enjoyment of the skill with which the author manipulates the styles of ordinary speech and literary forms and juxtaposes different styles, both to each other and to an often deliberately inappropriate subject matter. The ironic detachment invited from a reader (resembling in kind, if not in degree of enthusiasm, the critical position of the narrator of the Cena) corresponds to a similar detachment on the part of the writer, who does not fuse his personality with the work he creates. And yet, while the author is ironically separable from his characters and situations, he does not use them in the service of a detectable satiric intention, as Horace and Juvenal do. Instead of making us hear his voice, either as creative artist or satirist, he retains a detachment from his work which we might (repeating the Freudian term in a different context) call "voyeuristic." This attitude to his literary work, once diagnosed, may be susceptible of psychological interpretation, on Freudian or perhaps Eriksonian lines, as being the attitude of a man who has not moved from the satirical mimicry of the emotional adolescent to the mature self-responsibility of the independent artist. That is more than I can say.

A Note on the "Realism" of the Satyricon

The Satyricon is sometimes seen as remarkable primarily for its realism, whether that realism is seen in faithfulness to ordinary language, or in depiction of the actualities of sexual life, or in techniques of fictional presentation.³⁴ So far as I can tell from reading Sullivan's discussion of this question (pp. 98 ff.), he sees Petronius as a realist in some sense, and in his argument he cites, as others do, the eightline verse at 132. 15 ff. There Petronius, apparently speaking in propria persona, seems to defend the inclusion of sexual elements in his work, in part by claiming that his work represents the whole of human reality. This is not the place to consider the whole question of realism in the Satyricon; but the lines in 132, which fall within the context of a sexual episode, can be appropriately considered here, particularly as they may affect our understanding of the objectives of the sexual scenes. The verse itself is as follows:

quid me constricta spectatis fronte Catones
 damnatisque novae simplicitatis opus?s
sermonis puri non tristis gratia ridet,
 quodque facit populus, candida lingua refert.
nam quis concubitus, Veneris quis gaudia
 nescit?
 quis vetat in tepido membra calere toro?
ipse pater veri doctos Epicurus amare
 iussit, et hoc vitam dixit habere [telos].

Why do you Catos look at me with furrowed brow and condemn my work with its novel simplicity? My pure narrative smiles with a cheerful attractiveness; whatever people do, my frank tongue reports. Who is ignorant of love-making and the joys of Venus? Who forbids that our limbs should glow in the warmth of the bed? Why, Epicurus himself, the father of truth, ordered men of understanding to love, and said that this was the "prime goal" of life.

Part of the claim here is that sex is part of quodque facit populus, and that a work which aims to present a straightforward depiction of human life must include it. This claim resembles statements in other writers of the Silver Age who lay stress on the inclusiveness of their writing (luv. 1. 85-86), or who defend their decision to depict what really happens in human life rather than repeat the formulas of literary tradition (luv. 1. 19 ff., Mart. 10. 4. 11-12). Petronius' statement is made with particular clarity, and, if it is to be taken with absolute seriousness, it must end all debate about the literary objectives of the sexual episodes.³⁵

But it is not at all certain that in these lines Petronius has stepped out of the current of his work and given a complete and ingenuous statement of his intentions. Is not our reading of his claim influenced by the context in which it is placed? The sequence of events immediately before the statement is this. Encolpius lies on his bed and harangues (in nine lines of quasi-Virgilian verse) his limp penis. In three lines, composed of actual lines from Virgil,³⁶ the organ's failure to respond is described. Encolpius pulls himself up short at the ridiculousness of what he is doing. But then he changes his mind and decides that, if in Homer and tragedy characters can curse their eyes, heart, etc., and in real life sick men can curse their diseased feet, hands, etc., then he, Encolpius, can legitimately harangue his inadequate organ. Then, without a break in the received text, comes the literary credo. At first one might suppose that the speech is part of the story, and represents Encolpius' defending his address to his private parts; but the allusions to an opus, the phrase sermonis puri, and so on, indicate that here Petronius is defending his presentation of Encolpius' address. But how curious a peg on which to hang a credo of literary realism! The credo justifies Encolpius' impotent harangue—hardly the glowing pleasures of sex the claim speaks of, concubitus, Veneris gaudia, in tepido membra calere toro, amare. The juxtaposition of such a scene, so curious an example of the sexual, and so ironically composed in mock-epic style, to a claim of an all-embracing depiction of humanity's passion, is incongruous. Indeed, the incongruity is such that it has the effect of undercutting the claim, of making the claim itself seem a piece of rhetoric or pastiche, a version of the literary "statement of intentions,"³⁷ rather than the author's final and unqualified statement on his work. The context invites us to read the claim in an ironic tone of voice, dwelling, perhaps with particular relish, on phrases like novae simplicitatis, sermonis puri, non tristis, candida lingua, phrases employed in the literary statements of other writers, here rendered disingenuous by the situation.³⁸ Furthermore, just as the claim inappropriately mimics more serious literary statements, the allusion to Epicurus gives a deliberately simplified version of that thinker's views of the erotic and of pleasure as the goal of life.³⁹ Even if the claim were not undercut in these ways, it would be undercut, or at least belied, by the practice of sexual depiction within the work. Petronius' candida lingua does not report the whole range of human sexual experience; his selection is slanted towards acts which have a surprising effect, the perverse, bizarre, or amusing in erotic combination. Nor are these Veneris gaudia presented with the kind of "cheerful attractiveness" which would make a reader respond warmly to the "Epicurean" objective of a life rich in sexual activity. Whether one thinks of the different kinds of Angst that the erotic protagonist, Encolpius, suffers, or of the contrived performances of more effective voluptuaries, the impact of the sexual description is different from the purpose avowed in the credo. It is ironic detachment from the characters (perhaps combined with an aesthetic appreciation of the scenes they compose) that the erotica of this work invite, and not a spontaneous responsiveness to their experiences. Thus the claim of realism, at least in connection with the presentation of the sexual, must be seen as simply another piece of Petronian pastiche, a literary pose momentarily adopted by the author, rather than an attempt to break out of his work and speak directly and sincerely to his audience.⁴⁰

Notes

¹ The first statement of these views was given in "The Satyricon of Petronius—Some Psycho-analytic Considerations," The American Imago, XVIII (1961), 353-69. This psychoanalytic argument was subsequently transposed into two literary discussions: "Realism and Satire in Petronius," Critical Essays on Latin Literature: Satire (London, 1963), pp. 73 ff., esp. "A Digression on the Genesis of the Sexual Episodes," pp. 78-82; and "The Sexual Themes of the Satyricon," ch. vii of The Satyricon of Petronius (London, 1969), pp. 232-53. It is to the most recent statement of these views that the page references in this article refer.

² See, for instance, the well-known analysis of Hamlet by Ernest Jones, of which the final version was published as Hamlet and Oedipus (London, 1949). More recently one may compare the subtle, but still (for many readers) implausible interpretation of certain scenes in Oliver Twist by Steves Marcus, "Who is Fagin?" in an appendix to Dickens: From Pickwick to Dombey (London, 1965), pp. 358-78, esp. 370 ff.

³A Critical Dictionary of Psychoanalysis, ed. Charles Rycroft (London, 1968). The entry under "scopophilia" refers the reader to "voyeurism," p. 175, from which the words quoted are taken.

⁴ Sullivan's examples of scopophilia (pp. 238-43) are: 26. 4-5 (Encolpius and Quartilla watching the lovemaking of Gilton and Pannychis), 140 (Encolpius and Philomela's son watching the love-making of Eumolpus and Philomela's daughter), and 11 (Ascyltus interrupting the love-making of Encolpius and Giton), which is also put forward as an example of exhibitionism.

⁵Sat. 26. 4-5: "itaque cum inclusi iacerent, consedimus ante limen thalami, et in primis Quartilla per rimam improbe diductam adplicuerat oculum curiosum lusumque puerilem libidinosa speculabatur diligentia. me quoque ad idem spectaculum lenta manu traxit, et quia considerantium haeserant vultus, quicquid a spectaculo vacabat, commovebat obiter labra et me tamquam furtivis subinde oculis verberabat." Sat. 140. 11: "itaque ego quoque, ne desidia consuetudinem perderem, dum frater sororis suae automata per clostellum miratur, accessi temptaturus an pateretur iniuriam. nec se reiciebat a blanditils doctissimus puer, sed me numen inimicum ibi quoque invenit." All quotations are from the edition of K. Muller (Munich, 1961).

⁶ The examples of exhibitionism are: 24. 6-7 (Quartilla playing with Giton's penis), 92. 7-9 (Ascyltus, naked at the baths, admired by those present for the size of his penis), 140. 12-13 (Encolpius showing his restored virility to Eumolpus), and 11 (in which Encolpius is considered the exhibitionist), cf. n. 4. Sullivan, pp. 240-43.

⁷ "'dii maiores sunt qui me restituerunt in integrum …' haec locutus sustuli tunicam Eumolpoque me totum approbavi. at ille primo exhorruit, deinde ut plurimum crederet, utraque manu deorum beneficia tractat."

⁸ "… ex altera parte iuvenis nudus, qui vestimenta perdiderat, non minore clamoris indignatione Gitona flagitabat… illum autem frequentia ingens circumvenit, cum plausu et admiratione timidissima. habebat enim inguinum pondus tam grande ut ipsum hominem laciniam fascini crederes. o iuvenem laboriosum: puto illum pridie incipere, postero die finire."

⁹Five Lectures on Psycho-Analysis: Leonardo da Vinci and Other Works (London, 1957), in The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, ed. James Strachey. "Dostoevsky and Parricide," tr. D. F. Tait, in Dostoevsky: Stavrogin's Confession, etc. (London, 1947).

¹⁰ P. G. Walsh, The Roman Novel (Cambridge, 1970), hereafter simply "Walsh."

¹¹ The traditions L and 0; see Muller's Praefatio, pp. xxxvii ff. Sullivan notes that the habits of the original excerptor of L can be detected by comparison with H in the Cena (pp. 37-38). After giving quite full extracts at the beginning, he limits himself to verse and generalities. Similarly in other episodes he may have preserved the opening incidents fully, before losing interest and retaining only verse, generalities, and, perhaps, strikingly dramatic or sexual passages.

¹² Walsh, "Eumolpus, the Halosis Troiae, and De Bello Civili," CP, LXIII (1968), 208 ff., gives a recent discussion of the issues.

¹³ This, broadly speaking, is Horace's advice in the Ars poetica. He advocates sincerity of artistic purpose, in that he calls for a fusion of the writer's creative gifts (ingenium) with an artistic correlative to those gifts, a work suited to the writer's talents (38-40, cf. 366 ff.), which fulfils his intentions (73 ff.), and is given verbal shape through determined ars (295 ff., 408 ff.). What is commended is integration of the poet's mind with his work, not ironic detachment from it and exploitation of the incongruous possibilities of all available styles. The notion of a quasi-moral seriousness, as part of a writer's duty, is present in the assertion that "scribendi recte sapere est et principium et fons" (309, cf. 310), and in the statement that "omne tulit punctum qui miscuit utile dulci, slectorem delectando pariterque monendo" (343-44).

¹⁴ Cf. Sullivan, p. 158.

¹⁵ The assault, apparently, is of a passive kind, clunibus baslisque, 24. 4.

¹⁶ Inspection shows several uses of inguina,, scortum, clunes, coitus; also anus, cinaedus, spatalocinaedus, spintria, and the obscure pigiciaca (see n. 29 below). It is not a large vocabulary relative to the amount of sexual action.

¹⁷ Cf. Walsh, pp. 100 ff.

¹⁸ Cf. Walsh, pp. 42 and 106; Sullivan, pp. 189-90, 217-18, 236.

¹⁹ Circe and Polyaenus, 127 ff., Tarquin and Lucretia, 9.5.

²⁰ Cf. Walsh, pp. 10 ff.

²¹ 127. 9; cf. Il. 14. 347 ff.

²² 132. 11, lines 1-2; cf. Aen. 6. 469 ff.

²³ Cf. P. George, "Style and Character in the Satyricon," Arion, V (1966), 336-58, esp. 338-52 on Giton.

²⁴ E. Courtney, "Parody and Allusion in Menippean Satire," Philologus, CVI (1962), 86 ff., notes ironic reversals of the romance plot. For instance, in the romance, in exceptional cases, the hero attracts men; in the Satyricon, correspondingly, the hero Encolpius, occasionally becomes involved with women (p. 93). On the relative chronology of the romance and the Satyricon, see Walsh, pp. 8-9, 78 ff. B. Perry, The Ancient Romances (Berkeley, 1967), dates the Ninus ca. 100 B.C., and the works of Chariton, together with a postulated prototype for the Recognitiones of ps.-Clement, in the first century after Christ (p. 350).

²⁵ Courtney, p. 94.

²⁶ For the relation between idealized historiography and romance, see Perry, ch. iv, "Birth of the Ideal Greek Romance," pp. 149-80.

³⁰ 47. 8, 65. 1, 69. 7, 54. 3-4.

³¹ Tac. Ann. 14. 14, 15. 33, 16. 4; Suet. Nero 20 ff.

³² Tac. Ann. 15. 37; Suet. Nero 18-19; Iuv. 10. 333 ff.,

³³ The terminology used in this sentence is that of ancient literary critics, notably Horace and Aristotle (cf. n. 13 above).

³⁴ E.g., E. Auerbach, Mimesis (Princeton, 1953), ch. ii.

³⁵ E.g., A. Collignon, Étude sur Petrone (Paris, 1892), pp. 53-55, takes these lines as a serious personal statement by the author, justifying the depiction of lovemaking on Epicurean grounds.

³⁶ For the first two lines see Aen. 6.-469 ff. (cf. 1. 482). For the third line see Ecl. 3. 83, 5. 16; Aen. 9. 436.

³⁷ For such statements of intentions, comments by the author indicating the nature of the work he is offering, see, e.g., Hor. Epist. 1. 1. 1 ff.; Ov. Am. 1. 1, Rem. Am. 357-96; Mart. 1. Epist. ad lect. Such statements may be in themselves amusingly or artifully presented, as is the case with Ovid Am. 1. 1 and Mart. 1. Epist. ad lect., but they are not normally placed in a context which renders them incongruous.

³⁸ On the employment of these phrases in Latin literature, see H. Stubbe, "Die Verseinlagen im Petron," Philologus, Supp. XXV (1933), 150-54. Simplicitas (cf. Sullivan, p. 99, n. 1) and sermo purus (cf. E. T. Sage, "Atticism in Petronius," TAPA, XLVI [1915], 54) connote the unadorned simplicity of the "Attic" style of prose. (In fact, Atticist slogans, if partly appropriate to the narrative style of the Satyricon, are inadequate to cover the range of styles self-consciously employed within the whole work.) Also simplicitas, as well as candidus and purus, denotes frankness and directness, an abandonment of guile or restraint (just as non tristis—equivalent in literary terms to iocosus, Hor. Ser. 1. 10. 11—implies a "carnival" freedom from severitia or tristitia, which is a severe attitude expressed in a weighty style, Cic. Brut. 30. 113, cf. Mart. 1. Epist. ad lect.). This apologia undercuts its own claims to simplicitas—already contradicted by the sophistication of the opus Petronius presents—by its slick employment of artistic slogans. (Cf. the disingenuousness with which Martial cites the Romana simplicitas of Augustus' obscene verses as a justification for his own oblique and contrived compositions.)

³⁹ For Epicurus pleasure is the telos of life. He includes the sexual pleasures with other sensations under the heading of the pleasurable and the good (Diog. Laert. 10. 6); but in his more detailed scheme of pleasures it would seem that sexual pleasures come in the category of those which are physical but not necessary (Ep. ad Men. 127). Furthermore, he makes disparaging remarks about the possible ill-effects of love (Diog. Laert. 10. 118) and the disturbing frenzy of erotic desire (Hermias In Phaedr., p. 76), a theme developed by Lucretius at 4. 1058.

⁴⁰ I should like to acknowledge the valuable comments and criticisms made on earlier drafts of this article by Professor P. G. Walsh of Edinburgh University, Professor G. S. Kirk of Bristol University, and Dr. R. Phillips of Yale University.