tirical
tone and with a leaning toward the prose-poetic form? This is the question
raised by the analysis, which we have made above, of the characteristics
of the story. We have no ambitious hope of solving it, yet the mere
statement of a puzzling but interesting problem is stimulating to the
imagination and the intellect, and I am tempted to take up the subject
because the discovery of certain papyri in Egypt within recent years has
led to the formulation of a new theory of the origin of the romance of
perilous adventure, and may, therefore, throw some light on the source of
our realistic novel of every-day life. My purpose, then, is to speak
briefly of the different genres of literature of the earlier period with
which the story of Petronius may stand in some direct relation, or from
which the suggestion may have come to Petronius for his work. Several of
these lines of possible descent have been skilfully traced by others. In
their views here and there I have made some modifications, and I have
called attention to one or two types of literature, belonging to the
earlier period and heretofore unnoticed in this connection, which may help
us to understand the appearance of the realistic novel.

It seems a far cry from this story of sordid motives and vulgar action to
the heroic episodes of epic poetry, and yet the _Satirae_ contain not a
few more or less direct suggestions of epic situations and characters. The
conventional motif of the story of Petronius is the wrath of an offended
deity. The narrative in the _Odyssey_ and the _AEneid_ rests on the same
basis. The ship of their enemy Lichas on which Encolpius and his
companions are cooped up reminds them of the cave of the Cyclops; Giton
hiding from the town-crier under a mattress is compared to Ulysses
underneath the sheep and clinging to its wool to escape the eye of the
Cyclops, while the woman whose charms engage the attention of Encolpius at
Croton bears the name of Circe. It seems to be clear from these
reminiscences that Petronius had the epic in mind when he wrote his story,
and his novel may well be a direct or an indirect parody of an epic
narrative. Rohde in his analysis of the serious Greek romance of the
centuries subsequent to Petronius has postulated the following development
for that form of story: Travellers returning from remote parts of the
world told remarkable stories of their experiences. Some of these stories
took a literary form in the _Odyssey_