Fifty years have passed since Robin Nisbet, reviewing for this journal the first Konrad Müller edition of Petronius, drew the attention of academics to the ‘scandalously neglected’ text of the Satyrica. And yet, for all the subsequent scholarly engagement that is reflected in a massive bibliography, Petronius continued to miss a detailed commentary that could substitute the editio variorum of P. Burman (17432) and synthesize the results so far achieved. Except for the Cena Trimalchionis and the Bellum civile, scholars have moved in this welcome direction only in recent years, publishing such extensive studies on single sections of the novel as the commentary by P. Habermehl (2006) on chs 79–110, by N. Breitenstein (2009) on chs 1–15, as well as my own (2010) on chs 100–115. The publication of the commentary on the whole Satyrica, planned more than twenty years ago by Schmeling and J. P. Sullivan and carried out by Schmeling and Setaioli (the latter has worked on the poetry), fulfils therefore one of the most urgent desiderata of classical philology and is especially welcome, all the more so because its authors are world-renowned scholars and experts on Petronius.
The book opens with a well-informed introduction (xiii–xlix), that provides us with the general information about the work and scholarship in ten brief chapters. The first, ‘Author and Date’, very prudently dates the Satyrica to the reign of Nero and establishes the identity of their author with the Petronius Arbiter described by Tacitus; it deals with the unknown praenomen Petronii, offers an excursus about the Nachleben, and elucidates the spelling of the title, which the authors trace back to both Satyroi and satura. The following chapter ‘Testimonia and Manuscripts’ lists testimonia, fragments (unfortunately without saying which fragments the authors ascribe to Petronius), as well as the most important manuscripts and early editions of the Satyrica, and provides a concise summary of the textual transmission. In the chapters ‘Reconstruction’ and ‘A Hypothetical Schematic Reconstruction’, the authors propose a conjectural reconstruction of the original work. They suppose that it was written in episodes ‘intended as recitations for the literary coterie associated with Nero’ and persuasively argue that it consisted of twenty-four books. An outline of the narrative is presented exempli gratia and includes two traditional though quite uncertain guesses: a beginning at Massilia, where the main character might have committed offence against Priapus, and an end at Lampsacus, where he might have expiated his offence. Problems arise when it comes to the book-division: the authors assign the extant narrative to a limited number of books (14–17 only), an idea already discarded by Heinze, who more convincingly assigned it to Books 14–20 — I would be even more cautious, assigning it to Books 13–21. But, if the extant fragments actually come from just three and a half books, the complete novel would have been long beyond belief: the authors guess a length of 400,000 words, almost eight times as much as the Metamorphoses of Apuleius!
‘Language and Style’ deals with the main features of speech and style, as well as with the narrator's unreliability in narrating the events experienced in his youth. In the chapter ‘Genre’ the authors make clear that they consider the Satyrica a novel — not a Menippean satire, nor a mime, nor a mixing of genres — which aims to entertain the reader very much like Apuleius' Metamorphoses does. To stress the similarities with the Metamorphoses and to remove from the Satyrica the label of satire is, in my opinion, the best service one can do Petronius today. They also rightly put aside the unprovable hypothesis that the Satyrica could be an imitation of a lost Greek novel, and tend to believe that Petronius wrote an original work in Latin well before Greek prosimetric novels dealing with picaresque ambience and adventure were written. A key feature of the Satyrica is certainly its intertextuality: S. duly attributes it to the nature of the main character, a ‘mythomaniac narrator’ who, being victim of a sort of ‘confession-compulsion’, ‘interprets all events in his life as having parallels to events in epic and tragedy’ (xxxvii; a reference to Conte's The Hidden Author is needed here). This persuasive interpretation implies that intertextuality does not necessarily mean parody: the mythomaniac narrator recalls literary models not in order to alter them, but to shape his own overblown poses. To combine this reading with the idea of those who see the Odyssey as a model for the structure of Petronius' novel is tempting: Encolpius would consider himself as a new hero persecuted by Priapus just as Odysseus was persecuted by Poseidon; and S. inclines to explain in this way the plot of the novel. But I would be more cautious regarding the ira Priapi as an efficient motif for the plot. References to the Odyssey occur only with 97,4 onwards (the mention of 48,7 does not have any structural meaning), and, like Setaioli, I do not find that impotence is such a predominating motif in the Satyrica: the first indication of Encolpius' impotence detected by S. (20,2 ‘sollicitavit inguina mea mille iam mortibus frigida’) is actually indication of his potency, as mille mortibus is ablative of cause and mors is a metaphor for orgasm — this parallel could be added to the note on 79,8 l. 5 perire.
The excellent chapter on ‘Poems’ illustrates systematically the Petronian technique of inserting smaller or longer poems into prose, and examines the different kinds of poems and characters who declaim them. The chapter on ‘Epic’ enumerates the main references to, and borrowings from, epic. After a short paragraph on the main ‘Bibliographies’, the last chapter acquaints the reader with two methodological statements: (i) the Latin text adopted for the commentary does not come from any previous edition, but is likely to be the one that S. will print in a new critical edition which he is now producing; (ii) the authors have a different attitude towards the text: Setaioli is a conservative scholar who tends to take the text literally, much more than S. does, as will be clear in the commentary.
The commentary is thorough and detailed. Its major lack is the regrettable exception of the fragments, commented on by Burman and more recently by E. Courtney (1991). Each section of the novel is conveniently preceded by a useful introduction. The commentary notes closely examine many textual problems and a wide range of literary models, and does not neglect to explore social and economic dynamics, nor to engage with the religious and archaeological questions raised by the text. The discussions on language and style are a good guide through the multitude of stylistic levels, which range from the poetic and rhetorically refined to the lower-register and downright vulgar. To enclose in a single volume the most important features of the Satyrica is no easy task and necessarily requires some sacrifice. But the authors have judiciously selected the topics worthy of comment, confining their discussion to the more interesting instances. Their notes are generally well-balanced and informed: I particularly appreciated those on mellitos verborum globulos (1,3), on anicula (6,4), on dari missionem (21,2), on the seviri Augustales (30,2), on the trumpeter (74,2), on ‘size matters’ (92,9), on women aroused by gladiators (126,5–6), and on cannibalism (141,3). In a few cases, for the sake of exhaustiveness, the commentary includes general remarks which would be more properly confined to the introduction (e.g., on imitatio (p. 14) or on poems (p. 15.), or on terms of abuse (p. 29f.), or on Encolpius' impotence (p. 487f.)), or observations which seem unnecessary (e.g., 1,3 ‘The pirates are surely not “in chains”’, but mss. read cum catenis, not in catenis; 137,11 ‘If fortissimum iecur exists in Latin literature, it will mean something like “potent liver with magical powers”’, but it is doubtful whether fortis can have this meaning). Occasionally, one feels the lack of something, e.g. of some speculation about lacunas and the fragmentary narrative, or of discussions of textual problems, probably because the authors intend to reflect further upon difficult passages in view of S.'s announced edition. But in such cases, the reader is left without guidance about uncertain or surely corrupted passages: e.g., at 1,1 ducem, 52,11 nam modo … ad naturam, 73,5 lautitias suas ita ut supra, 92,12 ab officioso, 99,2 deleret, 114,7 prope iam fidelissimi, 114,11 vel si voluerit … expellere, 117,2 latius and penam, 131,9 quietum, 136,6 expiare … provocassem, and so on.
It is quite natural for a reviewer not to subscribe to the authors' textual choices or interpretations on all occasions — S. and Setaioli themselves conceive their commentary as ‘just one of many places for scholars to start working on the Satyrica, not a place to end their researches’. I will just offer a few examples. I am positively struck by the choice of conjectures such as Öberg's excellent per ioculum at 54,3, or by the support of readings often held as corrupt such as 140,3 ad pygesiaca sacra, or by the reviving of older ideas that deserve consideration such as Kaibel's deletion of vetare at 47,4, though in some cases I am convinced that among older or recent proposals one could find better solutions than, e.g., 2,7 corrupta eloquentia e<repta> regula, 4,3 artifici, 5 l. 16 operata, 14,7 scilicet de more ridebant, 22,5 [illi … praedam], 27,5 et iam non, 37,6 et ubi non putes, 38,8 quoi, 45,6 pater male, 52,3 coleum, 119 l. 11 crustas, 128,1 puto. The commentary is enriched by some of S.'s conjectures (e.g. at 14,3, 30,5, 44,5, 44,9, 62,12, 79,6, 119 l. 9): some deserve attention (e.g. the deletion of in at 30,5 as anticipation of intrare, already suggested by Dell'Era), some are merely possible though not particularly convincing (cf. 62,12 [hac] nostri domum: where does hac come from?), others are definitely less satisfactory (the proposal tum at 119 l. 9 is contra metrum). As for the exegesis, I select just three examples, for which I try to offer alternative views. At 12,2 S. suggests that ‘Encolpius and company might have brought the pallium to the forum in hopes of attracting the attention of the rightful owner …, who would get it back only after paying a reward’: could they not simply come to the forum when the obscuritas facilitates the illegal trade and take advantage of it to sell the stolen pallium, no matter to whom? At 63,2 I cannot understand how the reference to Babrius 125 (where an ass badly imitates a monkey which has climbed onto a roof) can support the interpretation of asinus in tegulis as ‘a proverbial expression indicating something strange and/or seemingly impossible’: the Babrian parallel rather suggests that this expression spoken by Trimalchio does not refer to the strange episode narrated by him, but to Trimalchio himself, who modestly tries to imitate Niceros in narrating a striking story — after narrabo, I would use a comma rather than a full stop. At 111,10 S. contends that the term muliercula is ambiguous and could designate indifferently the widow or the maiden, but I suspect that the word can only indicate the widow (‘poor woman’): at first, the soldier has strived to comfort the crying widow just with verbal exhortations (111,8); having failed, he tries to offer the widow his food.
The work is equipped with a general bibliography (551–94) and exhaustive indexes — of characters, of other ancient names, rerum, and locorum (595–681). It is barely worth noting that throughout the whole work there are some slips and misprints which merit correction if a second edition is to appear (only a few examples: p. xx 26. 1; p. xxii satyrei and ebibat; p. xxv ships; p. 3 acommpanied; p. 12 adultationibus; p. 60 deficente; p. 65 lagoenam (cf. p. 66); p. 70 suavia (bis); p. 73 pertracto; p. 100 dispositio; p. 130 duo; p. 164 Blümmer; p. 213 colleos; p. 215 om.; p. 308 Spinazolla; p. 333 si qua amantibus; p. 346 iaceo cum; p. 381 lac-iniam; p. 390 hospitiumque; p. 396 anstattt; p. 407 Hier-osolyma; p. 455 fero; p. 480 supercillis; p. 560 eros and attributo).
In short, although philologists in general, and those who study this vexed text in particular, will always be inclined to question an interpretation or a textual choice, no one can doubt that this long-awaited commentary, as a result of forty years lasting investigation and love, will be a fundamental point of reference for any classical scholar and student who is going to seriously approach the study of the Satyrica.
