SOURCE: "Petronius as Paradox: Anarchy and Artistic Integrity," Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association, Vol. 102, 1971, pp. 631-84.

In the following essay, Zeitlin contends that the inconsistencies, ambiguities, and incongruities of the Satyricon are deliberate and that they reflect Petronius's worldview, which embraced irrationality, chaos, and disintegration.

The recent renewal of interest in the Satyricon has produced many new and valuable insights into this strange work.¹ But enigmatic it still remains—both in respect of its form or genre and of the purpose or stance of the author—while contradictory theories continue to be vigorously propounded, attacked, and defended.²

Perhaps this enigmatic quality of the Satyricon, aggravated by the fragmentary condition of the text, will inevitably defeat the possibility of any consensus among its readers, but the present lack of consensus may also be a clear indication that a new approach to the Satyricon is needed. It...