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The Satyricon

Gaius Petronius Arbiter

9,032 ratings
The Satyricon | Gaius Petronius Arbiter

The Satyricon

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The novel focuses on the misadventures of the narrator, Encolpius, and his lover, a handsome sixteen-year-old boy named Giton. Throughout the novel, Encolpius has a hard time keeping his lover faithful to him as he is constantly being enticed away by others. Encolpius's friend Ascyltus (who seems to have previously been in a relationship with Encolpius).
own besides a couch and commence to snore as if they had been asleep for a long time, that you would have thought they belonged there. The butler had gotten up and poured oil in the flickering lamps by this time, and the boys, having rubbed their eyes open, had returned to their duty, when in came a female cymbal player and the crashing brass awoke everybody.



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CHAPTER THE TWENTY-THIRD.


The banquet began all over again, and Quartilla challenged us to a drinking-bout, the crash of the cymbals lending ardor to her revel. A catamite appeared, the stalest of all mankind, well worthy of that house. Heaving a sigh, he wrung his hands until the joints cracked, and spouted out the following verses,


"Hither, hither quickly gather, pathic companions boon;
Artfully stretch forth your limbs and on with the dance and play!
Twinkling feet and supple thighs and agile buttocks in tune,
Hands well skilled in raising passions, Delian eunuchs gay!"

When he had finished his poetry, he slobbered a most evil-smelling kiss upon me, and then, climbing upon my couch, he proceeded with all his might and main to pull all of my clothing off. I resisted to the limit of my strength. He manipulated my member for a long time, but all in vain. Gummy streams poured down his sweating forehead, and there was so much chalk in the wrinkles of his cheeks that you might have mistaken his face for a roofless wall, from which the plaster was crumbling in a rain.



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CHAPTER THE TWENTY-FOURTH.


Driven to the last extremity, I could no longer keep back the tears.

Tristan 05/03/2021
Petronius' Satyrica more than lives up to its bawdy reputation. Those ancient pagans sure were a riot, let me tell you. Sadly, due to its fragmentary nature (only two books have survived), it fails in ever truly making the reader - well, this one at least - care about the actual story. As a series o
P.E. 07/05/2019
A collection of fragments alleged to be the first novel in Western literature.

A farcical mixbag of daily life and cant, with poetry, parodies and pastiches, and don't forget a good coating of saucy and nonsensical episodes. The feast at Trimalchio's has to give you the giggles :D

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Evan 10/19/2012
Today, the Satyricon is most famous for two things:

1. For being (arguably) the first novel, and

2. For being a very, very dirty little book.

Unfortunately, only 141 chapters of a much longer work have survived. But those chapters are extremely compelling. Written during the reign of Nero in the 1st ce

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