The Satyricon

""Deep grief gnaws at my vitals and drags me down, almost to the very doors of death itself," moans Quartrilla, drawing near Encolpius, her eyes glistening. "I am afraid that, with the careless impulsiveness of youth, you may divulge, to the common herd, what you witnessed in the shrine of Priapus -- and reveal the rites of the Gods to the rabble." ""I stretch out my suppliant hands to your knees. I beg and pray you do not make a mockery and a joke of our nocturnal rites . . . nor lay bare the secrets of so many years," she whispers -- and tells the young man how he must pay . . . by "curing" her body of the "ills" besetting her." The Rabelaisian "Satyricon" of Petronius, one of the most infamous books of all time, follows the rogue Encolpius and his serving boy Giton as they engage in fortune-hunting adventure, amorous misadventure and extravagant feasting in the Rome of the first century, in the time of Nero's court.