Decent indecency : the 'Roman' image of 'Greek' traditions in Petronius's Satyricon

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to illustrate how The Pergamene Youth and The Widow of Ephesus episodes present a stereotypical negative view of ‚Greek tradition‘ in Roman culture. This analysis shall show how the narrators of these two Milesian tales entertain while the implicit author connects ethical categories and values to the different levels of the complex narrative structure. The question is not what are the Greeks like, but how the author sees the Greeks. The subject of the current study is thus not the Hellas that is open to historical research, but the ideal of Greek culture that was present in Roman minds.