Arbitri Nugae: Petronius' Short Poems in the Satyrica (review)

This volume consists of an introduction, twenty-two chapters, and three appendices, all of which have appeared (or are about to appear) elsewhere, though for the most part they are presented here in English for the first time (all poems except for the Troiae halosis and the Bellum civile are included). The earliest essay dates to 1997, but the book was, Setaioli makes clear, conceived as a whole from the beginning. This is, then, the fruit of at least a decade and a half of scholarly labor on the poems in the Satyrica and represents a major contribution to Petronian studies by an eminent student of Latin literature, whose work deserves to be better known in the English-speaking world.

The format of the several chapters is fairly uniform. Each begins with the text of the relevant passage, which includes the immediate prose context where relevant (in a few cases, two poems are treated together, if they seem to be closely connected), along with an apparatus criticus (translations are not provided). The discussions that follow vary not only in length and detail but also in layout: sometimes there is a verse by verse commentary after the initial analysis, other times not. The numbered paragraphs may dwell more on the immediate context in Petronius, on parallels in other Roman literature, or on other matters, in accord with what the interpretation requires. All the chapters provide extensive references to earlier scholarship, giving credit where it is due, sometimes to figures whose contributions have been all but universally overlooked, and offering judicious summaries of competing views. This respect for the achievements of others is one of the major attractions of the book and permits the reader both to locate Setaioli's interpretations in the larger tradition and to evaluate them independently.

Setaioli takes the poems in the Satyrica seriously. They are part of the overall comic character of the novel, to be sure, and when they reflect the attitudes and ignorance of a figure like Trimalchio, they may reveal deficiencies of style and thought, but in general they are plausible bits of verse, like Martial's epigrams. For example, in the longish poem recited by Agamemnon (Satyrica 5), which Setaioli dubs "The Education of the Orator," Setaioli explains the combination of choliambic and hexameter meters as a function of the theme, as Agamemnon switches from the diatribe mode, suitable for attacking the decay of contemporary oratory and ethics, to the didactic presentation of literary precepts. As Setaioli writes, this view "may explain our poem's metric variety much better than the intent to expose Agamemnon's feigned literary and rhetoric abilities" (23); the mere fact that the poem is put in the mouth of a disreputable character does not automatically nullify the value of the educational program he sketches. Setaioli adduces a wealth of parallels to show that Agamemnon's ideal "cannot be dismissed as lacking any seriousness, and that it actually belongs to the most engaged strand of contemporary teaching" (36). The poem at 14.2, which attacks the Cynics themselves for perjuring their testimony for money, implicitly defends the life of the poet as the only one that is not "subservient to material goods" (55). Setaioli interprets the poem at 18.6 (which he treats jointly with that at 15.9), pronounced by Quartilla, as a criticism of the Stoic ideal, according to which the sage should be above being offended by stulti: one should, she affirms, neither endure the contempt of others nor resort to the law to the point of crushing one's opponent. The irony is that Quartilla herself is prepared to use violence, and her rejection of the courts is a sign more of her distrust of the legal system than of a high-minded, not to say arrogant (superbum), disdain for retribution (70-71; in this connection, Setaioli might have cited not just Seneca but also Musonius Rufus 10).

When it comes to Trimalchio, as I have...