Boy, oh boy
Simon Raven
SATYRICA by Petronius, edited and translated by R. Bracht Branham and Daniel Kinney Dent, £18.99, pp. 184 Petronius' Satyricon is a jaunty piece of picaresque, much slashed by time and chance, about a gentleman vagabond called Encolpius (the narrator), his serving-boy- cum-catamite, Giton, (a pretty little bit with whom Encolpius fancies himself fran- tically in love), Encolpius' sceptic friend, Ascyltos who competes for Giton, and an elderly bard named Eumolpus, who is a gifted story-teller and con-man but a grotty poet. There are also several female whores of varying talent and degree, a witch, and the famous parvenu, Trimalchio, who gives a Lucullan banquet with perverse and inge- nious cookery (hares got up to look like Pegasus and piglets of marchpane sucking the teats of the roast pig). The Latin, to an amateur Latinist like myself, seems fresh and lucid; the adventures wag along briskly, though gaps in the text make for occasional confusion.
The new translation, under the title Satyrica, by R. Bracht Branham and Daniel Kinney, is in apposite English, swift and cit- ric, with the odd pointless vulgarism like `ya' for 'you'. The original from time to time breaks into verse, much of this with a certain bucolic charm — though not when it purports to have been composed by Eumolpus, who specialises in soggy sagas. The English translation of Petronius' short- er verses is harmless: you should skip the epic lucubrations of Eumolpus.
So much for the good news, both about Petronius and this translation. Now for the bad news, which applies equally to both.
The incessant homosexuality, from city to shore of Southern Italy, on ship-board and even during shipwreck, from Cumae to Salemany to Scylla is a grinding bore. Peo- ple talk of this work as one of pornography, but when it gets to the point, one is usually fobbed off with some banality such as 'I passed the night in bliss with my darling'. Furthermore, much of the story is about sexual jealousy, surely the meanest and most depressing of all vices. The older characters buzz and bicker about Giton like sixth-formers at an all-male public school squabbling about whose turn it is to have the School Tart.
Luckily for us Eumolpus is so decayed that he is almost past sex and tells anec- dotes instead: The Widow of Ephesus, that classic of female faithlessness, randiness and ruthless common sense; and the one about the Tutor. His Pupil (and best friend's son) threatens to 'Call my Father' if there are any more attempts to feel him up, but on being at last bribed into surren- der he enjoys himself so much that he pesters his Mentor for more and more and more until the latter, broken, cries out, `Any more of this, and I'll call your Father.'
But this is the only homosexual incident that has point or humour, and it really does not make up for the quagmire of vomit and other assorted emissions that one must wade through to reach it.
Mind you, there is some good fun, clean and unclean, at Crotona, where Eumolpus passes himself off as a rich man without dependents. His remittance (like Billy Bunter's) will reach him in a few days, as soon as his agents find out where the ship- wreck has deposited him. Fortune hunters flock to his lodging with handsome presents. But of course even now we are not let off sex . . . which suddenly and unexpectedly becomes rather amusing. Encolpius becomes impotent, is cured by the witch, then becomes impotent again. . . or does he? Meanwhile Eumolpus is rumbled and seeks sanctuary with a `respectable' widow, who has not heard that he's a fake and wants to ingratiate her- self with him by presenting her teenage son and daughter to him for use selon son gout. Although he no longer has a 'gout' in such matters, he puts on an act to keep the ball rolling, stationing his valet under the bed to propel his (Eumolpus') groin up and down to simulate enthusiasm for the girl astride him. Encolpius now catches her brother watching through the keyhole and pleasuring himself. Will this get Encolpius going again? We are on the point of firing out when the whole text shatters into meaningless fragments. As good an end as any, I suppose.
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