Hesiod - Works and Days

At the end of the Theogony, the genealogies of heroes emerge and begin to cement themselves into the histories of men. Hesiod has moved beyond the tradition of a local cult into a larger myth, creating a new story for a Panhellenic people. The most powerful families of Greece will trace their lineage to the age of Heroes and legitimize their divine authority to rule.

Now in Works and Days Hesiod circles back to discuss the origin of humans. There have been five different ages, five attempts at human creation, all of which have failed for a variety of different reasons. At the end of each epoch, each failure is destroyed or subsumed and the gods plunge their hands once more into the primordial sludge to begin again.

The first race of men, the Golden Age, was an age of ‘articulate folks’ that lived like Gods, ‘nothing to do with hard work or grief.’ [134] This Golden Age of men lacked the ability to reproduce, and having not been given the gift of immortality they died and were covered by the Earth. Because of their near perfection they became holy spirits and now take their place as invisible wardens for the whole human race. 

They roam all over the land, shrouded in mist,

Tending to justice, repaying criminal acts. 

And dispensing wealth. This is their royal honor. 

[145-149]*

The Olympians tried their hand at human generation again, this time with the Silver Age. They compensated for the singular flaw of the Golden Age by creating a race of men that could procreate, but this time the race is infantile and weak, being nursed by their mothers for a hundred years only to live a short and futile adulthood. The pacifism of the golden age has been replaced by fratricide:

They did not live very long, and pain at that,

Because of their lack of wits. They just 

could not stop hurting each other and could not bring themselves

To serve the Immortals, nor sacrifice at their altars

The way men ought to, wherever and whenever. 

[151-158]

Zeus, angered by their incompetence and their refusal/ inability to worship the gods, does away with the race, yet due to their simplicity they are not cast into Hades, but take their place as the Blessed underground mortals; second in status but still with a modicum of honor. 

Next, Zeus takes things into his own hands, too many Olympian cooks in the kitchen has had disastrous results. So Zeus single handedly creates the next race of ‘articulate folk’  in what will become the Bronze Age. This time instead of noble metals Zeus creates men from ash trees and his creation is even more disastrous than their predecessors. The Bronze age men look like monsters. In correcting for the weak and infantile men of the Silver Age Zeus has created a generation of cunning warriors with excessive physical strength, unable to restrain their penchant for violence or channel their gratuitous strength and power to meaningful ends, they are destined for anonymous deaths in the halls of Hades. 

They didn’t eat any food at all.

They had this kind of hard, untamable spirit. 

Shapeless hulks. Terrifically strong. Grapple hook hands

Grew out of their shoulders on thick stumps of arms, 

And they had bronze weapons, bronze houses, 

And their tools were bronze. No black iron back then. 

Finally they killed each other off with their own hands

And went down into the bone-chilling halls of Hades. 

And left no names behind. Astounding as they were, 

Black Death took them anyway, and they left the 

sun’s light. 

[170-178]

Another failure, another attempt. This time, the Age of Heroes, Zeus directs the lustful gaze of his compatriot gods (and himself) to the world of men. This is the race of heroes and demigods, a humanity mixed with both divine and mortal blood. The first cities (Thebes and Troy) are created and these men die in epic battles for the sake of honor and justice. 

And some, crossing the water in ships. 

Died at Troy, for the sake of beautiful Helen. 

And when Death’s veil had covered them over

Zeus granted them a life apart from other men, 

Settling them at the ends of the Earth. 

And there they live, free from care. 

In the Isles of the Blest, by Ocean’s deep stream. 

Blessed heroes for whom the life-giving Earth 

Bears sweet fruit reining three times a year. 

[182-194]

The flaw of the Age of Heroes is that it requires perpetual tending. When the gods withdraw from intercourse with mankind, what is left is a barren world, devoid of hope, and it is here that Hesiod and his brother Perses find themselves: The Iron age, where for those without power or legitimacy it is a struggle to survive. 

Then the fifth generation: Broad-browed Zeus 

Made still another race of articulate folk

To people the plentiful earth. 

I wish I had nothing to do with this fifth generation, 

Wish I had died before or been born after, 

Because this is the Iron Age. 

Not a day goes by 

A man doesn’t have some kind of trouble. 

Nights too, just wearing him down. 

I mean the gods send us terrible pain and vexation. 

[199-208]

Ultimately this age too will be destroyed. Men will start being born aged, with grey hair around their temples. They will be incapable of kindness and compassion but will spend their time bickering and fighting.  They will take justice into their own hands, forgetting the gods, forgetting their place in the cosmos. Mankind will destroy each other, goaded by envy and injustice, and ultimately only Shame and Suffering will be left and there will be no defense against evil. 

As Works and Days opens, Hesiod and his brother Perses find themselves living in Askra “bad in winter, godawful in summer nice never,” [709] in the midst of a feud. Perses has stolen his brother’s inheritance and then after presumably spending it all like a ‘damn fool’ he’s back…asking for more money. What Hesiod decides to do instead is give his brother a thousand line essay on how to live a better life, attempting to teach him a skill set (justice and hard work) so that he will no longer find himself begging for his survival.

Perses is a foil for this generation's tendency towards folly. What begins as sloth and laziness and a little dishonesty will sew the seed of their destruction. Perses has chosen injustice over justice, he has chosen sloth and laziness over hard work and perseverance, the simple option of stealing his brother's inheritance rather than labor for his food. Life is hard, and humans must toil, that is their lot. To struggle against the gods would only be foolish. 

It’s what the hawk said high in the clouds

As he carried off a speckled-throated nightingale

Skewered on his talons. She complained something pitiful,

And he made this high and mighty speech to her: 

No sense in your crying. You’re in the grip of real strength now

And you’ll go where I take you, songbird or not.

I’ll make a meal of you if I want, or I might let you go. 

Only a fool struggles against his superiors. 

He not only gets beat, but humiliated as well. 

Thus spoke the hawk, the windlord, his long wings beating. 

[W&D 235-245]

Hesiod again tells the Prometheus story. In retribution for Prometheus giving fire back to humans, Zeus hides how to make a living from humans[60], forcing them to eke out their survival day in and day out. Part two of the curse was creating women, not as a helpmeet but as a ‘real pain for human beings.’[103] Hesiod will later caution his brother not to let a ‘sashaying female pull the wool over his eyes,’ they might look good on the outside but really they’re just fishing for your barn. “Trust a woman as you would a thief.”[419-421] As soon as this woman, Pandora, shows up, she immediately opens her jar and dumps petulance, misery, disease and famine all over the land. The only thing left clinging to the lip of the jar is hope. [117] 

The only way to survive, especially if you are poor, is to cultivate justice, yet only divine Justice can beat out Violence. Men have a propensity for injustice, where Lady Justice is dragged through the streets by corrupt judges, who swallow bribes and pervert their verdicts. Justice in the hands of humans tends toward corruption and chaos. Even after his soliloquy on the benefits of justice, to choose to live uprightly in a world of evil seems foolish. 

The eye of Zeus sees all and knows all, 

And if he wants, he’s looking here right now, 

And the kind of justice this city harbors 

Doesn’t fool him one bit. As for me, I’d as soon 

Not be a just man, not myself or my son. 

It’s no good at all for a man to be just

When the unjust man gets more than what’s just. 

But I don’t look for Zeus in his wisdom

To bring things to that pass for a long time. 

[306-315]

Rather than seek conquests and easy wealth, (like stealing his brother's inheritance), Hesiod urges his brother to return to a quiet life of farming; to quietly and with humility tend his crops; to work with his hands, or rather to work in any capacity so long as he does it diligently. Work is the antidote for hunger. The wealth of hard earned crops is the antidote for poverty which leads to crime and vice. 

Hunger is the lazy mans constant companion. 

Gods hate him, and men do too, the loafer 

Who lives like the stingless drones, wasting 

The hives honey without working themselves, 

Eating free. 

You’ve got to schedule your work 

So that your sheds will stay full of each season’s harvest.

It’s work that makes men rich in flocks and goods. 

When you work you're a lot dearer to the Gods

And to people too. Everybody hates a lie about. 

[350-354]

After his discussion on justice, we have come to the end of the homily portion of the poem. What follows is an agricultural treatise that is sometimes referred to as the 'Farmers Almanac' 1 The poem has moved from anthropology to didactic poetry with advice such as: 

“plant naked, plow naked, reap naked” 

[440]

Doing things right is the best thing in the world 

Just like doing ‘em wrong is the absolute worst. 

[530]

If you ever get the urge for hard seafaring 

When the Pleiades chased by gigantic Orion 

Fall into the misty sea, well forget it: 

All sorts of winds are whipping around then. 

[684-666]

It is here, that we begin to notice the mutability of Zeus. His mind is hard to predict, variable, changeable. Throughout the poem the other gods have slowly been relegated to the sidelines, and without the mediating role of Hekate [Theogony 415-450] Zeus alone controls the fate of mankind. "Little by little, the earlier guarantees and promises give way to growing uncertainty. And the gods, especially Zeus, contribute to it. Tellingly, in the later sections of the poem, Zeus, who had been previously said to grant prosperity [281, 379] is now named as the source of poverty. [637-38]"2 What began as a song of praise in the opening of the poem, now sounds a bit sinister.

Come sing Zeus’ praises, hymn your great Father

Through whom mortals are either

Renowned or unknown, famous or unnamed

As goes the will of great Zeus. 

Easy for Him to build up the strong

And tear the strong down. 

Easy for Him to diminish the mighty

And magnify the obscure.

Easy for Him to straighten the crooked

And wither the proud.

[2-11]

All throughout the Famers Almanac there are systems of order, the best days for planting and harvesting etc. But what if you do everything right? What if you remember to ‘never piss standing up while facing the sun’[806] or ‘never beget children after coming home from a burial’[815] and you always make sure to ‘never let boys of twelve sit on gravestones.’? Even if you do everything right, the gods owe you nothing. Humans have created order to ensure predictability, but the gods will never be caged in by predictions. It is man’s lot to get his work done as best he can and hope he doesn’t offend the gods.  

No matter what your situation, it is better to work. 

[359]

*All quotes from Works and Days are from: 
Lombardo, Stanley. Hesiod: Works and Days and Theogony. Cambridge, Hackett Publishing, 1993.

1. Strauss, Jenny. Hesiod's Cosmos. Cambridge, University Press, 2003.
2. Strauss, Jenny. Chapter 6: "Perspectives on Gods and Men"

Other Material: 
Hesiod- The Other Poet: Ancient Reception of Cultural Icon 
Introduction to Hesiod 

Hesiod - Theogony

There is a modern tendency to think of cosmogony as an attempt to substantiate foundational truth. In our modern brains we feel entitled to an origination story that is comprehensible and reductive. Carrying with us the pock marks of humanism, even at a subterranean level, we feel uncomfortable with the unknown. The humanist mantra is a rejection of dogma and superstition in exchange for critical thinking and rationalism; humans exist in the center of this world in an almost Copernican model. Nothing exists outside of our ability to comprehend.

At its heart cosmogony asks the question: How did we get here and what is our purpose? Beneath the narrative emerges an ordered system of belief that attempts to describe our creator and creation. Our modern approach to cosmogony looks similar to a lab with test tubes and beakers. Evidence is more important than narrative, and the “what" is frequently valued above the “why”.

Hesiod, writing between 750- 650 BC, very quickly locates himself geographically in the spectrum of knowledge. He is a mortal human, a shepherd, watching his flocks at the foot of Mount Helikon, and as such there are some things no mortal will ever truly understand. The Theogony doesn’t open with Hesiod, he’s not the protagonist; instead the narrative begins while the Muses are on Mount Helikon, where no human being can observe their sacred rites. 

And having bathed their silken skin in Permessos

Or in Horse Spring or the sacred creek Olmeios,

They begin their choral dance on Helikon’s summit

So lovely it pangs, and with power in their steps

Ascend veiled and misted in palpable air

Treading the night and in a voice beyond beauty

[5-10 trans: Stanley Lombardo]

Hesiod doesn’t go looking for the Muses, they come to him, while he his alone with his flock, and they don’t bring great tidings but rather they say: 

Hillbillies and bellies, poor excuses for shepherds: 

We know how to tell many believable lies

But also, when we want to, how to speak the plain truth.

[28-30]

Hesiod does not claim to be infallible or omnipotent. He is a poor excuse for a shepherd, how could he possibly presume to describe the secrets of the universe? The Muses hand him a staff of laurel, and breathe into him a divine voice that will allow him to speak poetry of the past and future, and so he begins. 

(Hilariously Lucian, writing five hundred years later, is underwhelmed by Hesiod’s future telling abilities. This is understandable because the Theogony seems to end suspiciously in the past, with no hint of the future in sight. In his “Word with Hesiod” he lodges his complaint with the bard in an imaginary discussion: 

Either the alleged promise of the Muses to disclose the future to you was never given, and you are--excuse the expression--a liar: or it was given, and fulfilled, but you, niggard, have quietly pocketed the information, and refuse to impart it to them that have need: or, thirdly, you have composed a number of prophetic works, but have not yet given them to the world; they are reserved for some more suitable occasion. I do not presume to suggest, as a fourth possibility, that the Muses have only fulfilled half of their promise, and revoked the other,—which, observe, is recorded first in your poem. Now, if you will not enlighten me on this subject, who can? As the Gods are 'givers of good,' so you, their friends and pupils, should impart your knowledge frankly, and set our doubts at rest.)

To recap: Hesiod, a mere mortal, is shepherding his flocks, when the Muses emerge from the invisibility of the night to teach him divine secrets, in which he may or may not be able to discern fact from fiction. Truth is the gods and they will do with it what they want.

After the Muses prep Hesiod, he begs them to start at the beginning, the reverse order of the Muses opening hymn to the deities [10-20] that starts with Zeus and works it’s way back to Gaia, Oceans and the black one, Night. Hesiod wants to begin with Chaos.

If modern origin stories are held to a scientific standard, Hesiod and his contemporaries  

were playing jazz. The poet Jared Carter compares the oral tradition of poetry to a New Orleans jazz performance, the poets riff and play off each other, there are chord changes and shared melodies that build off of tradition. There is a common theme, but the poet is given much autonomy and freedom. 1

We can see this in how Hesiod and Homer differ in their birth narrative of Aphrodite. In Hesiod’s version Aphrodite is the product of her father, Ouranos’ castration, while in Homer’s version Aphrodite is the daughter of Zeus sans castration. A bit different. 

Hesiod’s version is so graphic and extreme it would be wrong not to go into it in minute detail: 

In the beginning there was only Chaos, the Abyss, 

But then Gaia, the Earth, came into being.

[16-17]

So far so good. But then Tartaros shows up, the dim underground world, and next Eros, who is allegedly the loveliest of all immortals. Eros ends up being a sidekick to Aphrodite, and doesn’t really have a prominent role to play in the Theogony outside of fomenting a general atmosphere of febrile desire. (If I had to distill the Theogony into one line it would be: A lot of nouns (person, place or thing) getting it on with other nouns in a frequently graphic and disturbing way.) 

Gaia gives birth to Oranos, the starry Heaven. “Just her size, a perfect fit on all sides.”[26] And then without any sexual love (Hesiod feels its important we know this) she gives birth to the barren raging sea. [31] And this is where things start to go down hill. You know that part about the Heavens being the perfect fit for the Earth? Well, Ouranos has his way with his mother every evening when the sun sets, he envelops her. Their union produces the Titans, and Kronos, the youngest Titan is disgusted by his lecherous father. 

As Gaia gives birth to the Cyclopes her progeny becomes more and more monstrous and terrifying. The hundred handed monsters are strong and hulking and Ouranos loathes them. So he decides to stuff them back into the hollow of the Earth as soon as they are born and keep them there forever. 

Jenny Clay puts it this way: “Genealogy now gives way to narrative as Hesiod relates how Uranus refused to allow his offspring to be born, “but kept all of them hidden and did not allow them to come up into the light” [157] apparently by blocking the birth canal through continuous sexual intercourse.” 2  Yikes? 

Gaia comes up with a plan. A cunning and evil trick. She will goad her children into destroying the offending ‘member’ of their dysfunctional family. 

Listen to me, children, and we might yet get even 

With your criminal father for what he has done to us. 

After all, he started this whole ugly business. 

[165-167]

Her children are shocked and horrified at what their mother is asking of them, all but Kronos. 

I think I might be able to bring it off, Mother.

I can’t stand Father; he doesn’t even deserve the name. 

And after all, he started this whole ugly business. 

[171-173]

And thus the moral doctrine of vengeance is born, and the defendant limps up to the stand, her belly swollen with hundreds of children battling each other to escape and she makes her case: 

“He started it!” 

So that evening, when Ouranos descends over the earth, Kronos is waiting for his father. In an ambush, clutching the sickle his mother created for him out of flint, he reaches up with his left hand and: 

The fiendishly long and jagged sickle, pruning the genitals 

Of his own father with one swoop and tossing them 

Behind him, where they fell to no small effect

Earth soaked up all the bloody drops that spurted out, 

And as the seasons went by she gave birth to the Furies 

And to the Giants gleaming in full armor, spears in hand,

And to the Melia, as ash-tree nymphs are generally called. 

The genitals themselves, freshly cut with flint, were thrown

Clear of the mainland into the restless, white capped sea,

Where they floated a long time. A white foam from the god-flesh

Collected around them, and in that foam a maiden developed…

Aphrodite is her name in speech human and divine, since it was in foam

She was nourished. 

[188-91, 195-197]

By comparison, in Book Twenty of the Iliad (20.107) ...Apollon tells Aeneas that his mother, Aphrodite, is the daughter of Zeus. 

So there is something else going on here. These aren’t narratives that aspire toward truth of any kind. The details aren’t important, instead what emerges is the chaos and violence as gods run around begetting each other, this trajectory is not sustainable. The monsters get more and more terrifying and the cycle of revenge has been established. 

Jenny Clay divides the Theogony into three major succession myths. The first is completed with the brutal narrative of Kronos castrating his father. Despite his methods, Ouranos was attempting to suppress the female generative force of Gaia which ultimately will lead to a radically destabilized cosmos. But Ouranos is instead suppressed and loses his ability to generate life in the process. After another two hundred lines of genealogies we come to Kronos who picks up the mantel from his father and begins the cycle again. Kronos and his sister Rheia produce the Olympians; Kronos is terrified that his offspring will “subdue” him, so he waits for each child to be born and then devours them. 

Rheia comes up with a plan to allow her youngest son to live. She will hide him away deep within the caverns of the earth and in his place swaddle a large stone. As one would expect, the plan works flawlessly, considering there is very little difference from a human baby and a rock. Eventually, after Zeus is strong and has finished appropriately flexing his glorious muscles, Gaia suggests to Kronos that he vomit up all his offspring (this part is a little hazy…) And the first thing Kronos vomits up is not a human baby after all…but a stone. 

Zeus took the stone and set it in the ground at Python (Delphi) 

Under Parnassoss’ hollows, a sign and wonder for men to come. 

And he freed his uncles, other sons of Ouranos

Who their father in a fit of idiocy had bound. 

They remembered his charity and in gratitude 

Gave him thunder and the flashing thunderbolt

And lightning, which enormous Earth had hidden before.

Trusting in these he rules mortals and immortals. 

[501-509]

Zeus has usurped his father, the second succession is accomplished with a military coup instead of castration, and now Zeus must battle and control the unruly gods. He punishes Atlas with infinite sky holding, Prometheus has a shaft driven through his middle and daily an eagle perches on the shaft and slowly eats his liver, only to have it grow back each night for a process of infinite liver consumption and regeneration. Moral of the story: Don’t mess with Zeus. But Prometheus is eventually saved from the eagle/liver ordeal and immediately schemes a way to give fire to mortals. Playing tricks on Zeus doesn’t go well, but this time it is not Prometheus who is punished, but the mortal men themselves. Their curse? Women. 

He made this lovely evil to balance the good,

Then led her off to the other gods and men 

Gorgeous in the finery of the owl-eyed daughter

Sired in power. And they were stunned,

Immortal gods and mortal men, when they saw 

The sheer deception, irresistible to men. 

From her is the race of female women, 

The deadly race and population of women

A great infestation among mortal men, 

…etc. 

[588-598]

Hesiod goes on in this misogynistic manner for another twenty lines, until he gets to his conclusion which is basically: can’t live with ‘em, can’t live without ‘em. If a man is fated to marry an abusive woman, there is no help for him, nothing can be done. He will live with pain in his heart, and mind and spirit suffering an incurable evil. Kind of intense. 

Finally we have arrived at the Titanomachy, the great ten year battle between Zeus and his Olympians, and the Titans. When Zeus finally wins, the gods persuade him to be their king, thus completing the last succession myth, god by election. 

His first act as King of the gods is to make Metis (translated: cunning intelligence) his wife. When Metis is about to deliver her first child, Athena, the ‘owl-eyed goddess,’ Zeus feels threatened, as his father and grandfather before him. His grandfather tried hiding his offspring in the womb of the earth with little success. Kronos had tried to swallow his children himself, burying them within his own ‘womb’ (It’s the end of the Bronze age…men have wombs too). Zeus decides he’ll try things a little differently and swallow both his wife and his future children all in one go, so he stuffs Metis into his stomach [895] and in doing so appropriates not only her cunning intelligence but also her female power of generation. Thirty-five lines later:

From his own head he gave birth to owl-eyed Athena,

The awesome, battle-rousing, army- leading, untiring Lady

whose pleasure is fighting and the metallic din of war.

[929-934]

Zeus and Memory, “with the beautiful hair”, together create the nine Muses and at this point the poem has gone full circle. Creation of the physical world has been completed, Gaia is subdued, Metis has been incorporated into Zeus and succession is no longer a threat. Zeus persuades the gods to focus their sexual interest on mortals and procreation between the gods and mortals begins and culminates in the race of heroes. The last phase of history has begun. 

As the poem ends, the genealogies of heroes emerge and begin to cement themselves into the histories of men. Hesiod has moved beyond the tradition of a local cult into a larger myth, creating a new story for a Panhellenic people. The most powerful families of Iron Age Greece will trace their families lineage to the gods and legitimize their divine authority to rule.

I mentioned above that the point of cosmogony is ultimately to answer the questions: How did we get here and what is our purpose? Throughout the Theogony a world is crafted that is very dark and erratic. It is a world comprised of binary oppositions; between Eros, who brings things together with desire, and Eris, who tears things apart with strife. Men take their place, not as captains of their destinies, but haunted by them. 

Hesiod thinks poetry can help. 

…Happy is the man

Whom the Muses love. Sweet flows the voice from his mouth.

For if anyone is grieved, if his heart is sore

With fresh sorrow, if he is troubled, and a singer

Who serves the Muses chants the deeds of past men 

Or the blessed gods who have their homes on Olympus, 

He soon forgets his heartache, and of all his cares

He remembers none: the goddesses’ gift turns them aside. 

[97-104]

The Theogony doesn’t really discuss the purpose or even genesis of mortal men, they sort of show up as a side note; a counterpoint to the divine and immortal. Hesiod makes a claim that Zeus establishes justice for the gods and men…but it’s a “might makes right” form of justice and men are caught between the wiles and whims of the erratic deities (as Homer makes very apparent throughout the Iliad and the Odyssey.) Man’s lot is to survive. And when survival looks bleak there is always poetry to comfort even an isolated shepherd. 

Resources: 

Lucian- A Word with Hesiod 

Hesiod - Theogony  translated by Hugh G. Evelyn-White, 1914

Hesiod: Works and Days and Theogony Translated by Stanley Lombardo (I heard a rumor that this is the best translation and it was amazing. The best by a long shot.) 

Literature and History: Before Orthodoxy: Hesiod's Theogony. 

Hesiod: The Other Poet - Hugo Koning 

Footnotes: 

All quotes from the text of the Theogony are from:  Lombardo, Stanley. Works and Days and Theogony. Hackett Publishing, 1993. 

1. Carter, Jared. “Hesiod: Poet and Peasant Overtures.” Chicago Review, Winter, 1990. 

2. Clay, Jenny Strauss. Hesiod’s Cosmos. Cambridge University Press, 2003. 

The Apocolocyntosis - Seneca

As a child Claudius was afflicted with various illnesses that left him physically weak and unsightly. According to Suetonius he had several disagreeable traits which included: an uncontrolled and horrible laugh that was exacerbated by stress, an excessive slobbering and drooling along with a frequently runny nose, a stammer and a persistent nervous tic of the head. His family found him embarrassing and his constant drooling disgusting. They did their best to hide him away but since he wasn’t a risk or a threat they let him live. 

So he spends his life sequestered in a library and reads everything he can get his hands on, and then quietly, while his family is killing each other, he writes. He writes a twenty volume book called Tyrrhenica on the history of the Etruscans. He writes an eight volume book on the history of Carthage. He writes a forty-one volume history of Rome. He writes a book about the art of dice playing and on the defense of Cicero. He had theories on linguistics and attempted to reform the Latin alphabet. Yet, despite his increasing literary accomplishments, he remains the family idiot. Whether through a sense of self preservation or the unfortunate havoc stress wreaks on his body, he is rarely able to string a single thread of coherent words together in the presence of his family. 

Claudius survives the reign of his maternal grand-uncle, Octavian (Augustus) and then his uncle Tiberius and then, against all odds, the reign of his nephew Caligula. He claims he survives by his cunning wit hidden behind a mask of stupidity...but Suetonius has his doubts: “Instead of keeping quiet about his stupidity, Claudius explained, in a number of short speeches, that it had been a mere mask assumed for the benefit of Gaius, and that he owed his life and throne to it. Nobody, however, believed him, and soon a book was published  entitled 'The Fools Rise to Power'; the thesis being that no one would act the fool unless he were a fool already.” 1

Under Caligula things got a little crazy.  Everything became hectic and erratic as the citizenry fought to survive in the harrowing chaos of Caligula’s journey to madness. As Caligula rebirths himself as a God, Claudius is one of the first to prostrate himself in awe at his overwhelming majesty. When Caligula names his horse his first citizen and then a senator and then attempts to give him a consulship, the court looks on with masks of approval hiding their increasing panic. Caligula toys with suppressing Homer, Virgil and Livy and attempts to abolish the legal profession as a whole. He has a spat with Neptune which involves him rallying his troops and declaring war on the sea. 

You would think by comparison Claudius would get a raving review. An emperor with a tendency towards republicanism? What’s not to love? And it seems the people did love him. He was chosen by the Knights twice as the head of the deputation to the Consuls. When he would appear in the theater the "entire Equestrian Order would rise and take off their cloaks as a mark of honor." 2   Yet he is often described as a coward and Suetonius seems to relish the anecdote of his coming to power: 

“When the assassins of Gaius (Caligula) shut everyone out, pretending that he wished to be alone, Claudius went off with the rest and retired to a room called the Hermaeum; but presently heard about the murder and slipped away in alarm to a near-by balcony, where he hid trembling behind the door curtains. A guardsman, wandering vaguely though the Palace, noticed a pair of feet beneath the curtain, pulled their owner out for identification and recognized him. Claudius dropped on the floor and clasped the soldier’s knees, but found himself acclaimed Emperor.” 3 

Slowly his domestic life begins to fall apart. As Livia ruled the caesars before him, Claudius finds himself ruled by his third wife Messalina. She flagrantly carried on affairs beneath his roof and within their matrimonial bed, and at one point while Claudius is away on a trip to Ostia, she marries her lover Silius, publicly celebrating the “full solemnities” of their marriage. 

Claudius, who had surrounded himself with a staff of freedmen, seems to hesitate about the best course of action to take, much to the chagrin of…everyone. His staff are overcome with fear that Claudius will continue to make a mockery of the station of emperor, and as Claudius tries to decide what legal authority Silius now enjoys, the freedmen come up with a plot to oust/murder Messalina. Their biggest obstacle is Claudius’ propensity to forgive Messalina one flagrant indiscretion after another…and getting married to your lover in a public celebration while your husband is away on vacation seems unforgivable. Messalina, begins to realize the severity of her position and pulls out all the stops, making a public profession of regret. She puts on sack cloth and ashes and runs out to meet her husband’s chariot, wringing her hands in grief. 

It seems evident that whatever fervor Claudius momentarily had in his breast is beginning to subside when he sends a message to the now imprisoned “poor woman” telling her she must be present the next day to plead her case. The freedmen are not willing to risk Claudius’ penchant for clemency, and Narcissus bursts into the room and orders the centurion and tribune in attendance to carry out the execution. 

“Now for the first time she saw her situation as it was, and took hold of the steel. In her agitation, she was applying it without result to her throat and again to her breast, when the tribune ran her through.” 4

By far his biggest mistake was his marriage to his fourth wife and power hungry niece Agrippina. He has to massage the red tape a little because while you may get away with anything in the bedroom, on paper incestuous relationships were frowned upon. Also he did himself no favors and made it sound super awkward and gross by referring to her in speeches as “my daughter and foster-child, born and bred in my lap, so to speak.” …yuck. And then he adopts her son, Nero..and things do not bode well for our hero. 

From the beginning Nero’s fate as a demonic tyrant seemed to be pretty much a given. When his horoscope was read to include many ominous predictions, Gnaeus Domitius Ahenobarbus, Nero’s father said: “that any child of himself and Agrippina was bound to have a detestable nature and become a public danger.” Yes and yes. And before long, after a dinner presumably of mushrooms (read:poison) Claudius loses the power of his speech and after suffering much pain dies shortly before dawn. 

Which brings us to Seneca. 

The Apocolocyntosis is a twelve page Menippean satire that seems to follow Claudius into the afterlife as he navigates his way between heaven and hell. I say “seems to” because…I actually have no idea what this is about. 

Part of this lack of understanding is based on the “how” and “why” of it’s existence. At face value it seems like it was commissioned by Agrippina in that genre of post-dictator-funerary-bashing. Even though Agrippina and Nero had made a show of their grief and mourning and had quickly deified their “victim”, it was still popularly believed that they had also commissioned his murder. Seneca’s brother has a witty little comment that everyone loves to quote about Claudius being dragged to heaven on a hook.

Ok. So Agrippina and Nero murder Claudius and deify him to shore up their legitimacy (and also to assuage the populace who apparently loved him). Then they commission Nero’s tutor to write a bit of ironic defamation to further bolster the credibility of the seventeen year old, who had all the tell tale signs of insanity bequeathed to him by his predecessors. (Suetonius’ short history on Nero reads like the worst version of “America’s Got Talent." Nero thought he had an incredible voice and would give endless recitals during which pregnant women were forced to give birth rather than leave and men would jump out of the window to their death, taking the chance that hell would be a step up…) 

While the authorship is pretty much undisputed, it’s hard to rationalize the same Seneca that gave us Consolatio ad Polybium filled with flatteries of Claudius and his powerful freedmen.

One theory is that it’s an attack on the deification of Claudius specifically because Agrippina sponsored it….and yet there’s nothing really definitive or specific to her. No literary attack that would serve to curb her authority or undermine her power over Nero. The satire also doesn’t mention the presumed death by poisoning. It could also be read as a defense of the perpetrators by quickly glossing over the circumstances of his death and emphasizing the deserved ridicule of the court buffoon. …so is it an attack or defense?

A short recap of the Apocolocyntosis is as follows: Claudius limps onto set, a Quasimodo that leaves Hercules terrified despite his success with other ‘monsters’. He starts mumbling and drooling and eventually manages to quote Homer and Virgil to the gods’ satisfaction. The gods then bring the case of Claudius to the heavenly courts; should he be deified? The prosecution says nay. They can’t let all the riffraff in can they? If all mortals are deified doesn’t that make a mockery of deification? (The title “Apocolocyntosis” pretty much means either “deification of a pumpkin head" or something to that effect.) 

The defense says yay. “Whereas the Divine Claudius is related by blood to both the Divine Augustus and equally to the Divine Augusta, his grandmother, whom he personally had declared a goddess, and whereas he is far superior intellectually to all other mortals, and whereas it is in the interest of the state that there should be someone who can “swallow boiling turnips” with Romulus, I hereby propose that the Divine Claudius be a god from this day forth…”6

Everything seems to be going forward in favor of Claudius, when who should rise against our hero but his own grand-uncle the deified Augustus! As usual it is his family that is disgusted and pained by his existence. He makes his case with anecdotes about his janus nature, incapable of shooing a fly but quick to murder off members of his family. 

“He was also angry with his wife and hung her up. Did he ever kill? You killed Messalina, whose great-great-uncle I was as well as yours. “I don’t know about it,” you say. God damn you! Not knowing about it is worse than killing her!” 7

This seems unfair. Right? I mean…after all the baseless fratricide and familial murder…this one actually seems kind of warranted.

“Do you now want to make this man a god? Look at his body- the gods were angry when it came into the world. In short, let him say three words one after the other and he can drag me off as his slave. Who’s going to worship him as a god? Who’ll believe in him? While you create such gods, no one will believe that you yourselves are gods.”8

Interestingly, this seems to be Claudius’ exact opinion about mere mortals deifying themselves. He believed such things should be left to the gods and at this point after suffering through the reign of Caligula, worshipping the emperors either deceased or living had lost its charm. But instead of the gods making this argument, it’s his old grand-uncle, once more thinking up ways to banish him to some nefarious nether region. 

Augustus ends his argument thus: “I move that he be severely punished, that he be denied any immunity from trial, and that he be deported as soon as possible, leaving heaven within thirty days and Olympus within three.” 

After a brief discussion the gods agree and in a shout-out to Seneca’s brother: 

“Without delay, Mercury seized him, twisting his neck, and hauled him off from heaven to hell.” Not quite on a ‘hook’ but the same general sentiment. He has been found wanting in the Forum and will now be deposited in the river Styx.  

As he makes his way to hell, he’s joined by Narcissus who had allegedly committed suicide after learning of the death of his master. As a faithful freedman he is here to usher Claudius into the underworld, which is a veritable ‘who’s who’ of Messalina’s lovers, and leading the pack is lover number one, Gaius Silius. In the center of the crowd is the ballet dancer Mnester, Caligula’s muse and Messalina’s lover number two. The crowd makes up a list of secretaries and army officers and family members most of which in someway or other had their fates sealed by Messalina.

Claudius, momentarily being overwhelmed by the crowd, asks them how it is that they have gotten here, perhaps being unsure of where the ‘here’ is.  

“Pedo Pompeius then spoke: ‘What do you mean, you cruel bastard? You ask how? Who else sent us here but you, you butcher of every friend you had? Let’s go into court. I’ll show you the bench down here.” 9

And once again Claudius faces a tribunal, but this time in hell, and this time more efficient. His indictment is read out: “Executed: 30 Senators, 221 Roman knights and others, and ‘to the number of the grains of sand and the specks of dust”. He is immediately found guilty and the verdict rendered: 

“What thou hast wrought should thou suffer, 

Straight would justice be done.”

They deliberate amongst themselves as to the proper punishment, some useless labor that he will toil aimlessly at for the rest of eternity. He loved playing dice, why not be forced to pick up dice and drop them into a bottomless cup for all eternity; perpetually left to hunt around for the fallen dice…this does have a nice ring to it. At the last minute Caligula shows up and claims Claudius as his slave. This seems fair. The council is given and Claudius is whisked away to spend the rest of eternity as the legal secretary/slave for his deranged nemesis. 

After reading this through about six or seven times I think the general emotion I get from Seneca is rage. Rage and betrayal. After ‘surviving’ against all odds the psychotic breakdown of Caligula, after being the one stable support that Rome seemed to tether herself to under the whims of a crazed tyrant building houses for his horse while systematically murdering everyone…Claudius, the self professed idiot-savant…falls for literally the oldest trick in the book. He walks away from sense and sensibility and becomes blindly infatuated with one woman after another. After watching Livia work her tyrannical powers, you think he would have learned from the side lines. But he lets these women wreak tyranny and cause collateral damage. He removed his son Britannicus from the position of heir apparent and put Agrippina’s son in his place. And ultimately when he began to question this decision he was murdered. And maybe Seneca thinks rightfully so. The job of a leader is to lead the people.The job of a historian is to learn from past mistakes. Claudius did neither. I can almost see Seneca in 45 minutes of exasperation write out this tirade, dripping with frustration and anger. Picking up perpetually falling dice is too good of a punishment. He’s not Sisyphus. He can rot in hell with the man he was almost better than. 

Seneca drops the mic. 

1. Suetonius. The Twelve Caesars. Translated by Robert Graves. 1957. Book V. 38

2. Suetonius, Book V. 6

3. Suetonius, Book V. 10

4. Tacitus, Annals Book XI. 38

5. Sullivan, J.P. Petronius: The Satyricon and Seneca: The Apocolocyntosis.  pg 210

6. Sullivan, pg.227

7. Sullivan, pg 228

8. Sullivan, pg 229

9. Sullivan, pg 229

The Satyricon - Petronius

It is not surprising that the Satyrica has a long history as a banned book. Pierre Pithou, a humanist from the 1560’s joked that he kept his copy “in jail”. (1)  In an archaic version of “Words with Friends” Lord Byron had “Codes with Friends” in which quoting portions of the Satyrica became a code for talking about his illicit sexual relationships. That being said, in Amy Richlin's essay “Sex in the Satyrica: Outlaws in Literatureland” she tells students reading Petronius that they are part of a brief moment in history where not only is reading the Satyrica accessible to the masses, (I found my copy for $2 at a thrift shop), but the Satyrica is also being taught to students as a study in literature rather than being sequestered away as corruptible material. 

I’m not going to lie, after reading through the Satyrica I felt fully corrupted. Like Alice in Wonderland crawling through a rabbit hole only to find a world of x-rated Mad Hatters and general obscenity. I needed a guide. And thanks to our modern world of instant gratification I was able to find a digital copy of Petronius: A Handbook, edited by Jonathan Prag and Ian Repath almost instantaneously. I found this book to be invaluable. It is comprised of twelve essays that cover everything from contemporary architecture: “Freedmen’s Cribs: Domestic Vulgarity on the Bay of Naples” by Shelley Hales, to mortality in “At Home with the Dead: Roman Funeral Traditions and Trimalchio’s Tomb” by Valerie Hope. So good. 

Ok, here we go. 

It is largely agreed that Petronius was the author of the Satyrica and a courtier of Nero. Upon gaining entry to Nero's coterie he became known as the “Arbiter of Elegance”. Tacitus mentions in his Annals that Petronius became more and more indispensable to Nero, until “in the end Nero’s jaded appetite regarded nothing as enjoyable or refined unless Petronius had given his sanction to it.” Here’s Tacitus’ review: 

“Gaius Petronius deserves a further brief notice. He spent his days sleeping and his nights working and enjoying himself. Industry is the usual foundation of success, but with him it was idleness. Unlike most people who throw away their money in dissipation, he was not regarded as an extravagant sensualist, but as one who made luxury a fine art. His conversation and his way of life were unconventional with a certain air of nonchalance and they charmed people all the more by seeming so unstudied…” (Annals 16.18)

So what kind of book would a Neronian arbiter of elegance write? A very, very complicated one. First of all what makes matters difficult for the modern reader is that what we have are fragments, roughly three books out of a potential twenty-four. The Satyrica begins almost mid sentence and we have to race to catch up with protagonists that always seem one step ahead, weaving from one reference to another, throughout a web of literary obfuscations. It is a satire about satires, a comic epic that destructs cultural norms and literary expectations.

Our protagonists are an awkward love triangle comprised of Encolpius, Giton and Ascyltus. They live outside the law, (❡125.4) and outside the normative cultural positions of slave/free, man/woman.  Ultimately, Encolpius is on a quest in search of his lost virility and his wayward lover, while the other two seem along for the ride. When the narrative opens, Encolpius is at a school of rhetoric with his teacher Agamemnon, yet it is the student we hear from first: 

“…I’m sure the reason such young nitwits are produced in our schools is because they have no contact with anything of any use in everyday life. All they get is pirates standing on the beach, dangling manacles, tyrants writing orders for sons to cut off their father’s heads, oracles advising the sacrifice of three or more virgins during a plague - a mass of cloying verbiage: every word, every move just so much poppycock. (❡1.1) (2)

While Encolpius’ complaint references those made by Seneca, this isn’t a philosophical treatise but rather the voice of a jaded student thinking up ways to prove there’s no point to learning so he can selfishly go back to his personal quest.  In an almost modern complaint he says it’s the parents that are to blame, they rush their children through their studies when they are still young and frivolous. If only the parents would allow their children to mature to a point where they are intellectually capable of appreciating the “noble art of oratory” then this honorable art would have its true weight and dignity. Within the next paragraph the framework begins to emerge. This book will be a playful criticism of everything held dear, nothing will escape the brutal wit of the narrator. 

“Your smooth and empty sound effects provided a few laughs, and as a result you took the guts out of real oratory, and that was the end of it. Young men were not tied down to rhetorical exercises when it was Sophocles or Euripides who developed the proper language for them. Academic pedants had not addled their wits when Pindar and the nine lyric poets shrank away from the Homeric style. And apart from the poets I can cite, I certainly cannot see Plato or Demosthenes going in for this sort of training.” (❡2)

What Petronius is about to do will make Plato roll over in his grave. He is about to systematically destroy everything sacred in a brilliant and hilarious way. A way that is without precedent or genre. In book III of the Republic, Socrates talks about how to tell stories, what meters to use, what meters to avoid, but most importantly he fundamentally forbids the artist or poet to represent characters that are vicious, unrestrained, slavish and graceless. He’s pretty specific, in a hyper controlling kind of way.

Petronius breaks everything apart. He not only combines poetry and prose, but he combines meters as well. He mixes iambic and hexameters within the same poem, which becomes an inside joke for the contemporary literati. When it is at last Agamemnon’s time to respond to Encolpius’s accusations he does so through poetry, saying “Just to show you how I’m not above a bit of low-level improvisation in the manner of Lucilius, I’ll throw you off a few lines expressing my feelings…” what follows is a mash-up of iambic and hexameters. The joke is that while Lucilius did write in different meters, we have no evidence that he did so within the same poem. And therefore the poem is completely un-Lucilian. (3)  The joke follows a thematic trail throughout the Satyrica of the uneducated posing as educated. It is grandiose posturing on a Neronian scale. 

After a description of the appropriate meter and mode for the most manly and heroic themes, Plato goes on to discuss the correct relationship between a boy and a man. The teacher/student relationship is sacred. It is not to be erotic and passionate but pure and chaste.  Petronius’ heroes are unrestrained, slavish and graceless and make fun of sexually normative behaviors. They are anything but chaste.

Giton to Encolpius: So thank you for loving me in such an honorable Platonic way. Alcibiades himself couldn’t have been safer when he slept in his teacher’s bed.” 

Encolpius to Giton: Honestly, dear lad, I can’t realize I’m a man, I don’t feel it. The part of my body that once made me an Achilles is dead and buried. (❡128-129)

I mentioned Encolpius’ quest above. Another genre that Petronius plays around with is the epic. Homeric references saturate the text and the Satyrica can be read as “sustained rewriting of the Odyssey". (4) Just as Ulysses faces the wrath of Poseidon after killing his son the cyclops, Encolpius faces the wrath of Priapus after desecrating a sacred ritual. 

Side note: Priapus is the guardian of the gardens and he protects his property with his huge erection, threatening to rape any attempting thieves. So…yikes. 

Priapus thwarts Encolpius’s romantic success at every turn ending in the sustained impotence of our hero. But while Ulysses is the penultimate masculine hero, Encolpius is effeminate, and frequently confused for a prostitute. While Ulysses is married to the faithful Penelope, Giton is hardly a faithful lover, the only absolute being his predictable fickleness. The majority of the humor focuses on Encolpius constantly losing Giton to Ascyltus and many others, both men and women. Again and again Encolpius tends to “epicize” his own non-adventures. 

When Encolpius gives Giton the choice between himself or Ascyltus, without much of a thought, “before the last syllable is out of his mouth” Giton picks Ascyltus. As the two wander away, Encolpius is wracked in grief. He packs up his belongings and spends three days in a quiet place along the seafront mourning the loss of his beloved. As he struggles to come to terms in his classically histrionic way he ponders how this has happened and who has done this to him: 

“…who brought this loneliness upon me? An adolescent wallowing in every possible filth, who even on his own admission had been rightly run out of town, free - for sex, freeborn, for sex, whose youth you’d buy with a ticket, who had been hired as a girl even by someone who thought he was a male. As for the other one! Putting on women’s clothes the day he became a man, talked into effeminacy by his mother, doing only women’s work in the slave pen, and after he couldn’t meet his debts and had to change his sexual ground, he abandoned the claims of an old friendship and - in the name of decency! - sold out everything like a whore on the strength of a one night stand.” (❡81)

It’s not clear whom each epithet belongs to. The descriptions seem to fit all three reasonably well. When Encolpius decides to rouse himself for battle and fight for his ‘Penelope’, he girds his loins, puts on his belt, grabs his sword and races to the market prepared to wreak havoc along the way. This is his most soldierly and heroic behavior. When a soldier seeing the rage and hell bent blood and destruction written all over his face he asks for the name of his regiment. Encolpius lies, thinking he has perpetrated a successful deception. The soldier then asks him if it’s normal for the soldiers in his regiment to walk around in slippers? And Encolpius realizes the ruse is up. He walks away, almost thankful that he didn't have to injure someone (most likely himself) with his soldiering. 

By far, the most famous portion of the Satyrica is Dinner with Trimalchio, where the three heroes make there way for a free dinner. This is where Petronius riff's on Horace (Dinner with Nasidienus 2.8), and this is where the narrative becomes the most elaborate and cacophonous. Everything drips and glitters with garish theatric stage appeal. Trimalchio is a self made man (a slave that slowly earned his way to the top) and he’s proud of his prodigious wealth. The definition of satiric elegance, with a clock that ticks away telling him how much longer he has to live. 

The three find themselves at the bath with their soon to be host, who is involved in all sorts of glamorous and esoteric sporting endeavors surrounded by a host of “long haired boys” (capillati) and eunuchs. A friend runs up and tells them that this bald old man in the red shirt is their host and they watch in amazement as:

“…Trimalchio snapped his fingers. At the signal the eunuch brought up the pissing bottle for him, while he went on playing, With the weight off his bladder he demanded water for his hands, splashed a few drops on his fingers and wiped them on a boy’s head…

[they all go into the bath and Trimalchio gets smothered in perfume while his masseurs drink and spill Falernian wine]

Wrapped in this scarlet felt he was put into a litter. Four couriers with lots of medals went in front, as well as a go-kart in which his favorite boy was riding, a wizened , bleary-eyed youngster, uglier than his master. As he was carried off, a musician with a tiny set of pipes took his place by Trimalchio’s head and whispered a tune in his ear the whole way.

"We followed on, choking with amazement by now, and arrived at the door with Agamemnon at our side.” (❡27-28)

Already our protagonists have witnessed the hight of self congratulatory conceit. Trimalchio makes a triumphal procession the short distance to his front door, glorying in his as of yet unattained victory. Besides taking a bath he has little to be “triumphant” about. This is reminiscent of Nero, the emperor without militaristic prowess. His victories were over “musicians, poets and playwrights, epitomes of high culture rather than barbarians.” (5) Oh yes, and family members. Tacitus mentions (Annals 14.13) the people lining up to watch Nero’s triumphal entry after murdering his mother…

After contemplating the murals decorating the entrance of Trimalchio’s mansion, which include signage that reads: “Any slave leaving the house without his master’s permission will receive one hundred lashes” and “Beware of Dog” the three enter a literary hall of mirrors, surrounded by guests representing the poverty of high culture. (The “Beware of Dogs” sign is a throw back to “Virgil’s Cerberus, who guards the gates of Hades (Virgil Aen. 6.417-23) The allusion makes explicit that dining at Trimalchio’s is a living hell.” (6)

As one would expect, working for Nero was perilous and unpredictable. Eventually Petronius’ popularity lead to a jealous rival, Tigellinus, who sewed seeds of discord and manipulated the emperor’s penchant for cruelty. 

Side note: Nero forced his tutor and advisor Seneca to commit suicide for his alleged complicity in the Pisonian conspiracy. Seneca’s grandson Lucan after a brief literary success was also accused of treason (this time accurately) and forced to commit suicide as well at the age of 25. Nero himself was a self professed actor, poet, musician and charioteer and did not share the spotlight well. It was a dangerous time to be a literary man. 

So according to Tacitus (Annals 16.19):

“Petronius got as far as Cumae and was prevented from going any further. He refused to prolong the suspense that hope or fear involved. Not that he was hasty in taking leave of his life. On the contrary, he opened his veins and then, as the fancy took him, he bound them up or re-opened them, and all the while talked with his friends, but not on serious topics or anything calculated to win admiration for his courage..simply gay songs and light verses. He dealt out rewards to some of his slaves and floggings to others. He began a lavish dinner and took a nap, so that his death, although forced on him, should appear natural. Even in the codicils of his will he refused to flatter Nero or Tigellinus or anyone else powerful. Instead he wrote out a full description of the Emperor’s vicious activities, giving the names of his male and female partners and specifying the novel forms his lust had taken…”

And from Pliny the Elder (Natural History 37.20): 

“T. Petronius, a consular, when he was going to die through Nero’s malice and envy, broke his fluorspar wine dipper so that the Emperor’s table would not inherit it. It had cost 300,000 sesterces.” 

In a world where daily survival took risk and intrigue, Petronius created a world to hide inside, a jest within a jest, a hall of mirrors, which allowed him to simultaneously critique his contemporaries and poke fun of everything else. In the end, life will be short and your fate will be in the hands of pernicious and vindictive gods. So like Trimalchio, Petronius rose a glass and surrounded himself with songs and light verses as he took his last breath:

‘What comes next you never know, 

Lady Luck runs the show,

So pass the Falernian, lad.”

(❡55)

1. Richlin, Amy. "Sex in the Satyrica: Outlaws in Literatureland."Petronius: A Handbook, edited by Jonathon Prag and Ian Repath, Wiley-Blackwell, 2009. 

2. All Satyrica quotes are from Sullivan 1965

3. Slater, Niall W. "Reading the Satyrica." Petronius: A Handbook, edited by Jonathon Prag and Ian Repath, Wiley-Blackwell, 2009.

4. Andreau, Jean. "Freedmen’s Cribs: Domestic Vulgarity on the Bay of Naples." Ibid. 

5. Klebs, E. 1889. Ibid. 

6. Vout, Caroline. "The Satyrica and Neronian Culture." Ibid.