great
variety of characters and shows no regard for conventional morals. It is
especially interesting to notice the element of parody, which we have
already observed in Petronius, in both kinds of literary productions. The
theory that Petronius may have had the composition of his _Satirae_
suggested to him by plays of this type is greatly strengthened by the fact
that the mime reached its highest point of popularity at the court in the
time of Nero, in whose reign Petronius lived. In point of fact Petronius
refers to the mime frequently. One of these passages is of peculiar
significance in this connection. Encolpius and his comrades are entering
the town of Croton and are considering what device they shall adopt so as
to live without working. At last a happy idea occurs to Eumolpus, and he
says: "Why don't we construct a mime?" and the mime is played, with
Eumolpus as a fabulously rich man at the point of death, and the others as
his attendants. The role makes a great hit, and all the vagabonds in the
company play their assumed parts in their daily life at Croton with such
skill that the legacy-hunters of the place load them with attentions and
shower them with presents. This whole episode, in fact, may be thought of
as a mime cast in the narrative form, and the same conception may be
applied with great plausibility to the entire story of Encolpius.

We have thus far been attacking the question with which we are concerned
from the side of the subject-matter and tone of the story of Petronius.
Another method of approach is suggested by the Menippean satire,[87] the
best specimens of which have come down to us in the fragments of Varro,
one of Cicero's contemporaries. These satires are an _olla podrida_,
dealing with all sorts of subjects in a satirical manner, sometimes put in
the dialogue form and cast in a _melange_ of prose and verse. It is this
last characteristic which is of special interest to us in this connection,
because in the prose of Petronius verses are freely used. Sometimes, as we
have observed above, they form an integral part of the narrative, and
again they merely illustrate or expand a point touched on in the prose. If
it were not aside from our immediate purpose it would be interesting to
follow the history of this prose-poetical form from the time of Petronius
on. After him it does not seem to have been used very much until the third
and fourth centuries of our era. However, Martial in the first centur