strikes from without and affects only a limited area, not as a fate which results from the inner processes of the real, historical world. And though, to be sure, proverbial literature and the gnomic maxims of popular philosophy conceive of change of fortune as coming to all men in all conditions, they express the idea only theoretically. Sententious reflections upon the instability of earthly happiness are heard often enough at Trimalchio’s banquet; and, on the other hand, in the guest’s reference to a goblin ( incubo ), there lingers something of the tendency to ascribe changes of fortune to specific interventions from without. But in Petronius’ book the highly practical and mundane, or what we may call the intrahistorical, concept of the instability of fortune, predominates; the account which Trimalchio gives of his rise to wealth is entirely practical and mundane, and there are similar passages elsewhere. In the passage before us, however, it is the very similarity of the cases cited, the fact that they are so similar as to constitute a series, which more especially conveys the impression of an intrahistorical process. This is no matter of one person, or a few people, being stricken by a fate without precedent, far outside the common course of things, while the rest of the world remains calm. On the contrary, merely in the guest’s narrative, four persons are mentioned who are all in the same boat, all engaged in the same turbulent pursuit of unstable Fortune. Though each of them individually has his private destiny, their destinies are all similar; their lot, for all its turbulence, is the common lot, common and vulgar. And behind the four persons who are described, we see the entire company, every member of which, we surmise, has a similar destiny which can be described in similar terms. Behind them again, we see in imagination a whole world of similar lives, and finally find ourselves contemplating an extremely animated historico-economic picture of the perpetual ups and downs of a mob of fortune-hunters scrambling after wealth and stupid pleasures. It is easy to understand that a society of businessmen of the humblest origins is particularly suitable material for a representation of this nature, for conveying this view of things. Such a society most clearlyreflects the ups and downs of existence, because there is nothing to hold the balance for it; its members have neither inward tradition nor outer stability; they are nothing without money. In all of antique literature there is hardly a passage which, in this sense, so strongly exhibits intrahistorical movement as the passage before us.
And now we come to the third and possibly most important difference from the Homeric style, the most significant peculiarity of Petronius’ Banquet: it is closer to our modern conception of a realistic presentation than anything else that has come down to us from antiquity; and this not so much because of the common vulgarity of its subject matter but above all because of its precise and completely unschematized fixation of the social milieu. The guests gathered at Trimalchio’s party are southern Italian freedmen-parvenus of the first century; they hold the views of such people and speak their language almost without literary stylization. The like can hardly be found anywhere else. Comedy indicates the social milieu much more abstractly and schematically, much less specifically as to time and place; it hardly exhibits the rudiments of individualized speech in its characters. Satire, to be sure, contains much that tends in our direction, but the presentation is never so broad, it is moralistic and concerned with branding some specific vice or ridiculous trait. The romance, finally, fabula milesiaca , the genre which doubtless includes Petronius’ work, is—in the other specimens and fragments that have come down to us—so crammed with magic, adventure, and mythology, so overburdened with erotic detail, that it cannot
And now we come to the third and possibly most important difference from the Homeric style, the most significant peculiarity of Petronius’ Banquet: it is closer to our modern conception of a realistic presentation than anything else that has come down to us from antiquity; and this not so much because of the common vulgarity of its subject matter but above all because of its precise and completely unschematized fixation of the social milieu. The guests gathered at Trimalchio’s party are southern Italian freedmen-parvenus of the first century; they hold the views of such people and speak their language almost without literary stylization. The like can hardly be found anywhere else. Comedy indicates the social milieu much more abstractly and schematically, much less specifically as to time and place; it hardly exhibits the rudiments of individualized speech in its characters. Satire, to be sure, contains much that tends in our direction, but the presentation is never so broad, it is moralistic and concerned with branding some specific vice or ridiculous trait. The romance, finally, fabula milesiaca , the genre which doubtless includes Petronius’ work, is—in the other specimens and fragments that have come down to us—so crammed with magic, adventure, and mythology, so overburdened with erotic detail, that it cannot
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