The Satyricon | Page 7

distinguish the spurious passages, as a point of interest, in the
present edition, the forgeries of Nodot are printed within round brackets,
the forgery of Marchena within square brackets, and the additions of

De Salas in italics {In this PG etext in curly brackets}.
The work is also accompanied by a translation of the six notes, the
composition of which led Marchena to forge the fragment which first
appeared in the year 1800. These have never before been translated.
Thanks are due Ralph Straus, Esq., and Professor Stephen Gaselee.

THE SATYRICON OF PETRONIUS ARBITER
BRACKET CODE: (Forgeries of Nodot) [Forgeries of Marchena]
{Additions of De Salas} DW
VOLUME 1.--ADVENTURES OF ENCOLPIUS AND HIS
COMPANIONS
CHAPTER THE
FIRST.
(It has been so long; since I promised you the story of my adventures,
that I have decided to make good my word today; and, seeing that we
have thus fortunately met, not to discuss scientific matters alone, but
also to enliven our jolly conversation with witty stories. Fabricius
Veiento has already spoken very cleverly on the errors committed in
the name of religion, and shown how priests, animated by an
hypocritical mania for prophecy, boldly expound mysteries which are
too often such to themselves. But) are our rhetoricians tormented by
another species of Furies when they cry, "I received these wounds
while fighting for the public liberty; I lost this eye in your defense: give
me a guide who will lead me to my children, my limbs are hamstrung
and will not hold me up!" Even these heroics could be endured if they
made easier the road to eloquence; but as it is, their sole gain from this
ferment of matter and empty discord of words is, that when they step
into the Forum, they think they have been carried into another world.
And it is my conviction that the schools are responsible for the gross

foolishness of our young men, because, in them, they see or hear
nothing at all of the affairs of every-day life, but only pirates standing
in chains upon the shore, tyrants scribbling edicts in which sons are
ordered to behead their own fathers; responses from oracles, delivered
in time of pestilence, ordering the immolation of three or more virgins;
every word a honied drop, every period sprinkled with poppy-seed and
sesame.
CHAPTER THE
SECOND.
Those who are brought up on such a diet can no more attain to wisdom
than a kitchen scullion can attain to a keen sense of smell or avoid
stinking of the grease. With your indulgence, I will speak out:
you--teachers --are chiefly responsible for the decay of oratory. With
your well modulated and empty tones you have so labored for
rhetorical effect that the body of your speech has lost its vigor and died.
Young men did not learn set speeches in the days when Sophocles and
Euripides were searching for words in which to express themselves. In
the days when Pindar and the nine lyric poets feared to attempt
Homeric verse there was no private tutor to stifle budding genius. I
need not cite the poets for evidence, for I do not find that either Plato or
Demosthenes was given to this kind of exercise. A dignified and, if I
may say it, a chaste, style, is neither elaborate nor loaded with
ornament; it rises supreme by its own natural purity. This windy and
high-sounding bombast, a recent immigrant to Athens, from Asia,
touched with its breath the aspiring minds of youth, with the effect of
some pestilential planet, and as soon as the tradition of the past was
broken, eloquence halted and was stricken dumb. Since that, who has
attained to the sublimity of Thucydides, who rivalled the fame of
Hyperides? Not a single poem has glowed with a healthy color, but all
of them, as though nourished on the same diet, lacked the strength to
live to old age. Painting also suffered the same fate when the
presumption of the Egyptians "commercialized" that incomparable art.
(I was holding forth along these lines one day, when Agamemnon came
up to us and scanned with a curious eye a person to whom the audience

was listening so closely.)
CHAPTER THE
THIRD.
He would not permit me to declaim longer in the portico than he
himself had sweat in the school, but exclaimed, "Your sentiments do
not reflect the public taste, young man, and you are a lover of common
sense, which is still more unusual. For that reason, I will not deceive
you as to the secrets of my profession. The teachers, who must gibber
with lunatics, are by no means to blame for these exercises. Unless they
spoke in accordance with the dictates of their young pupils, they would,
as Cicero remarks, be left alone in the schools! And, as designing