Word: satyricon
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...Satyricon of Petronius. A bawdy belly laugh at Nero's Rome delivered by the worldliest Roman of them all and translated with unexpurgated wit by Classicist William Arrowsmith...
...study of Latin offers two great rewards among others: in the first year the student learns to decipher dates on cornerstones, and in the seventh or eighth, if he is clever, he is able to read the Satyricon. The randy classic, which deals with a kind of conjugation untouched by grammars, has been nibbled at on the sly by headmasters and bishops; one old Etonian boasted that he had four editions and thought it "rather a gesture'' to keep his best one, bound in clerical black, on his pew at chapel...
Refined Voluptuary. The Satyricon-whose title may refer both to satire and to the customary activity of satyrs-is probably the work of Gaius Petronius. Nero's "arbiter of elegance." of whom Tacitus wrote: "He spent his days in sleeping, his nights in the enjoyment of life. That success which most men achieve by dint of hard work, he won by laziness. Yet unlike those prodigals who waste themselves and their substance alike, he was not regarded as either a spendthrift or a debauchee, but rather as a refined voluptuary...
...verse-its deft rendering into English is typical of Latinist Arrowsmith's translation-is. of course, sheer nonsense. The Satyricon is as impure and guileful as anything in literature, and Petronius was mocking Roman bluenoses when he pretended to deny it. But the great gaiety of the work, and the sharpness with which Petronius satirizes esthetes, pedants, bad poets, the nouveau riche and the rapacious poor, lift this gutter odyssey well above the merely pornographic. The fragment that remains of the original huge manuscript is a mixture of prose, poetry and puns, fustian rhetoric and sweaty argot...
Although the Satyricon's authorship has been disputed. Translator Arrowsmith feels that Petronius lived in a style entirely consonant with the wild life of the book. Even Petronius' death was artfully arranged. When palace intrigue involved him in a treason charge, he opened his veins, chatted airily with his friends, recited some light poetry; then, placing a manicured thumb to an elegant nose, he wrote out a definitive list of Nero's bed partners and sent it off to the emperor before he lay back...