The Satyricon — Volume 07: Marchena Notes
The Satyricon — Volume 07: Marchena Notes
Translated by Firebaugh W. C.
Ancient Rome's first novel still crackles with mischief two millennia later. Petronius Arbiter's The Satyricon follows Encolpius and his beautiful companion Giton as they drift through the underbelly of Nero's empire, tumbling from one erotic misadventure to the next. This isn't heroic myth-making; it's street-level satire, a picaresque portrait of con artists, fake priests, gluttons, and poets too pleased with their own verse. The prose is playful, obscene, and surprisingly tender, wrestling with desire, jealousy, and the search for meaning in a world that prizes nothing but pleasure. This seventh volume, enriched with Marchena's scholarly notes, captures the novel at its most riotous. The text remains fragmentary but pulses with energy: an encounter with the lascivious priestess Quartilla, philosophical debates interrupted by hunger or lust, the constant anxiety of being exposed as frauds. What makes The Satyricon endure is its modernity: the unreliable narrator, the episodic structure that feels almost cinematic, the way humor and desire intertwine without apology. It reads less like an ancient artifact and more like something a jaded Roman might have live-tweeted. For readers who want classical literature's raunchy, philosophical heart, this is it.
Editions
X-Ray
“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
Link to this book
Add a free, dofollow link to Lex on your blog, forum, syllabus, or reading list.
<a href="https://lex-books.com/book/the-satyricon-volume-07-marchena-notes-109b0cbc-0cd6-4656-b73b-d7051ef7d6b5"><img src="https://lex-books.com/badges/read-on-lex.svg" alt="Read The Satyricon — Volume 07: Marchena Notes by Petronius Arbiter free on Lex" width="160" height="40"></a>[](https://lex-books.com/book/the-satyricon-volume-07-marchena-notes-109b0cbc-0cd6-4656-b73b-d7051ef7d6b5)[url=https://lex-books.com/book/the-satyricon-volume-07-marchena-notes-109b0cbc-0cd6-4656-b73b-d7051ef7d6b5][img]https://lex-books.com/badges/read-on-lex.svg[/img][/url]Read The Satyricon — Volume 07: Marchena Notes by Petronius Arbiter free on Lex: https://lex-books.com/book/the-satyricon-volume-07-marchena-notes-109b0cbc-0cd6-4656-b73b-d7051ef7d6b5Cite this book
Reading this edition for a paper or guide? Copy a citation.
Arbiter, Petronius. The Satyricon — Volume 07: Marchena Notes. Lex, lex-books.com/book/the-satyricon-volume-07-marchena-notes-109b0cbc-0cd6-4656-b73b-d7051ef7d6b5.Arbiter, P. (n.d.). The Satyricon — Volume 07: Marchena Notes. Lex. https://lex-books.com/book/the-satyricon-volume-07-marchena-notes-109b0cbc-0cd6-4656-b73b-d7051ef7d6b5Arbiter, Petronius. The Satyricon — Volume 07: Marchena Notes. Lex. https://lex-books.com/book/the-satyricon-volume-07-marchena-notes-109b0cbc-0cd6-4656-b73b-d7051ef7d6b5.
