Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: THE BELLUM CIVILE OF PETKONIUS INTRODUCTION In discussing any part of the work of Petronius, we are hampered at the outset by uncertainty as regards the identity of the author. The author J His batirae1 are not mentioned by any writer prior to the second century A.D.,2 and even then, although repeatedly cited by grammarians, as Petronius, Petronius Arbiter, or Arbiter alone,3 1 For the title, see p. 3, n. 2. 2 The first reference known is that of Terentianus Maurus, De Metris, 1. 2489, Arbiter disertus, and 2852, Petronius. For further references, see Buecheler's editions (Berlin, Ed. Maior, 1862, Ed. Minor, 1892, 1886, 1895), Collignon, Pétrone en France (Paris, 1905), Introd., and Burmann, Ed. (Utrecht, 1709, 1743), Part II, pp. 254, 257, 271. 3 E.g. Serv. ad Verg. Aen., III, 57 ; Fulgent. Mytholog., III, 8, p. 124 (in Mythographi Latini, Amsterdam, 1681), and the references in (2) above. In Scaliger's Ms. (see p. 246) he is called C. Petronius Arbiter Afranius. he is never spoken of as a contemporary or assigned to any period. As a result of this uncertainty, many theories have been advanced and vigorously contested, placing him anywhere from the reign of Augustus1 to the fourth century A.D.2 The internal evidence, however, and especially the two epic fragments, the Troiae Halosis3 and the Bellum Civile, point decidedly to the reign of Nero.4 Beyond this there is a considerable amount of evidence, not conclusive indeed, but collectively of no little weight, which leads us to identify him with the Gaius Petronius of Nero's court,5 the elegantiae arbiter of whom Tacitus has left us so striking a portrait.' This evidence is : first the name or designation Arbiter; second, the indications in the fragments that their author was not only familiar with ...