SOURCE: "The Use of Language as a Means of Characterization in Petronius," Classical Philology, Vol. II, No. 1, January, 1907, pp. 43-50.

In the following essay, Abbott explains how Petronius expresses both the individuality and culture level of his characters through their vocabulary, colloquialisms, pronunciation, word-formation, and inflectional forms.

The character and culture of a man are revealed by his dress, his conduct, his attitude toward the world, by the subjects in which he shows an interest, and by his manner of speech, and upon the use which writers of fiction have made of these indications of character depends the clearness with which we conceive the essential qualities of the people whom they depict. Among the Latin writers no one has equaled Petronius, it seems to me, in the portrayal of character, and the purpose of this paper is to call attention to one method which he has used with...