The Satyricon — Complete

(It has been so long since I promised you the story of my adventures, that I have decided to make good my word today; and, seeing that we have thus fortunately met, not to discu...

Having put on our clothes, in the meantime, we commenced to stroll around and soon, the better to amuse ourselves, approached the circle of players; all of a sudden we caught si...

There was no torch to light the way for us, as we wandered around, nor did the silence of midnight give promise of our meeting any wayfarer with a light; in addition to this, we...

“I have always and everywhere lived such a life that each passing day was spent as though that light would never return; (that is, in tranquillity! Put aside those thoughts whic...

For a long time affairs at Crotona ran along in this manner and Eumolpus, flushed with success so far forgot the former state of his fortunes that he even bragged to his followe...

The arena of his activities is, however, that of Venus and not Mars. Petronius is fond of figurative language, and in several other passages, he has made use of the slang of the...

Quartilla is here smarting under the sting of some former lover’s impotence. Her remark but gives color to the charge that, owing to the universal depravity of Rome and the smal...

Martial, xi, 46, makes mention of the fact that patrons of houses of ill fame had reason to beware of needle holes in the walls, through which their misbehaviour could be apprec...

Philosophic dogmas concerning the brevity and uncertainty of life were ancient even in the time of Herodotus. They have left their mark upon our language in the form of more tha...

German scholars have adopted the doctrine that Marsyas belonged to that mythological group which they designate as “Schlauch-silen” or, as we would say in English, “Wineskin-bea...

In the winter of 1895 a dinner was given in a New York studio. This dinner, locally known as the “Girl in the Pie Dinner,” was based upon Petronius, Martial, and the thirteenth...

All translators have rendered “contus” by “pole,” notwithstanding the fact that the word is used in a very different sense in Priapeia, x, 3: “traiectus conto sic extendere peda...

In tracing this savage caricature, Petronius had in mind not Crotona alone; he refers to conditions in the capital of the empire. The descriptions which other authors have set d...

“Captare” may be defined as to get the upper hand of someone; and “captari” means to be the dupe of someone, to be the object of interested flattery; “captator” means a successi...

Castration has been practiced from remote antiquity, and is a feature of the harem life of the Levant to the present day. Semiramis is accused of having been the first to order...

Many scholars have drawn attention to the ethereal beauty of this passage. Probably the finest parallel is to be found in Horace’s ode to Calliope. After the invocation to the m...

Since the Fairy Tale Era of the human race, sputum has been employed to give potency to charms and to curses. It was anciently used as anathema and that use is still in force to...

See also Dio Chrysostom, xxxiii. “Neither,” says Lampridius, Life of Heliogabalus, “was he given to demand infamies in words when he could indicate shamelessness with his finger...

This instrument, made from glass, wax, leather, or other suitable material such as ivory or the precious metals (Ezekiel xvi, 17), has been known from primitive times; and the s...