Petronius

Gaius Petronius' Satyricon is a bewildering work that dates to around 50 CE. It is by turns mock-heroic, comic, and satirical, and takes the form of narrative prose, verse, and philosophy. In his mock-epic wanderings, the hero comes to a gallery, where he encounters a poet and is struck by a painting of the Fall of Troy. The poet, Eumolpus offers a poetic commentary on the scene (Satyricon 89).

The verse is purposely bad, and we are evidently meant to perceive that Eumolpus has derived his version from Virgil's version of the tale. Unsurprisingly, this effort is greeted with a volley of stones from others walking in the gallery, and Eumolpus flees (Satyricon 90).

Even the prompting of verse by a painting echoes Virgil. Images of the Trojan war in the paintings of the temple at Carthage remind Aeneas of his grief. It is the knowledge of the Trojan's plight which these scenes attest that encourages Aeneas in his dealings with the Cartaginians. Although his telling of the fall of Troy does not follow on directly from these visions, it is offered as a parallel: the Carthaginians who previously had only paintings based on tales from afar, now have words to fill out the pictured stories.

That Eumolpus employs the device of spouting into verse at the prompt of a painting, and that his verse is not only derivative but also plain bad, is perhaps a comment on the many poetical spin-offs of the Trojan story: while it has produced some of the greatest literature of the classical era, it no doubt also fueled much of the worst.