Rose.
Dear old Eumolpus, with his boring culture and shameless chuckle, no
school is complete without him; indeed, I have heard that the
principal scholastic agents keep a section in their lists of
"Appointments Required" headed, for private reference, with his sole
name. Ascyltos is generally the Captain of the XV or XI, sometimes of
both, and represents the unending war of muscle against mind;
Encolpius is, of course, the hero of every school story ever written,
though (to be fair) the authors of most of them have never guessed it.
Agamemnon is the sort of form-master whom it is conventional to rag.
He may have told you already that Petronius is worth reading for its
admirable literary criticism (contained in pages 1 to 4 and 189 and
191 of this volume) and you may have listened, not knowing yet that
literary criticism is rarely admirable, nor suspecting that those are
the pages which most people leave unread. But you are fortunate in
having being born in a generation which is not afraid to say frankly
what it likes, and you will, I imagine, say frankly that you have read
Petronius, and intend to read him again because he tells a rattling
good story, and, unlike certain contemporary novelists whom you are
counselled to admire, tells it about people whose characters and
motives you have no difficulty in understanding.
But all this time I have said nothing to you about Petronius "the
man," as literary critics say, and this, as you may have suspected, is
because I know as little about him as anyone else.
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