1. 11/20/2018
CLA77, Andrew Scholtz

2. Agenda Recap and Update Immoral Morality? What If?...
Context, Story and Theme, Satire
Immoral Morality?
“The Widow of Ephesus” (pp. 118 ff.)
What If?...
Finnis and Nussbaum on Petronius
11/20/2018

3. Context, Story and Theme, Satire
Recap and Update
Context, Story and Theme, Satire
11/20/2018

4. The World of the Satyricon…
11/20/2018
The World of the Satyricon…
CLA77, Andrew Scholtz

5. Naples Puteoli Croton Pompeii 11/20/2018 CLA77, Andrew Scholtz
Nero (Nero Claudius Caesar) r
Philhellene
artiste
Petronius
arbiter elegantiae (overseer of entertainments)
suicide, 65 CE
Satyricon (episodic novel)
Pompeii
CLA77, Andrew Scholtz

6. Satyricon: Plot Outline
11/20/2018
Satyricon: Plot Outline
Lost text
Encolpius & …
Lycurgus (?)
Encolpius gladiator kills Lycurgus lanista
Lichas (Enc’s affair w/ wife)
Tryphaena (theft of Giton)
“Brothers” & Quartilla
offense vs. Priapus
Preserved text
“Bros’” Escapades about town
Reunion w/ Quartilla
Priapic offense atoned for?
Preserved text (cont.)
Dinner w/ Trimalchio
Eumolpus & “bros.”
Pergamene boy
Shipboard
reunion w/ Lichas, Tryphaena
widow of Ephesus
theft of Isis’ gear
shipwreck
Con in Croton
Encolpius’ impotence
w/ Circe
w/ Oenothea
Philomela lena
Eumolpus’ will
Themes
11/20/2018
CLA77, Andrew Scholtz

7. “Priapic” themes… 11/20/2018 CLA77, Andrew Scholtz
satyricon: “priapic themes” – mostly that around priapus revolve a number of related themes – these connections suggest what f could have termed a social-sexual isomorphism
theme - general considerations
power
pleasure
fertility
fortune
scopophilic fascination
what arrowsmith calls romanitas – whose imperilment arrowsmith argues the novel dramatize
details…
plot points
“... Quartilla, whose secret rites in the grotto of Priapus you disturbed” (§ 17)
(Trimalchio’s Priapic tray of treats, § 60)
Priapus appears to Lichas in dream (chance at revenge: § 104)
Encolpius’s sexual disfunction (§§ 126 ff.)
Encolpius (“crotch”)
impotent “anti-Priapus”
allegory: anti-Priapic impotence = . . .
“objective correlative” for mos maiorum in decline
hyper-phallic ascyltus – friend/rival to encolpius
Oenothea, priestess-witch of Priapus
killing of her sacred goose
sexual-social-political dimension
“sexualization of power”
Vasily Rudich Dissidence and Literature under Nero: The Price of Rhetoricization (London and New York 1997), 208–9
subversion of mos maiorum
“ways of the ancestors” (traditional morality)
scandalously sexualized court
abuse of power and subversion of res publica (legitimate government)
decline of traditional aristocracy
rise of freedman class (Trimalchio!)
decline in artistic-literary standards
CLA77, Andrew Scholtz

8. 11/20/2018
Satyricon, its “A B C”s…
CLA77, Andrew Scholtz

9. Or, the Satyricon as Satire
11/20/2018
Or, the Satyricon as Satire
In Petronius’ Satyricon,
“A” is for…
Petronius – Encolpius
Giton active/passive
“B” is for (target)..
Encolpius self-satirizing
Roman society
Eumpolpus (pederasty, anti-pederasty)
“C” is for…
talks to self! encourages self!
petronian satire as evidence??
bewilderment, revulsion, maybe even a prurient voyeurism, all that seems to connect the reader to the actors, to implicate the reader in the simultaneously bemused and disgusted gaze internal to the novel
in way, petronius’ novel resembles a fascinum, a magic object that “fascinates,” that draws the desiring gaze yet simultaneously exhausts it
with our eyes; we seek to possess and dominate, yet the object dominates us
but why? why have his speakers moralize as much as they do if the point is to titillate? why disgust readers if his novel is supposed to supply pleasure? why baffle us if the point of communication is to convey an idea clearly?
PETRONIUS, even more than j, poses the problem of the satiric frame, the question of editorial distance between, on the one hand, authorial voice and audience, on the other hand, target
if “they,” a well defined external other, is target, then the satire demarcates an “us” defined through shared ideas of group definition – both as to what “we” are and how “we” should behave
but to the extent that author and/or audience is targeted – is “c” – then the work in question dramatizes the self’s struggle with its moral environment, and forces readers to reflect critically on those very ideologies
11/20/2018
CLA77, Andrew Scholtz

10. “The Widow of Ephesus” (pp. 118 ff.)
Immoral Morality?
“The Widow of Ephesus” (pp. 118 ff.)
11/20/2018

11. The Moral? even chaste woman falls for man (cynical)
Juvenal-like – misogynistic cynicism
or maybe commentary on human nature
women as stupid b/c sex-driven
men as dogs – no reverence
guy in control at first, but woman now takes leading
univira – one-woman man
11/20/2018

12. Finnis and Nussbaum on Petronius
What If?...
Finnis and Nussbaum on Petronius
11/20/2018

13. “Your response to Petronius?”…
11/20/2018
“Your response to Petronius?”…
Finnis, “Law, Morality, and ‘Sexual Orientation’ ”
Notre Dame Law Review 69.5 (1994) 1049–76
Nussbaum, “Platonic Love and Colorado Law: The Relevance of Ancient Greek Norms to Modern Sexual Controversies”
Virginia Law Review 80.7 (1994) 1515–1652
11/20/2018
CLA77, Andrew Scholtz

14. Finnis/Nussbaum on Petronius…
Satyricon a critique of roman tradition
anti-universalist
11/20/2018