This is the account given by his Spanish biographer. In his preface, dedicated to the Army of the Rhine, he states that he found the fragment in a manuscript of the work of St. Gennadius on the Duties of Priests, probably of the XI Century. A close examination revealed the fact that it was a palimpsest which, after treatment, permitted the restoration of this fragment. It is supposed to supply the gap in Chapter 26 after the word "verberabant."
Its obscenity outrivals that of the preceding text, and the grammar, style, and curiosa felicitas Petroniana make it an almost perfect imitation. There is no internal evidence of forgery. If the text is closely scrutinized it will be seen that it is composed of words and expressions taken from various parts of the Satyricon, "and that in every line it has exactly the Petronian turn of phrase."
"Not only is the original edition unprocurable," to quote again from Mr. Gaselee's invaluable bibliography, "but the reprint at Soleure (Brussels), 1865, consisted of only 120 copies, and is hard to find. The most accessible place for English readers is in Bohn's translation, in which, however, only the Latin text is given; and the notes were a most important part of the original work."
These notes, humorously and perhaps sarcastically ascribed to Lallemand, Sanctae Theologiae Doctor, "are six in number (all on various forms of vice); and show great knowledge, classical and sociological, of unsavory subjects. Now that the book is too rare to do us any harm, we may admit that the pastiche was not only highly amusing, but showed a perverse cleverness amounting almost to genius."
Marchena died at Madrid in great poverty in 1821. A contemporary has described him as being rather short and heavy set in figure, of great frontal development, and vain beyond belief. He considered himself invincible where women were concerned. He had a peculiar predilection in the choice of animal pets and was an object of fear and curiosity to the towns people. His forgery might have been completely successful had he not acknowledged it himself within two or three years after the publication of his brochure. The
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fragment will remain a permanent tribute to the excellence of his scholarship, but it is his Ode to Christ Crucified which has made him more generally known, and it is one of the ironies of fate that caused this deformed giant of sarcasm to compose a poem of such tender and touching piety.
Very little is known about Don Joe Antonio Gonzalez de Salas, whose connecting passages, with the exception of one which is ir-
relevant, are here included.
The learned editors of the Spanish encyclopedia naively preface their brief sketch with the following assertion: "no tenemos noticias de su vida." De Salas was born in 1588 and died in 1654. His edition of Petronius was first issued in 1629 and re-issued in 1643 with a copper plate of the Editor. The Paris edition, from which he says he supplied certain deficiencies in the text, is unknown to bibli-ographers and is supposed to be fictitious.
To distinguish the spurious passages, as a point of interest, in the present edition, the forgeries of Nodot are printed within round brackets, the forgery of Marchena within square brackets, and the additions of De Salas in italics {In this PG etext in curly brackets}.
The work is also accompanied by a translation of the six notes, the composition of which led Marchena to forge the fragment which first appeared in the year 1800. These have never before been translated.
Thanks are due Ralph Straus, Esq., and Professor Stephen Gaselee.
THE SATYRICON OF PETRONIUS ARBITER
BRACKET CODE (Forgeries of Nodot) [Forgeries of Marchena]
{Additions of De Salas}
DW
VOLUME I.
ADVENTURES OF ENCOLPIUS AND HIS COMPANIONS
CHAPTER THE FIRST.
(It has been so long; since I promised you the story of my adventures, that I have decided to make good my word today; and, seeing that we have thus fortunately met, not to discuss scientific matters alone, but also to enliven our jolly conversation with witty stories. Fabricius Veiento has already spoken very cleverly on the errors committed in the name of religion, and shown how priests, animat-
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ed by an hypocritical mania for prophecy, boldly expound mysteries which are too often such to themselves. But) are our rhetoricians tormented by another species of Furies when they cry, "I received these wounds while fighting for the public liberty; I lost this eye in your defense: give me a guide who will lead me to my children, my limbs are hamstrung and will not hold me up!" Even these heroics could be endured if they made easier the road to eloquence; but as it is, their sole gain from this ferment of matter and empty discord of words is, that when they step into the Forum, they think they have been carried into another world. And it is my conviction that the schools are responsible for the gross foolishness of our young men, because, in them, they see or hear nothing at all of the affairs of everyday life, but only pirates standing in chains upon the shore, tyrants scribbling edicts in which sons are ordered to behead their own fathers; responses from oracles, delivered in time of pestilence, ordering the immolation of three or more virgins; every word a honied drop, every period sprinkled with poppy-seed and sesame.
CHAPTER THE SECOND.
Those who are brought up on such a diet can no more attain to wisdom than a kitchen scullion can attain to a keen sense of smell or avoid stinking of the grease. With your indulgence, I will speak out: you--teachers--are chiefly responsible for the decay of oratory. With your well modulated and empty tones you have so labored for rhetorical effect that the body of your speech has lost its vigor and died. Young men did not learn set speeches in the days when Sophocles and Euripides were searching for words in which to express themselves. In the days when Pindar and the nine lyric poets feared to attempt Homeric verse there was no private tutor to stifle budding genius. I need not cite the poets for evidence, for I do not find that either Plato or Demosthenes was given to this kind of exercise. A dignified and, if I may say it, a chaste, style, is neither elaborate nor loaded with ornament; it rises supreme by its own natural purity. This windy and high-sounding bombast, a recent immigrant to Athens, from Asia, touched with its breath the aspiring minds of youth, with the effect of some pestilential planet, and as soon as the tradition of the past was broken, eloquence halted and was stricken dumb. Since that, who has attained to the sublimity of Thucydides, who rivalled the fame of Hyperides? Not a single poem has glowed with a healthy color, but all of them, as though nourished on the same diet, lacked the strength to live to old age. Painting also suffered the same fate when the presumption of the Egyptians "commercialized" that incomparable art. (I was holding forth along these lines one day, when Agamemnon came up to us and scanned with a curious eye a person to whom the audience
was listening so closely.)
CHAPTER THE THIRD.
He would not permit me to declaim longer in the portico than he himself had sweat in the school, but exclaimed, "Your sentiments do not reflect the public taste, young man, and you are a lover of common sense, which is still more unusual. For that reason, I will not deceive you as to the secrets of my profession. The teachers, who must gibber with lunatics, are by no means to blame for these exercises. Unless they spoke in accordance with the dictates of their young pupils, they would, as Cicero remarks, be left alone in
the schools! And, as designing parasites, when they seek invitations to the tables of the rich, have in mind nothing except what will, in their opinion, be most acceptable to their audience --for in no other way can they secure their ends, save by setting snares for the ears--so it is with the teachers of rhetoric, they might be compared with the fisherman, who, unless he baits his hook with what he knows is most appetizing