The Satyricon/Seneca, the Apocolocyntosis

... or at least the Latin equivalent, one of those great Latin adjectives that are being dumped from English and replaced by raw slang. Scurrilous means roughly 'raunchy' or 'sleazy', but with a sharply disapproving tone to it. "Shameful' might also be a near synonym. The Satyricon is a scurrilous book - a collection of fragments, actually - a depiction of gluttony, pretentiousness, vulgarity, and sexual decadence: sodomy, pederasty, public intercourse, scatophilia, sadism, rape, all subjects to be laughed at uproariously. The challenges to any modern reader will be to decide whether Petronius meant his work as satire or pornography... or both... and whether he intended to censorious. Clearly the extravagance portrayed was perceived as "shameful", as scurrilous, or else it wouldn't have been funny. Another and greater challenge to the modern historian is to decipher just how realistic such a portrayal of bizarre perversion and vulgarity might be. The Roman Empire was unquestionably a marvel of administration and efficiency. It had to be, to survive the insanity at the center ... if even a tenth of the center were as corrupt as Petronius and Suetonius describe. With no means of transportation or communication faster than a man on foot or a ship with rowers, the Roman Empire was so much more secure and luxurious than any lands around it that every barbarian with a sharp stick was ready to fight his way in. Yet Nero was real. We know that. We have archaeological as well as literary evidence of the scale of his excesses. Making sense of how an administrative empire with high internal security and general satisfaction could survive Nero, and the dozens of mini-Neros implied by Petronius, is half the fun of being a historian. And if you, dear reader, have any ambition of appreciating ancient Rome historically, you must see it through the obscene descriptions of Petronius. The young Nero's personal tutor was none other than the austere stoic philosopher Seneca, and Seneca was capable of scurrility as shameful as Petronius, though never as lurid. The Apocolocyntosis (a title translated by Robert Graves as the "Pumkinification of Claudius") is a scurrilous semi-dramatic account of the efforts of the dead Emperor Claudius to claim his rights as a demi-god, with a place on Olympus. Like several of the plays attributed to Seneca, it was obviously written to amuse and to curry favor with Nero, Claudius's successor. We all know that Seneca's boot-licking failed in the end; Nero ordered him to commit suicide. These two translations were done in the 1960s, a time when the late Victorian conventions of language still prevailed. The vocabulary of sexuality and body functions is a good deal less blunt here in English than in the original Latin, but perhaps our modern imaginations are more attuned to euphemisms. This society of rich slaves, imperious freedmen, opulent prostitute priestesses, and the unchallengeable privilege of the super rich was the substrate

Lacking the complete text, which is probably forever lost, this surviving material is still a very entertaining look into Roman life and culture. It offers perspectives that you will find no where else in classical literature, often very humorous. I've wanted to read this text for many years and was not dissapointed when I final picked it up. Those who are reading this review are likely aware of how frequently this work has been cited and referenced by more modern writers, and upon reading it one can easily see why that is so. I recommend it to anyone who is into classics, satire, novels, Swift, etc.

Petronius, according to the translator's notes, was a person of unidentified occupation and member of Emperor Nero's court. Chances are that Petronius got by ingratiating himself with the rich and famous, perhaps by amusing them with his stories. It's also fair to guess that he joined some of their debuaches - perhaps some of this is drawn from experience - and that the tales grew in the telling. The story starts with the narrator Encolpius, with his friend Asclytus, and with the toyboy they share, Giton. What follows is a wandering series of encounters. They split and reunite a number of times, usually around some improbable scheme. Later on, the aging poet Eumolpus takes Asclytus' place in the story, in Giton's intimacy, and in the petty schemes with Encolpius. At one point, Encolpius is found spying on the ecstasies offered up to one of the gods. The punishment for that lewd interlude is in kind, to have ecstasy thrust upon (and into) him beyond bearing. That's an early passage, and sets the tone for all the other adventures and escapes in this book. Towards the end, his dissolute ways make him the Cialis poster boy. He seeks an aged witch for aphrodisiac treatment, and she gives it to him all different ways. To his dismay, many ways involve her own aged body in the treatment. A reader with a vivid imagination will see lots more humor than this 1965 translation would have dared put on paper. But I wonder, is this really the best translation? Yes, it has some integrity - Sullivan has been careful to note breaks in the manuscript. He even adds a chapter of "fragments," too broken and disjoint to guess at. The reader doesn't get a false sense of continuity caused by the translator's patches. On the other hand, the reader doesn't get a full sense of continuity, either. On the scale from academic rendering to storytelling, I wish this were a bit more in the storytelling direction. No matter, it's a great story anyway. //wiredweird

It was not easy being a poet and scholar in Nero's day. Since the Emperor regarded himself as the poet par excellence, everyone else was ultimately disposable. Both Petronius and Seneca were ultimately requested to commit suicide and did so, lest the Praetorian Guard were called in to "assist" them.In the earlier days of Nero's rule, when there was some possibility that his would be one of the rare enlightened reigns, Petronius and Seneca joined Nero in a regular after-dinner literary society where the humor was frequently raunchy and the sex more often than not perverted. The SATYRICON was originally a fairly long episodic spoof of the ODYSSEY: its hero offends the God Priapus by ransacking his temple and is stricken with impotence. He and his friends and bedmates wander through Italy recounting their adventures. The only fairly intact sequence tells of a dinner by a nouveau-riche merchant named Trimalchio who holds an elegant banquet but whose base-born origins are always showing. All the rest of the episodes are fragmentary, though not without interest.Seneca takes the recently poisoned Emperor Claudius down a peg by spoofing his deification. Starting with Julius Caesar, the Romans turned many of their leaders into gods upon their demise. Claudius -- who was by no means the nice guy portrayed in the Robert Graves books -- gets short shrift in the underworld. A clue: The title is usually translated as "The Pumpkinification of Claudius." Seneca was treading carefully here, as Nero's mother was Claudius' wife and is generally considered to have been the one who poisoned him.These are not works that you can sit down and read as if they were novels. The introductions are not only helpful, but mandatory to understanding what follows. Both works, along with the works of Lucan, are essential to understanding this darkly fascinating period of Roman history.

This book, when, as here it is translated well (i.e. in a fashion that renders it valid to a modern reader as opposed to one in which it is more a word-for-word translation from the Latin), is one of the funniest books of which I know. Roman literature typically seems derivative-- less real, less well-thought out than Greek stuff-- this book is one of the major exceptions to this rule.If you know of this book and want to read it, this translation here is a good place to start. This is the first novel (whatever that means!), and just an all-around good time....