The Satyricon Quotes

“Can't you see that I'm only advising you to beg yourself not to be so dumb?”
― Petronius, The Satyricon

“Nothing is falser than people's preconceptions and ready-made opinions; nothing is sillier than their sham morality...”
― Petronius, The Satyricon

“Everyone will find what he's looking for. Nothing pleases everyone: this man gathers thorns, that one roses.”
― Petronius, The Satyricon

“I said everything that a painful swelling in one's libido tells one to say.”
― Petronius, The Satyricon

“No man on earth may look on forbidden things as you have done and escape punishment. Especially here, a land so infested with divinity that one might meet a god more easily than a man.”
― Petronius Arbiter, The Satyricon

“utres inflati ambulamus. minoris quam muscae sumus, muscae tamen aliquam uirtutem habent, nos non pluris sumus quam bullae.”
― Petronius Arbiter, The Satyricon

“After all, I was once like you are, but being the right sort I got where I am.”
― Petronius, The Satyricon

“Wine there! Wine and dice! Tomorrow's fears shall fools alone benumb! By the ear Death pulls me. 'Live!' he whispers softly, 'Live! I come.”
― Petronius, The Satyricon

“The trader trusts his fortune to the sea and takes his gains,
     The warrior, for his deeds, is girt with gold;
The wily sycophant lies drunk on purple counterpanes,
     Young wives must pay debauchees or they're cold.
But solitary, shivering, in tatters Genius stands
     Invoking a neglected art, for succor at its hands.”
― Petronius, The Satyricon

“All those who are left legacies in my will…will obtain my bequests only on one condition, that they cut my body in pieces and eat it before the eyes of the citizens…You must merely shield your eyes, and imagine that what you have swallowed is not human entrails but ten million sesterces.”
― Petronius, The Satyricon

“[Circe]: What is the matter? Does my kiss offend you? Do I have bad breath from hunger? Have I neglected to cleanse my sweaty armpits?”
― Sarah Ruden, The Satyricon

“It's the old headpiece that makes a man, the rest is all rubbish.”
― Petronius, The Satyricon

“Nemo nostrum solide natus est.”
― Petronius, The Satyricon

“Kind Providence unto our needs has tempered its decrees
     And met our wants, our carping plaints to still
Green herbs, and berries hanging on their rough and brambly sprays
     Suffice our hunger's gnawing pangs to kill.
What fool would thirst upon a river's brink? Or stand and freeze
     In icy blasts, when near a cozy fire?
The law sits armed outside the door, adulterers to seize,
     The chaste bride, guiltless, gratifies desire.
All Nature lavishes her wealth to meet our just demands;
But, spurred by lust of pride, we stop at naught to gain our ends!”
― Petronius, The Satyricon

“Es gibt nichts Verfehlteres als die unsinnige Voreingenommenheit der Menschen und nichts Dümmeres als gleisnerische Sittenstrenge.”
― Petronius Arbiter, The Satyricon

“So the starry sky turns round like a millstone, always bringing some trouble, and men being born or dying.”
― Petronius, The Satyricon

“Just as in dicing, Fortune smiles or lowers; When good luck beckons, then your friend his gleeful service gives But basely flies when ruin o'er you towers.”
― Petronius Arbiter, The Satyricon

“When Ascyltes, loaded down with all these woes, was falling asleep, the maid he had rejected and insulted rubbed the whole of his face with a generous quantity of ash. He felt nothing, and she went on to paint graffiti-style penises on his shoulders and sides.”
― Sarah Ruden, The Satyricon

“...when I turned back to him, he'd taken off all his clothes and put 'em in a pile beside the road. That sure knocked the wind outta me. I stood there like I was dead. He pissed around his clothes and all of a sudden he turned into a wolf. I'm not joking.”
― Sarah Ruden, The Satyricon

“That's because he had such an enormous load of genitalia - you'd think that the rest of the body was nothing but a handle on that piece of equipment.”
― Sarah Ruden, The Satyricon

“Oenother took out a leather phallus, which she proceeded to coat with oil, ground pepper, and crushed nettle seeds. Gradually, she inserted it into my anus.
The cruel crone kept sprinkling the fluid over my thighs.
*
She mixed nasturtium seed with artemesia and spread it over my genitals, then, with a switch in her limber hand, beat everything below my navel.”
― Sarah Ruden, The Satyricon

“The ship you promised would come from Africa with money and an entourage has not arrived. The legacy hunters, just about cleaned out, have diminished their giving. Either I am mistaken, or the bill for our rare good fortune is about to arrive with interest.”
*
All beneficiaries of my will, except for my freedmen, may inherit under this condition: that they cut my body into pieces and eat it with all the townspeople watching.
*
We know that certain nations maintain the custom of relatives devour­ing their dead. In fact, the sick are often scolded for the deterioration of their flesh. For these reasons, I admonish my dear friends not to deny my request, but to eat my body with the same eagerness with which they prayed for it to die”
― Sarah Ruden, The Satyricon

“Among the difficulties which beset the path of the conscientious translator, a sense of his own unworthiness must ever take precedence; but another, scarcely less disconcerting, is the likelihood of misunderstanding some allusion which was perfectly familiar to the author and his public, but which, by reason of its purely local significance, is obscure and subject to the misinterpretation and emendation of a later generation.”
― Petronius, The Satyricon

“(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.”
― Petronius, The Satyricon — Complete

“Σίβυλλα τί θέλεις; respondebat illa: ἀποθανεῖν θέλω”
― Petronius, Des Titus Petronius Arbiter Satyricon (Classic Reprint)

“Dies, inquit, nihil est. Dum versas te, nox fit. Itaque nihil est melius quam de cubiculo recta in triclinium ire. Et mundum frigus habuimus. Vix me balneus calfecit. Tamen calda potio vestiarius est. Staminatas duxi, et plane matus sum. Vinus mihi in cerebrum abiit.”
― Petronius, Satyricon

“Heartened up by this story, I began to draw upon his more comprehensive knowledge as to the ages of the pictures and as to certain of the stories connected with them, upon which I was not clear; and I likewise inquired into the causes of the decadence of the present age, in which the most refined arts had perished, and among them painting, which had not left even the faintest trace of itself behind. "Greed of money," he replied, "has brought about these unaccountable changes. In the good old times, when virtue was her own reward, the fine arts flourished, and there was the keenest rivalry among men for fear that anything which could be of benefit to future generations should remain long undiscovered. Then it was that Democritus expressed the juices of all plants and spent his whole life in experiments, in order that no curative property should lurk unknown in stone or shrub. That he might understand the movements of heaven and the stars, Eudoxus grew old upon the summit of a lofty mountain: three times did Chrysippus purge his brain with hellebore, that his faculties might be equal to invention. Turn to the sculptors if you will; Lysippus perished from hunger while in profound meditation upon the lines of a single statue, and Myron, who almost embodied the souls of men and beasts in bronze, could not find an heir. And we, sodden with wine and women, cannot even appreciate the arts already practiced, we only criticise the past! We learn only vice, and teach it, too. What has become of logic? of astronomy? Where is the exquisite road to wisdom? Who even goes into a temple to make a vow, that he may achieve eloquence or bathe in the fountain of wisdom? And they do not pray for good health and a sound mind; before they even set foot upon the threshold of the temple, one promises a gift if only he may bury a rich relative; another, if he can but dig up a treasure, and still another, if he is permitted to amass thirty millions of sesterces in safety! The Senate itself, the exponent of all that should be right and just, is in the habit of promising a thousand pounds of gold to the capitol, and that no one may question the propriety of praying for money, it even decorates Jupiter himself with spoils'. Do not hesitate, therefore, at expressing your surprise at the deterioration of painting, since, by all the gods and men alike, a lump of gold is held to be more beautiful than anything ever created by those crazy little Greek fellows, Apelles and Phydias!”
― Petronius, The Satyricon

“Nada hay más falso que los estúpidos respetos humanos y nada más estúpido que una hipócrita severidad.”
― Petrônio, The Satyricon