The Satyricon

(p. 61, 15 and 73, 6) The remote colony of Puteoli was first founded in the year of the city 560 194 BC, then by Caesar Augustus as Iulia Augusta, and then by Nero in the year after Christ 60 as Neronea Augusta, and Neapolis, whose date of obtaining the rights of a colony is unknown. It is truly strange if a Greek city (p. 96, 7) is called a Puteolan state, having been inhabited for so long by Roman colonists and not distinguished more by the trade and crowds of various nations than by Greek ones: Nero chose Neapolis as 'a Greek city' when he wanted to appear on stage (Tacitus, Annals XV 33). It is added that in the frequent conversations during which the advantages and disadvantages of the colony and the life of the common people are discussed by those dining, there is almost no mention of commerce and nautical affairs, by the abundance of which the Puteolan emporium was celebrated. These facts argue against Puteoli, while against Neapolis argues the fact that no record has been handed down regarding the beginnings of its colony and its organization. Therefore, we must take care lest we, interpreting with arbitrary judgment the words of a writer who perhaps had not even decided upon one and the same colony himself, decide upon one or the other preposterously. For example, Ludovicus Friedlaender, in the preface of the index of the Königsberg schools for the winter of 1860, concluded that Puteoli was intended because of the vigiles watchmen/police (p. 92, 18), a type of military service which Neapolis did not seem to have had. Indeed, nothing forces us to believe that they refer to the watchmen instituted by Augustus in the military manner. Does not Creon, the king in the age of Amphitryon, if it pleases the gods, 'always station individual night watchmen at Thebes'? Did not the watchmen and guardians of the temple raise a clamor at Agrigentum when Verres went to plunder the temple? Did not the three night-magistrates at Rome, before Augustus, preside over the watchmen and night watches? Therefore, a cohort of watchmen was lacking at Neapolis, but I do not deny that there were watchmen who guarded the region at night for the purpose of preventing fires in a more crowded city.

Since these satires propose to us a life corrupted by luxury and sloth, and a mind fixed on the invention of pleasures and memory, they also display supreme and varied learning and elegance of wit. A skilled spectator of Greek arts and an intelligent judge of liberal studies seems to have dealt primarily with New Comedy and those books of the Peripatetics in which the characters of men were described, and very many singular things noted in Trimalchio and his guests imitate almost word for word the χαρακτῆρας characters inscribed with the name of Theophrastus.