possibly be considered an imitation of everyday life as it existed at the time—quite apart from the unrealistic and rhetorical stylization of its language. A broad and truly workaday style of presentation is most nearly approximated by certain products of Alexandrian literature, for instance the two women at the festival of Adonis, by Theocritus, or the brothelkeeper bringing suit, by Herondas. But both these pieces, which are in verse, are more playful in their realistic portrayal of sociological background data, and also more linguistically stylized, than Petronius. Petronius’ literary ambition, like that of the realists of modern times, is to imitate a random, everyday, contemporary milieu with its sociological background, and to have his characters speak their jargon without recourse to any form of stylization. Thus he reached the ultimate limit of the advance of realism in antiquity. Whether he was the first and only writer to embark upon such a venture, whether and how far the Romanmime had blazed the trail for him, are questions which need not be taken up in this context.
Now if Petronius marks the ultimate limit to which realism attained in antiquity, his work will accordingly serve to show what that realism could not or would not do. The Banquet is a purely comic work. The individual characters, as well as the connecting narrative, are consciously and consistently kept on the lowest level of style both in diction and treatment. And this necessarily implies that everything problematic, everything psychologically or sociologically suggestive of serious, let alone tragic, complications must be excluded, for its excessive weight would break the style. Let us pause here for a moment and think of the nineteenth-century realists, of Balzac or Flaubert, of Tolstoi or Dostoevski. Old Grandet (in Eugénie Grandet ) or Fedor Pavlovich Karamazov are not mere caricatures, as Trimalchio is, but terrible realities which must be taken wholly seriously; they are involved in tragic complications, and notwithstanding their grotesqueness, are themselves tragic. In modern literature the technique of imitation can evolve a serious, problematic, and tragic conception of any character regardless of type and social standing, of any occurrence regardless of whether it be legendary, broadly political, or narrowly domestic; and in most cases it actually does so. Precisely that is completely impossible in antiquity. There are, it is true, some transitional forms in bucolic and amatory poetry, but on the whole the rule of the separation of styles, touched upon in the first chapter of this study, remains inviolate. Everything commonly realistic, everything pertaining to everyday life, must not be treated on any level except the comic, which admits no problematic probing. As a result the boundaries of realism are narrow. And if we take the word realism a little more strictly, we are forced to conclude that there could be no serious literary treatment of everyday occupations and social classes—merchants, artisans, peasants, slaves—of everyday scenes and places—home, shop, field, store—of everyday customs and institutions—marriage, children, work, earning a living—in short, of the people and its life. Linked with this is the fact that the realists of antiquity do not make clear the social forces underlying the facts and conditions which they present. This could only be done in the realm of the serio-problematic. But since the characters do not leave the realm of the comic, their relation to the social whole is either a matter of clever adaptation or of grotesquely blameworthy isolation. In the latter case, the realistically portrayed individual is always in the wrong in his conflict with the social whole, which is represented as agiven fact, an institution unalterably established in the background of the action and requiring no explanation in regard either to its origin or to its effects. This too has altered in modern times. In the
Now if Petronius marks the ultimate limit to which realism attained in antiquity, his work will accordingly serve to show what that realism could not or would not do. The Banquet is a purely comic work. The individual characters, as well as the connecting narrative, are consciously and consistently kept on the lowest level of style both in diction and treatment. And this necessarily implies that everything problematic, everything psychologically or sociologically suggestive of serious, let alone tragic, complications must be excluded, for its excessive weight would break the style. Let us pause here for a moment and think of the nineteenth-century realists, of Balzac or Flaubert, of Tolstoi or Dostoevski. Old Grandet (in Eugénie Grandet ) or Fedor Pavlovich Karamazov are not mere caricatures, as Trimalchio is, but terrible realities which must be taken wholly seriously; they are involved in tragic complications, and notwithstanding their grotesqueness, are themselves tragic. In modern literature the technique of imitation can evolve a serious, problematic, and tragic conception of any character regardless of type and social standing, of any occurrence regardless of whether it be legendary, broadly political, or narrowly domestic; and in most cases it actually does so. Precisely that is completely impossible in antiquity. There are, it is true, some transitional forms in bucolic and amatory poetry, but on the whole the rule of the separation of styles, touched upon in the first chapter of this study, remains inviolate. Everything commonly realistic, everything pertaining to everyday life, must not be treated on any level except the comic, which admits no problematic probing. As a result the boundaries of realism are narrow. And if we take the word realism a little more strictly, we are forced to conclude that there could be no serious literary treatment of everyday occupations and social classes—merchants, artisans, peasants, slaves—of everyday scenes and places—home, shop, field, store—of everyday customs and institutions—marriage, children, work, earning a living—in short, of the people and its life. Linked with this is the fact that the realists of antiquity do not make clear the social forces underlying the facts and conditions which they present. This could only be done in the realm of the serio-problematic. But since the characters do not leave the realm of the comic, their relation to the social whole is either a matter of clever adaptation or of grotesquely blameworthy isolation. In the latter case, the realistically portrayed individual is always in the wrong in his conflict with the social whole, which is represented as agiven fact, an institution unalterably established in the background of the action and requiring no explanation in regard either to its origin or to its effects. This too has altered in modern times. In the
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