Potrei parlare di questo "romanzo" (il perché delle virgolette lo scoprirete tra poco) in moltissimi modi, con diversi approcci.

Da quello di perversa e stramba lettrice a quello di seria e ansiosa (per la verifica su questo) studentessa del classico. Questo'opera deve essere conosciuta per essere apprezzata. Sia perché è in gran parte lacunosa e frammentaria, soprattutto alla fine. (Si, maledetto cliffhanger!).

Appartiene probabilmente al primo secolo dopo Cristo e forse, non si sa per certo, venne scritta da Petronio, arbiter elegantiae. Questo Petronio era il mio tipo d'uomo: epicureo, stravagante, distaccato e gran signore.

Per darvi un esempio concreto, si suicidò per evitare la condanna dell'imperatore, tagliandosi le vene e lasciandole subito dopo, in modo da potersi godere il banchetto a cui aveva invitato i suoi amici. Inoltre mandò a Nerone il suo testamento contenente tutti i nomi dei vari partner.

L'opera non è meno stravagante di lui: scritta in prosimetro, attinge da tutta la letteratura antica senza però appartenere a nessun genere. Si ispira a molte forme letterarie e parodizza la tragedia e l'epica. Insomma, un raffinato pastiche.

Lo stile è versatilissimo, raggiunge tutte le tonalità possibili e immaginabili. La lingua è uno strumento efficacissimo per caratterizzare i personaggi. Purtroppo la storia è tronca, ma si comprende subito la trama. Tutti gli altri personaggi sono perfettamente caratterizzati.

La vicenda è divertente, scabrosa, irriverente e ironica. Petronio non guarda in faccia nessuno e non rispetta alcun "Catone". Certo, ci sono scene morbose, ma non bisogna essere ipocriti.

Ultima cosa: leggetevelo. Anche solo per vantarvi in giro di essere sopravvissuti a una lettura del genere. Se non si può fare una cosa del genere, che senso ha essere lettori?

P.s: il "romanzo" greco in realtà non aveva nome nell'antichità, quindi chiamarlo in questo modo è accettato ma non corretto.

I had long been eager to get my hands on this famous volume.

The origins are obscure, although the authorship is attributed to Petronius. A courtier of Nero and appointed by this arbiter of elegance, he may later have been condemned for participating in some conspiracy against the emperor (the Pisonian one?).

The reading is interesting only from the perspective of "literary archaeology". The text accounts for food and drink at banquets, home decorations, aspects of the picaresque and the underworld, sexual customs, etc. We will see how people drank until they were drunk, how a spell was cast or in what way ships could be chartered for commercial transactions. But we must bear in mind that the format of the text is closer to Menippean satire than anything else. In this sense, the reading is very rich and will help us to approach the reality of 1st-century Rome.

Various scholars have attributed to the text the honour of being the first known novel, but in my opinion, at most, we could speak of a proto-novel, and that's being generous. Although a sketch of structure can be guessed in the development of events, there is a lack of connection, the narrative coherence of a guiding thread that does not exist. The facts are little more than mere juxtapositions of events, and the only cohesion is given by the fact that the protagonists are always in each of the scenes. But these sequences do not talk to each other, nor do they give meaning to the weak plot. The text does not answer any dramatic question nor do the characters develop an arc.

Is it prose? Yes, but with poetic quotations. Then there is the issue of the translation from Latin. It is difficult for a reader who does not know Latin to know exactly the context that the work had in Roman society at the time. We must bear in mind that almost all texts were written to be read aloud, declaimed or even interpreted, so Latin prose will sound a little foreign and somewhat musical to us.

As for the content; well, little more than the adventures of two friends from the underworld and the youth of one of them. We are told a lot about sex, violence, drunkenness, robberies, priestesses of Priapus and that kind of thing. It is remarkable that there are passages in which rapes of 7-year-old girls are mentioned; pederasty and erotism have their place throughout the narrative. The situations oscillate between the absurd and the unpleasant all the time. One must have a strong stomach and it has not seemed either fun or excellent to me; rather crude and vulgar.

Having said all the above, it is normal for a reader of our days to find that the reading is dull; firstly because what we have are fragments, not the complete work, and secondly because it is not a text designed to entertain 21st-century readers.

If the text is read as entertainment, then one star. If the intention is to learn about the era and investigate, then five.

I truly do not understand those people who claim that this book makes them uncomfortable. Instead, we should be grateful that these manuscripts were unearthed and still manage to exist. In the first few pages, there are two men engaged in a fight over a catamite. Eventually, they reach a decision to share him. I read this particular work around 2006 - 2007 while I was in Mumbai. I had seen the Fellini film related to it a long time ago.

There is no real coherent plot or anything of that sort. It is simply a collection of fragments with various characters. The modern interpretation seems to suggest that this book serves as a warning against the excessive debauchery of the Roman empire, which ultimately led to its decline.

It was indeed erotic. The movie, too, was quite sexy. That is all there is to it. It did not make me feel uncomfortable in any way. After all, I live in India, a place with its own rich and diverse cultural and literary traditions.