Whatever must be sought for, that seems best.
But later he has another outbreak. Encolpius and his friends have been shipwrecked near Croton. On their way to the town Eumolpus beguiles the tedium of the climb by the criticism of Lucan and the attempt to improve on the Pharsalia, which have been discussed in the chapter on Lucan. If neither his poetry nor his criticism as a whole are sound, they are at least meant seriously. Here, again, we have a plea for earnest study, and for the avoidance of mere tricks of rhetoric. As for the rhetorician Agamemnon, so for Eumolpus, the great poets of the past are Homer and the lyric poets; and nearer home are the 'Roman Vergil' and Horace. If there was nothing else in this passage than the immortal phrase 'Horatii curiosa felicitas', it would redeem it from the commonplace. Petronius is a 'classicist'; the friend of Nero, he protests against the flamboyance of the age as typified in the rhetorical style of Seneca and Lucan. If the work was written at the time when Seneca and Lucan first fell from the Imperial favour, such criticism may well have found favour at court. If, with the brilliant whimsicality that characterizes all his work, Petronius has placed these utterances in the mouth of disreputable and broadly comic figures, that does not impair the value or sincerity of the criticism. Eumolpus' complaint of the decline of the arts and the baneful effect of the struggle for wealth is no doubt primarily inspired by the fact that he is poor and can find no patron nor praise for his verse, but must put up with execrations and showers of stones. But that does not affect the truth of much that he says, nor throw doubt upon the sincerity of Petronius himself.
The same whimsicality is shown elsewhere in the course of the novel. It contains not a few poems which, detached from their context, are full of grace and charm, though their application is often disgusting in the extreme. Such are the hexameters towards the close of the work in which Encolpius describes the scene of his unhappy love affair with a certain Circe:
Idaeo quales fudit de vertice flores terra parens, cum se concesso iunxit amori Iuppiter et toto concepit pectore flammas: emicuere rosae violaeque et molle cyperon, albaque de viridi riserunt lilia prato: talis humus Venerem molles clamavit in herbas, candidiorque dies secreto favit amori (127);
As the flowers poured forth by mother earth from Ida's peak, when she yielded to Jove's embrace and the god's soul was filled with passionate flame; the rose, the violet, and the soft iris flashed forth, and white lilies gleamed from the green meadow; so shone the earth when it called our love to rest upon the soft grass, and the day, brighter than its wont, smiled on our secret passion.
nobilis aestivas platanus diffuderat umbras et bacis redimita Daphne tremulaeque cupressus et circum tonsae trepidanti vertice pinus. has inter ludebat aquis errantibus amnis spumeus et querulo vexabat rore lapillos. dignus amore locus: testis silvestris aedon atque urbana Procne, quae circum gramina fusae ac molles violas cantu sua furta colebant (131).
A noble plane tree and the bay tree with its garland of berries, and the quivering cypress and the trim pine with its tremulous top, spread a sweet summer shade abroad. Amid them a foaming river sported with wandering waters and lashed the pebbles with its peevish spray. Meet was the place for love, with the woodland nightingale and the town-haunting swallow for witness, that, flitting all about the grass and the soft violets, told of their loves in song.
The unpleasing nature of the context cannot obscure the fact that here we have genuine poetry of great delicacy and beauty.[321]
Of the satirical epigrams contained in the novel little need be said. They are not in any way pointless or feeble, but they lack the ease and grace, and, it may be added, the sting, of the best work of Martial. The themes are hackneyed and suffer from the absence of the personal note. But it is at least refreshing to find that Petronius does not attempt, like Martial and others, to excuse his obscenity on the ground that his actual life is chaste. He speaks out frankly. 'Why hide what all men know?'
quid me constricta spectatis fronte Catones
damnatisque novae simplicitatis opus?
sermonis puri non tristis gratia ridet,
quodque facit populus, Candida lingua refert (132).