The Classical Quarterly (New Series)
- The Classical Quarterly (New Series) / Volume 48 / Issue 02 / December 1998, pp 580-585
- Copyright © The Classical Association 1998
- DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/cq/48.2.580 (About DOI), Published online: 11 February 2009
Shorter Notes
Dividing the dinner: book divisions in Petronius' Cena Trimalchionis*
S. J. Harrisona1
a1 Corpus Christi College, Oxford, stephen.harrision@ccc.ox.ac.uk
The information transmitted on the numeration of the books of Petronius' Satyrica is notoriously contradictory. Parts of the extant fragmentary text are variously assigned to Books 14–16: the testimonia are clearly set out in Muller's recent fourth edition (whose numeration I use here), and briefly discussed by Sullivan: of Müller's testimonia, no. 10 places Sat. 89.1 in Book 15, no. 13 puts Sat. 20.5 in Book 14, no. 21 identifies the Cena Trimalchionis (Sat. 26.7–78.8) as Book 15, and no. 22 suggests that excerpts from Sat. 6–141 and the complete Cena all come from Books 15 and 16. My main purpose here, however, is not to reopen the general question of the numeration or the overall number of the books of the Satyrica.
Footnotes
* My thanks to Stephen Heyworth and to the anonymous referees for CQ for some useful comment and criticism.
