RIVALRY FOR GITON BY PETRONIUS
Rivalry for Giton is the name given on this website for ease of reference to the unnamed chapters 7 to 25 of the Satyricon by the Roman writer Petronius. It is the first of the seven parts into which the Satyricon is divided here.
A line of five ***** represents a gap of any length in the surviving text, which has survived only in fragments, and what is likely to have been recounted in it must be deduced or guessed. The translation is by Paul Dinnage for The Satyricon of Petronius published by Spearman & Calder of London in 1953.
7 iv – 9 x
Encolpius, the young man who narrates the whole story, is in a town in Campania. Lost while following his friend Ascyltos back to their lodgings, he is tricked by an old woman into entering a brothel, where he is surprised to encounter none other than Ascyltos.
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You would have thought the same old woman brought him there. I greeted him with a laugh and asked him what he was doing in this frightful place. He mopped his sweat. “If you only knew,” he said, “what has happened to me.” ***** Everybody, everywhere, seemed to be drunk on aphrodisiacs. ***** Combining our forces, we repulsed the trouble-maker.[2] ***** As through a mist I saw Giton standing on a street-corner, and I hastened towards him. |
[7 iv] putares [v] itaque ut ridens eum consalutavi, quid in loco tam deformi faceret quaesivi. [8 i] sudorem ille manibus detersit et “si scires” inquit “quae mihi acciderunt.” “quid novi?” inquam ego. [ii] at ille deficiens “cum errarem” inquit “per totam civitatem nec invenirem quo loco stabulum reliquissem, accessit ad me pater familiae et ducem se itineris humanissime promisit. [iii] per anfractus deinde obscurissimos egressus in hunc locum me perduxit prolatoque peculio coepit rogare stuprum. [iv] iam pro cella meretrix assem exegerat, iam ille mihi iniecerat manum, et nisi valentior fuissem, dedissem poenas.” ***** adeo ubique omnes mihi videbantur satyrion bibisse. ***** iunctis viribus molestum contempsimus ***** [9 i] quasi per caliginem vidi Gitona in crepidine semitae stantem et in eundem locum me conieci. . . . [9 ii] cum quaererem numquid nobis in prandium frater parasset, consedit puer super lectum et manantes lacrimas pollice extersit. [iii] perturbatus ego habitu fratris quid accidisset quaesivi. at ille tarde quidem et invitus, sed postquam precibus etiam iracundiam miscui, [iv] “tuus” inquit “iste frater seu comes paulo ante in conductum accucurrit coepitque mihi velle pudorem extorquere. [v] cum ego proclamarem, gladium strinxit et ‘si Lucretia es’ inquit ‘Tarquinium invenisti.’” [vi] quibus ego auditis intentavi in oculos Ascylti manus et “quid dicis” inquam “muliebris patientiae scortum, cuius ne spiritus quidem purus est?” [vii] inhorrescere se finxit Ascyltos, mox sublatis fortius manibus longe maiore nisu clamavit: [viii] “non taces” inquit “gladiator obscene, quem de ruina harena dimisit? [ix] non taces, nocturne percussor, qui ne tum quidem, cum fortiter faceres, cum pura muliere pugnasti, [x] cuius eadem ratione in viridario frater fui qua nunc in deversorio puer est?” |
10 vii – 11 iv
When they have finished quarrelling, they laugh, but agree to part ways, Ascyltos saying he would find new lodgings the next day.
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Passion caused this rash separation, for I had long wanted to rid myself of this importunate overseer and resume my old ways with Giton. ***** I went sight-seeing all over the town, then returned to my little room. I exchanged kisses without inhibition, entered the closest embrace, and I fulfilled my desires with a happiness to be envied. We were still at it when Ascyltos crept up to the door, loudly sprang back the bolt and came in, with me still at play with my brother. His laughter and applause filled the room. |
[10 vii] hanc tam praecipitem divisionem libido faciebat; iam dudum enim amoliri cupiebam custodem molestum, ut veterem cum Gitone meo rationem reducerem. ***** [11 i] postquam lustravi oculis totam urbem, in cellulam redii osculisque tandem bona fide exactis alligo artissimis complexibus puerum fruorque votis usque ad invidiam felicibus. [ii] nec adhuc quidem omnia erant facta, cum Ascyltos furtim se foribus admovit discussisque fortissime claustris invenit me cum fratre ludentem. risu itaque plausuque cellulam implevit, opertum me amiculo evolvit et [iii] “quid agebas” inquit “frater sanctissime? quid? vesticontubernium facis?” [iv] nec se solum intra verba continuit, sed lorum de pera solvit et me coepit non perfunctorie verberare, adiectis etiam petulantibus dictis: “sic dividere cum fratre nolito.” |
24 v – 25 iii
Encolpius, Acyltos and Giton are confronted in their lodgings by Quartilla, a devotee of Priapus, who condemns their attempts to pry into the cult’s secrets. She overpowers them with the help of a maid and a repulsive cinaedus who sexually assaults Encolpius and then Ascyltos.
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Giton stood in the middle and split his sides with laughter. Whereupon Quartilla noticed him and enquired with great interest whose boy he was. I said he was my brother.[10] |
[24 v] stabat inter haec Giton et risu dissolvebat ilia sua. itaque conspicata eum Quartilla, cuius esset puer diligentissima sciscitatione quaesivit. [vi] cum ego fratrem meum esse dixissem, “quare ergo” inquit “me non basiavit?” vocatumque ad se in osculum applicuit. [vii] mox manum etiam demisit in sinum et pertractato vasculo tam rudi “haec” inquit “belle cras in promulside libidinis nostrae militabit; hodie enim post asellum diaria non sumo.” |
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At this point Psyche came laughing up to her and whispered something in her ear. “Yes, indeed,” said Quartilla, “you were right to remind me. Why not? Wouldn’t this be a splendid opportunity of cropping our dear Pannychis’ maiden-head?” |
[25 i] cum haec diceret, ad aurem eius Psyche ridens accessit, et cum dixisset nescioquid, “ita, ita” inquit Quartilla “bene admonuisti. cur non, quia bellissima occasio est, devirginatur Pannychis nostra?” [ii] continuoque producta est puella satis bella et quae non plus quam septem annos habere videbatur, {et} ea ipsa quae primum cum Quartilla in cellam venerat nostram. [iii] plaudentibus ergo universis et postulantibus nuptias {fecerunt}, obstupui ego et nec Gitona, verecundissimum puerum, sufficere huic petulantiae affirmavi, nec puellam eius aetatis esse, ut muliebris patientiae legem posset accipere. |
The scene concludes with Giton and the girl taken, neither of them unwillingly, to a bed in a “bridal chamber” and Quartilla secretly watching their antics through a purposefully-made chink in the door.
Continue to II. Trimalchio’s Banquet
[1] Though Encolpius was the man in his Greek love affair with the boy Giton, he and Ascyltos were not mature men, but youths, at least as young as depicted in Fellini’s famous film Satyricon. The indications given for Ascyltos’s age are that he was a iuvenis (young man or youth; 17 vii and 92 vii). Indications of Encolpius’s age are much more frequent; sometimes he is a iuvenis (as is 16-year-old Giton in 107), but three people described him as an adulescens (129 vi, 134 viii and 137 viii). As Ascyltos is about to make clear (9 x), he himself had also been like Giton in relation to Encolpius, which much suggests that he was even younger than him.
This is important for understanding that Ascyltos (and probably Encolpius) were of that sexually ambiguous age where, in the thinking of a Roman readership, it could be taken for granted both that they would desire sex with boys (as well as women) and were still young enough that it was easily conceivable that mature men would wish to pedicate them. That is why this passage about a man trying to have his way with Ascyltos can safely be interpreted as Greek love. Though one hears of mature men being pedicated as punishment (for adultery, for example) or because they were cinaedi (pathics) and paid to be, the idea that a mature man might be pedicated simply for the pedicator’s pleasure is never entertained in Roman literature.
[2] Presumably meaning that Encolpius helped Ascyltos repulse the man who was groping him.
[3] Dinnage translates frater literally as “brother” throughout the Satyricon, but in a homosexual context it means a lover and it is thus translated in many other editions. Here it refers to Giton.
[4] Dinnage translates frater literally as “brother” throughout the Satyricon, but in a homosexual context it means a lover and it is thus translated in many other editions. Here it refers to Ascyltos, who had once been Encolpius’s boy.
[5] Gladium, translated literally as “sword” is also a metaphor for a “cock”, so it is (probably deliberately) unclear which Acyltos brought before Ascyltos.
[6] Sextus Tarquinius, the King’s son, raped the beautiful married Lucretia, who had resisted his advances and subsequently killed herself, an outrage which provoked the overthrow of the Roman monarchy in 509 BC. Lucretia thus became a paradigm for a chaste Roman woman.
[7] There are two insults here. Romans despised men who did anything womanly (muliebris) and fellators, who were believed to have impure breath (ne spiritus quidem purus est).
[8] The meaning is unclear, perhaps because Ascyltos alludes to things in the lost text, and is thus much disputed. Some think Encolpius had literally been a gladiator, others that the innuendo is purely sexual, perhaps playing on the impotence that periodically plagues Encolpius: he can only perform with dirty women, or he was kicked out of brothels with a warning not to waste the girls’ time.
[9] Again, frater (literally translated as brother) is being used in the homosexual sense of lover. Ascyltos is implying that he had once had the same relationship to Encolpius that Giton now has, ie. that of eromenos, but the full meaning is obscure because Ascyltos seems to be referring to a lost episode that would imply there are no grounds for Encolpius’s anger.
[10] Fratrem, translated literally here as “brother”, means “lover” in a homosexual context and is how Encolpius refers to Giton throughout the Satyricon.
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