These poems are very varied in character and as a whole reach a higher poetical level than most of those preserved in the existing fragments of the _Satyricon_.[1] The most notable features are simplicity and unaffected grace of diction coupled with a delicate appreciation of the beauties of nature. There is nothing that is out of keeping with the classicism on which we have insisted as a characteristic of Petronius, there is much that is worthy of the best writers of the Augustan age. The five lines in which he describes the coming of autumn have much in common with the descriptions of nature already quoted from the _Satyricon_. The last line in particular has at once a conciseness and a wealth of suggestion that is rare in any post-Ovidian poet:
iam nunc algentes autumnus fecerat umbras atque hiemem tepidis spectabat Phoebus habenis, iam platanus iactare comas, iam coeperat uvas adnumerare suas defecto palmite vitis: ante oculos stabat, quidquid promiserat annus.[333]
Now autumn had brought its cool shades, Phoebus' reins glowed less hot and he was looking winterward. The plane was beginning to shed her leaves, the vine to count its clusters, and its fresh shoots were withered. Before our eyes stood all the promise of the year.
Equally charming and sincere in tone is the description of the delights of the simple life:
parvula securo tegitur mihi culmine sedes uvaque plena mero fecunda pendet ab ulmo. dant rami cerasos, dant mala rubentia silvae Palladiumque nemus pingui se vertice frangit. iam qua diductos potat levis area fontes, Corycium mihi surgit olus malvaeque supinae et non sollicitos missura papavera somnos. praeterea sive alitibus contexere fraudem seu magis inbelles libuit circumdare cervos aut tereti lino pavidum subducere piscem, hos tantum novere dolos mea sordida rura. i nunc et vitae fugientis tempora vende divitibus cenis! me qui manet exitus olim, hic precor inveniat consumptaque tempora poscat.[334]
My cottage is sheltered by a roof that fears no ill; the grape, bursting with wine, hangs from the fertile elm; cherries hang by the bough and my orchard yields its rosy apples, and the tree that Pallas loves breaks beneath the rich burden of its branches. And now, where the garden bed's light soil drinks in the runnels of water, rises for me Corycian kale and low-growing mallow, and the poppy that grants easy slumber. Moreover, whether 'tis my pleasure to set snares for birds or hem in the timid deer, or on fine-meshed net to draw up the affrighted fish, this is all the guile known to my humble lands. Go to, now, and waste the flying hours of life on sumptuous feasts! I pray, that my destined end may find me here, and here demand an account of the days I have lived.