Quotes from bookSatyricon
The Satyricon, Satyricon liber , or Satyrica, is a Latin work of fiction believed to have been written by Gaius Petronius, though the manuscript tradition identifies the author as Titus Petronius. The Satyricon is an example of Menippean satire, which is different from the formal verse satire of Juvenal or Horace. The work contains a mixture of prose and verse ; serious and comic elements; and erotic and decadent passages. As with the Metamorphoses of Apuleius, classical scholars often describe it as a "Roman novel", without necessarily implying continuity with the modern literary form.The surviving sections of the original text detail the bizarre exploits of the narrator, Encolpius, and his slave and boyfriend Giton, a handsome sixteen-year-old boy. It is the second most fully preserved Roman novel, after the fully extant Metamorphoses of Apuleius, which has significant differences in style and plot. Satyricon is also regarded as useful evidence for the reconstruction of how lower classes lived during the early Roman Empire.
“A huge dog, tied by a chain, was painted on the wall and over it was written in capital letters ‘Beware of the dog.”
Canis ingens, catena vinctus, in pariete erat pictus superque quadrata littera scriptum ‘Cave canem.’
Sec. 29
Satyricon
“He has joined the great majority.”
Abiit ad plures.
Sec. 42
Variant translations:
He’s gone to join the majority [the dead].
He has gone to the majority.
(i.e. He has died.)
Satyricon
she replied, 'I want to die."
Sec. 48
In the T. S. Eliot poem, "The Waste Land", Petronius' original Latin and Greek is quoted: Nam Sibyllam quidem Cumis ego ipse oculis meis vidi in ampulla pendere, et cum illi pueri dicerent: Σίβυλλα τί θέλεις; respondebat illa: ἀποθανεῖν θέλω. The translation generally associated with Eliot's poem is as follows: For with my own eyes I saw the Sibyl hanging in a bottle, and when the young boys asked her, 'Sibyl, what do you want?', she replied, 'I want to die' .
The quote refers to the mythic Cumaean Sibyl who bargained with Apollo, offering her virginity for years of life totaling as many grains of sand as she could hold in her hand. However, after she spurned his love, he allowed her to wither away over the span of her near-immortality, as she forgot to ask for eternal youth.
Satyricon
