And so, at first, those who confessed were apprehended, and subsequently, on the disclosures they made, a huge number were found guilty—more because of their hatred of mankind than because they were arsonists. As they died they were further subjected to insult. Covered with hides of wild beasts, they perished by being torn to pieces by dogs; or they would be fastened to crosses and, when daylight had gone, burned to provide lighting at night. Nero had offered his gardens as a venue for the show, and he would also put on circus entertainments, mixing with the plebs in his charioteer’s outfit or standing up in his chariot. As a result, guilty though these people were and deserving exemplary punishment, pity for them began to well up because it was felt that they were being exterminated not for the public good, but to gratify one man’s cruelty.

DINNER AT TRIMALCHIO’S

Satyricon

Petronius Arbiter

Translation ascribed to Oscar Wilde, 1902

Petronius (AD 27–66) was ‘arbiter of elegance’ to the Emperor Nero. In AD 66, however, he was implicated in a plot against the emperor and committed suicide. His brilliant novel, the Satyricon, belongs to the last years of his life. Its most famous episode, the Cena Trimalchionis or ‘Dinner of Trimalchio’, sees the young narrator Encolpius and his friends go to dine at the house of the achingly nouveau Trimalchio, a former slave or ‘freedman’, who earned his fortune by winning his master’s favour and exporting goods from Rome. In the twentieth century, the boorish Trimalchio was an inspiration for F. Scott Fitzgerald’s character Jay Gatsby.

When this translation was first published in Paris in 1902 it was prefaced by a slip of paper identifying its translator as Sebastian Melmoth – the name Oscar Wilde adopted in exile. Although Wilde was an excellent classicist, he was apparently not the real translator1 of this story; the attribution was retracted some years after his death.

Well! at last we take our places, Alexandrian slave-boys pouring snow water over our hands, and others succeeding them to wash our feet and cleanse our toe nails with extreme dexterity. Not even while engaged in this unpleasant office were they silent, but sang away over their work. I had a mind to try whether all the house servants were singers, and accordingly asked for a drink of wine. Instantly an attendant was at my side, pouring out the liquor to the accompaniment of the same sort of shrill recitative. Demand what you would, it was the same; you might have supposed yourself among a troupe of pantomime actors, rather than at a respectable citizen’s table.