So, in those days as in these, your Trimalchio was ennobled; though, to do King James justice, he had a string of coronets for his Giton also.  The latter and his companions are still only emerging from a long period of oblivion in literature and obscurity in life.  Like the pagan deities who have shrunk in peasant mythology to be elves and pooks and suchlike mannikins, these creatures, banished from the polite reading of the Victorians, reappeared instantly in that grotesque microcosm of life which the Victorians invented as an outlet for one of their tightest repressions, the School Story.  I shall not press the analogy between Lycas and Steerforth, but merely remind you how, years before you ever heard the name (unless it is mentioned there) of Petronius Arbiter, you welcomed Giton’s acquaintance in the pages of Eric, or Little by Little, where he is known as Wildney, and painted in the most attractive colours, and were rather bored whenever old Eumolpus walked into the School Library as Mr. 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.  You have not long since laid down your Tacitus:  I need do no more than refer you to the Sixteenth Book of the Annals, where, in the 17th, 18th, 19th and 20th chapters, you will find what is almost the only historical proof of his existence.