Research on Petronius’ fragmentary novel, the „Satyrica“ 1, tends to focus on the largest and best-known surviving episode, the „Cena Trimalchionis“ (Dinner at Trimalchio’s). Thus the publication of an excellent new commentary by Peter Habermehl on chapters 79–141, the entire latter part of the novel, will be welcome news to Petronius’ many enthusiastic readers. The first part of Habermehl’s two-volume work, which has now appeared, covers the chapters 79–110. These chapters include several of the novel’s highlights, Encolpius’ desertion by Giton and his comical fit of rage, followed by his visit to a picture gallery and his first encounter with the mad poet Eumolpus (ch. 83–90). It also features two very different examples of Eumolpus’ artistry, the witty erotic „Tale of the Pergamene Boy“ (ch. 85–87) and Eumolpus’ attempt to surpass Vergil’s Aeneid, the „Troiae Halosis“ (Capture of Troy, ch. 89). This first volume of Habermehl’s commentary ends after the lovers, Encolpius and Giton, have been reunited and just before Eumolpus tells his second Milesian tale, „The Widow of Ephesus“, in the middle of an eventful sea journey with a certain captain Lichas (ch. 100).

The commentary’s excellent introduction (p. xi–xxxviii) gives an up-to-date and well-balanced survey of the immense scholarship on Petronius’ life and work, the book’s literary influences, the genre question, attempts at an interpretation of the „Satyrica“, and the textual transmission. With Syme and others, Habermehl identifies the author with Publius Petronius Niger, cos. suff. 62 CE (p. xi, n. 2).2 Thinly disguised, Habermehl argues, the work satirizes the „mad house of the Neronian years“ (p. xxxiv) and was probably written not for the amusement of Nero and his court, as is often claimed, but to entertain Petronius’ closest friends (p. xiii). An extensive bibliography (pp. xxxix–lxxi) precedes the commentary proper (pp. 1–488). Indices rerum and nominum will presumably follow in the promised second part of the commentary. A Latin text of the „Satyrica“ is not provided since Habermehl, for the most part, follows the standard edition, Konrad Müller’s 1995 Teubner text, which anyone seriously interested in Petronius probably owns anyway. At the same time, Habermehl deviates from Müller’s text in twenty-one cases (listed on p. xxxvii), and his thoughtful reexamination of the problems of the textual transmission is, in fact, one of the many strengths of his book.

In the manner of Nisbet and Hubbard’s well-known commentaries on Horace’s „Odes“, Habermehl’s detailed remarks on each chapter are headed by a short summary of the chapter’s content and a useful list of the relevant secondary literature. Habermehl’s comments cover not only matters of textual criticism, grammatical peculiarities, stylistic features, literary parallels, and everything else that one would expect of a commentary with the subtitle „ein philologisch-literarischer Kommentar“. Habermehl also offers notes on, to give just a few examples, the intricacies of Roman legal procedure (e.g., p. 77 on the Roman equivalent of small claims court; pp. 460ff. on peace treaties and contract language); Roman provincial administration (p. 95); religious customs and Eumolpus’ perversion of them (pp. 103–104); the construction of Roman ships (pp. 335–336); and Mediterranean ornithology (pp. 466–467). The lists of parallels that Habermehl provides are truly abundant (in fact, I would have been satisfied with far less), and all Greek quotes are translated.

A particular strength of the book are the longer interpretative essays that introduce major sections like the „Tale of the Pergamene Boy“ (pp. 92–94) or the „Troiae Halosis“ (pp. 151–160). Habermehl discusses the tale’s intricate ring-composition, its clever parody of Plato’s „Symposium“, and its dark moral: The story serves its function to comfort Encolpius over the perfidiousness of his ex-lover, the boy Giton, but it also exposes the narrator, Eumolpus, as an unscrupulous lecher and pederast. The „Troiae Halosis“, in turn, is defended as more than simple parody of Vergil’s „Aeneid“. In tune with Zeitlin and Connors 3, Habermehl emphasizes that the poem subtly undermines the Augustan values heralded by the „Aeneid“ (p. 160).4

Habermehl’s commentary on „Satyrica“ 79–110 is an impressive achievement. It is an essential addition to any college library’s Classics collection. In fact, anyone working on Petronius will want to own his or her own copy. At the same time, it would be nice to have an English version of Habermehl’s work, slimmed-down to the size of M.S. Smith’s commentary on the „Cena Trimalchionis“ 5, so that the many non-German speaking readers of Petronius’ oeuvre could also benefit from Habermehl’s expert guidance through the latter part of the „Satyrica“.

Anmerkungen:
1 The frequently used title „Satyricon“ is, in fact, the genitive plural of „Satyrica“ in the sense of „Satyricon libri“, i.e., books of satyr stories.
2 In Tacitus, the Neronian courtier Petronius, the likely author of the „Satyrica“, appears as Gaius, in Plutarch and Pliny as Titus Petronius, each time without a cognomen. Accordingly, Edward Courtney (A Companion to Petronius, New York 2001, pp. 6–7) expresses not unreasonable doubts (not mentioned by Habermehl) that the Petronius of the literary sources may not be the same as this Publius Petronius Niger (whose praenomen was definitely Publius, cf. Supplementum Epigraphicum Graecum 39 (1989), 1180, line 1).
3 Zeitlin, Froma, Romanus Petronius. A study of the Troiae Halosis and the Bellum Civile, in: Latomus 30 (1971), pp. 56–82, esp. 62–67; Connors, Catherine, Petronius the Poet. Verse and literary tradition in the Satyricon, Cambridge 1998, pp. 87–93.
4 Readers of Habermehl’s own entry „Petronius“ in: Der Neue Pauly 9 (2000), 671–676, will probably recognize these views (and some of the phrasing), but Habermehl’s arguments here are much more detailed. For example, Habermehl demonstrates that the frequent repetition of verbs with the iterative prefix „-re“, which Connors 1998, 87–93 takes as evidence for her reading of the „Troiae Halosis“ in its entirety as a „repetition“ (i.e., a reminder that the poem recreates its epic model, the „Aeneid“), are also a feature of Seneca’s tragic style that the poem consciously imitates (p. 158).
5 Smith, Martin S. (Hrsg.), Petronii Arbitrii Cena Trimalchionis, Oxford 1975. Habermehl himself states that he strove for something in the middle between Smith’s handy paperback and the enormous Groningen commentary on Apuleius (p. x).