Abstract
THE CHARACTERIZATION OF THE POET EUMOLPUS in Petronius' Satyricon is a topic of some importance, since it impinges on the vexed question of the purpose of the work's two major poems, the Troiae halosis and Bellum civile, for which Eumolpus is cast in the role of ostensible composer. Are we supposed to take this attribution seriously and at face value, reading the poems as the expression of the man and of such talents as he possesses? Or is the poet's persona largely to be ignored and the poems (together with the disquisition on the composition of epic that precedes the Bellum civile) read essentially as Petronius' own literary contributions, whether offered in the vein of parody, literary tribute, or paradigm of proper composition? Of these two views the latter has perhaps predominated in the past.Its most recent, sensitive, and effective major exponent is J. P. Sullivan, who concludes that the Troiae halosis is a parody of Senecan tragedy while the Bellum civile is a serious attempt, albeit flawed in its execution, to remodel historical epic in a conservative Virgilian mould.2
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