Satyricon - Reconstruction of Lost Sections

Reconstruction of Lost Sections

Although interrupted by frequent gaps, 141 sections of consecutive narrative have been preserved. These can be compiled into the length of a longer novella. Speculation as to the size of the original puts it somewhere on the order of a work of thousands of pages, and reference points for length range from Tom Jones to In Search of Lost Time.

Statements in the extant narrative allows the reconstruction of some events that must have taken place earlier in the work. Encolpius and Giton have had contact with Lichas and Tryphaena. Both seem to have been lovers of Tryphaena (113) at a cost to her reputation (106). Lichas' identification of Encolpius by examining his groin (105) implies that they have also had sexual relations. Lichas' wife has been seduced (106) and his ship robbed (113). Encolpius states at one point, "I escaped the law, cheated the arena, killed a host" (81). The second of these claims can be connected with an insult by Ascyltos (9), which might indicate that Encolpius escaped from fighting as a gladiator because the arena collapsed, although the text at that point is uncertain.

A number of fragments of Petronius' work are preserved in other authors. Servius cites Petronius as his source for a custom at Massilia of allowing a poor man, during times of plague, to volunteer to serve as a scapegoat, receiving support for a year at public expense and then being expelled. Sidonius Apollinaris refers to "Arbiter", by which he apparently means Petronius' narrator Encolpius, as a worshipper of the "sacred stake" of Priapus in the gardens of Massilia. It has been proposed that Encolpius' wanderings in the Satyricon began after he offered himself as the scapegoat and was ritually expelled. Other fragments may relate to a trial scene.

Also, among the poems ascribed to Petronius is an oracle predicting travels to the Danube and to Egypt. Edward Courtney notes that the prominence of Egypt in the ancient Greek novels might make it plausible for Petronius to have set an episode there, but expresses some doubt about the oracle's relevance to Encolpius' travels, "since we have no reason to suppose that Encolpius reached the Danube or the far north, and we cannot suggest any reason why he should have."