Of course you know that Venus joined us all up, as quickly as possible. Finally not even Giton himself could resist a smile, especially when the little girl caught him around the neck and showered innumerable kisses upon him, and he not at all averse to it.CHAPTER THE TWENTY-FIRST. Yet Encolpius constantly worries about whether or not Giton’s affections are waning. Although they are still retained in the text by some editors, this is done to give some measure of continuity to an otherwise interrupted narrative, but they can only serve to distort the author and obscure whatever view of him the reader might otherwise have reached. Tacitus, Plutarch and Pliny the Elder describe Petronius as the elegantiae arbiter (also phrased arbiter elegantiarum), “judge of elegance” in the court of the emperor Nero. Those who are brought up on such a diet can no more attain to wisdom than a kitchen scullion can attain to a keen sense of smell or avoid stinking of the grease. In the first place, there was Tryphaena, a most beautiful woman, who had come in company with Lycas, the master of a vessel and owner of estates near the seashore.
