Articles

The Satyrica of Petronius as a Roman Palimpsest

Authors

  • Gottskálk Jensson

Abstract

This paper argues that Petronius wrote his fictional narrative in the common Roman manner of transforming a pre-existing Greek text. The hypotext, now lost, of his palimpsest bore the same Greek title, Saturiká. The argument is constructed in three main stages. Firstly, a reconstruction of the lost opening episode set in Massilia explains both the narrative persona of Encolpius and the logic of the story; secondly, a survey of 19th century scholarship shows the ideologically motivated reception of the author, Petronius, in the image of an ‘original’ writer of realistic fiction; and thirdly, some problematic loci in the extant text of the Latin Satyrica are revisited to show the usefulness of the hypothesis as a tool for improving our understanding of this fragmentary text.

Published

2003-12-01

Issue

Section

Articles