Petronii Arbitri Satyricon 100-115: Edizione critica e commento (review)

With exhaustive modern commentaries available to date for only two sections of Petronius' Satyrica—Breitenstein (Berlin 2009) on chs. 1-15 and Habermehl (Berlin 2006) on chs. 79-110—we can hardly be very happy about an intersection of eleven chapters between the sixteen discussed by Vannini and the thirty-two already examined in one of the existing publications. Fortunately, however, Habermehl and Vannini complement one another quite nicely. While the former provides in-depth interpretations of his selected passages, Vannini focuses on textual criticism, language, and style, seeing, for example, considerable importance in prose rhythm for any attempts at emendatio. Unlike Habermehl, whose commentary is based largely on Müller's Teubner edition (4th ed. 1995), Vannini uses for chs. 100-115 a text founded on his own recensio of the manuscripts, which has also produced twenty-six very informative pages on the transmission of the Satyrica (as opposed to Habermehl's two: xxxv-vi). The literary context and background of the passages analyzed are similarly revisited by Vannini, who presents a wealth of new findings, whereas Habermehl confines himself in his introduction principally to an account of research to date. The results of Vannini's own studies include, for instance, a hypothesis on which to base the reconstruction of Petronius' text. Working like others before him on the assumption that the Satyrica originally comprised twenty-four books, Vannini argues very persuasively that the surviving fragments all belong to the second half and there specifically to books 13-21. The passages examined in his commentary are assigned by him (up to 115.6) to book 18. These contain the portion of Encolpius' narrative which bears the closest thematic resemblance to the Greek idealistic novels written from the mid-first century onwards (sea voyage, recognition, "trial scene," storm and shipwreck), and thus represent, as it were, a tale within the tale. Vannini does not actually believe that Petronius is alluding to such texts, but we can only agree with Vannini if we assume that the author of the Satyrica was Tacitus' arbiter elegantiae (Ann. 16.17-20) and so died oblivious of these novels in the year 66. Nowadays, however, the Satyrica is no longer dated, as Vannini seems to think, quasi unanimemente (3) to Nero's reign; an increasing number of scholars sees the work as a product of the second century at the earliest (or at least later than Martial). Its author, then, may very well have read novels such as Chariton's Callirhoe (see most recently Jeffrey Henderson, IJCT 17 [2010] 483-96).

The particular merit of Vannini's commentary lies in his comprehensive and innovative contribution, in his introduction and in the commentary, to our understanding of the "Widow of Ephesus" tale. Vannini looks closely at the rapporti fra le versioni antiche dell'aneddoto (23 ff.) and comes to a conclusion that is more convincing than all previous Quellenforschung: Phaed. app. 15, Petron. 111-12, and Romul. 59 are all based on a lost Latin adaptation of a fable found in chapter 129 of the Vita Aesopi, that of the widow and the plowman. The new costume romano consists, e.g., in the crucifixion motif, and Petronius adds flesh to the story with elements such as those we may suppose were found in the (also now lost) Milesian tales, and with a good measure of intertextuality. The astuteness with which Vannini develops his theory is matched by the staggering meticulousness with which he unfolds his commentary, and to which we already owe his brilliant report on Petronius studies 1975-2005 (Lustrum 49 [2007]). All we can do now is wait and see whether Gareth Schmeling, whose commentary on the complete Satyrica has finally been published,* is every bit as meticulous in his examination of the chapters which Breitenstein, Habermehl, and Vannini have left for him. No pressure!