SOURCE: "The Sexual Episodes in the Satyricon," Classical Philology, Vol. LXVIII, No. 2, April, 1973, pp. 172-85.

In the following essay, Gill takes issue with J. P. Sullivan's (see excerpt dated 1961) psychoanalytic reading of the sexual scenes in the Satyricon, advocating instead a literary approach which views them in terms of their function of stressing the bizarre and the shocking.

Scenes in the Satyricon which include a strongly sexual element compose a not inconsiderable amount of the extant text. The actions of the main protagonists outside the Cena, Encolpius and Giton, and of the characters they encounter, involve incidents and adventures in which the erotic drive plays an important part and which are sometimes overtly sexual. The two "Milesian" tales recounted within the main story, the Woman of Ephesus and the Boy of Pergamum, are narratives of sexual seduction. These parts of the Satyricon are written with no less invention...