The Satyricon — Volume 05: Crotona Affairs
The Satyricon — Volume 05: Crotona Affairs
Translated by Firebaugh W. C.
The fifth volume of the world's first novel finds our narrator Polyaenos in Crotona, attempting to navigate a social minefield of absurd pretension and naked greed. He encounters the seductive Circe and the endlessly scheming Eumolpus, each more ridiculous than the last. What follows is a cascade of humiliating encounters, botched seductions, and comical failures of nerve that would make any modern reader feel strangely at home. Petronius takes sacred classical education and turns it into ammunition for satire, making the pompous scholars and greedy social climbers look like exactly what they are. This is ancient Rome as it rarely appears in the history books: not marble and virtue, but desperate status-seeking, absurd courtship rituals, and pathetic performances of masculinity. It's filthy, it's funny, and it somehow feels more honest about human nature than a thousand sober philosophical treatises. For readers who thought the Romans took themselves too seriously, The Satyricon offers delicious proof otherwise.
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“Can't you see that I'm only advising you to beg yourself not to be so dumb?””
— Petronius Arbiter
“Nothing is falser than people's preconceptions and ready-made opinions; nothing is sillier than their sham morality...””
— Petronius Arbiter
“Everyone will find what he's looking for. Nothing pleases everyone: this man gathers thorns, that one roses.””
— Petronius Arbiter
“I said everything that a painful swelling in one's libido tells one to say.””
— Petronius Arbiter
“No man on earth may look on forbidden things as you have done and escape punishment. Especially here, a land so infested with divinity that one might meet a god more easily than a man.””
— Petronius Arbiter
“utres inflati ambulamus. minoris quam muscae sumus, muscae tamen aliquam uirtutem habent, nos non pluris sumus quam bullae.””
— Petronius Arbiter
“After all, I was once like you are, but being the right sort I got where I am.””
— Petronius Arbiter
“Wine there! Wine and dice! Tomorrow's fears shall fools alone benumb! By the ear Death pulls me. 'Live!' he whispers softly, 'Live! I come.””
— Petronius Arbiter
“The trader trusts his fortune to the sea and takes his gains, The warrior, for his deeds, is girt with gold;The wily sycophant lies drunk on purple counterpanes, Young wives must pay debauchees or they're cold.But solitary, shivering, in tatters Genius stands Invoking a neglected art, for succor at its hands.””
— Petronius Arbiter
