Petronius: A Handbook

Of all the literary works to have survived from the ancient world, few have been as celebrated – or as outrageously provocative – as the Satyrica. Traditionally ascribed to the Petronius who lived and died under Nero’s rule, one of the most darkly fascinating periods of Roman history, the Satyrica recounts a bizarre odyssey through contemporary everyday life. With its startling originality, bawdy humor, and vivid characterizations, Petronius′s brilliant, but fragmentary, novel has inspired countless writers and artists through the ages, most famously the Italian film director Fellini. The grotesqueries and excesses of the book′s most best–known extant section, Trimalchio’s feast, are particularly notorious and influential.

Reflecting the Satyrica′s unique stature in world literature, Petronius: A Handbook features a dozen original essays that explore the world portrayed by Petronius. Commissioned from leading scholars specializing in the ancient novel, Julio–Claudian culture, and early Roman imperial history, each essay tackles a specific aspect of the Satyrica – from the novel′s literary structure to its social and historic contexts and modern reception in literature and film. Collectively, the essays provide the first comprehensive, multi–dimensional approach to the study of the Satyrica and its relevance to our understanding of the early Roman Empire. Authoritative and insightful, Petronius: A Handbook will unravel the mysteries of one of the greatest literary works that antiquity has bequeathed to the modern world.

List of Illustrations ix

List of Contributors x

Preface and Acknowledgments xiii

Abbreviations xiv

Introduction
Jonathan Prag and Ian Repath 1

Map 15

1 Reading the Satyrica
Niall W. Slater 16

2 Petronius and Greek Literature
J. R. Morgan 32

3 Petronius and the Roman Literary Tradition
Costas Panayotakis 48

4 Letting the Page Run On
Poetics, Rhetoric, and Noise in the Satyrica
Victoria Rimell 65

5 Sex in the Satyrica
Outlaws in Literatureland
Amy Richlin 82

6 The Satyrica and Neronian Culture
Caroline Vout 101

7 Freedmen in the Satyrica
Jean Andreau 114

8 A Funny Thing Happened on My Way to the Market
Reading Petronius to Write Economic History
Koenraad Verboven 125

9 At Home with the Dead
Roman Funeral Traditions and Trimalchio′s Tomb
Valerie M. Hope 140

10 Freedmen′s Cribs
Domestic Vulgarity on the Bay of Naples
Shelley Hales 161

11 Petronius′s Satyrica and the Novel in English
Stephen Harrison 181

12 Fellini–Satyricon
Petronius and Film
Joanna Paul 198

Bibliography 218

Index locorum 234

General Index 244

Jonathan Prag is a University Lecturer in Ancient History at the University of Oxford, and a Tutorial Fellow of Merton College. His main areas of research are Hellenistic and Republican Sicily, and the Roman Republic. He has edited a volume (Sicilia nutrix plebis Romanae) on Cicero′s Verrines, and is currently co–editing a volume on The Hellenistic West and writing a book on the non–Italian soldiers of the Roman Republican army.

Ian Repath is Lecturer in Classics at Swansea University. His principal research interests are Greek and Latin prose fiction, and literary aspects of Plato. He is the author of the forthcoming article, Plato in Petronius: Petronius in platanona, and co–editor (with John Morgan) of Where the Truth Lies: Fiction and Metafiction in Ancient Narrative. He is a founding member of KYKNOS, the Swansea, Lampeter, and Exeter Centre for Research in Ancient Narrative Literatures.

"Each chapter includes useful discussion of further readings." (CHOICE, September 2009)