SOURCE: "Petronius and the Comic Romance," Classical Philology," Vol. XX, No. 1, January, 1925, pp. 31-49.

In the following essay, Perry rejects several proposed literary forerunners of the Satyricon, contending that its more likely model was the straightforward comic narrative.

In the present state of our knowledge, and owing to the nature of the problem itself, any attempt to account for the origin and peculiarities of Petronius' Satyricon must involve, at one point or another, the assumption of something that cannot be definitely proved. The following study is subject, of course, to these limitations. It is undertaken, however, in the belief that certain facts of ancient literary history have not hitherto received their proper evaluation in this connection, and that some advance may yet be made toward a more probable and comprehensive solution of this important problem.¹

The Satyricon, or rather what remains of it, relates, in autobiographical form, the...