No CrossRef data available.
Article contents
AN(OTHER) EPITAPH FOR TRIMALCHIO: SAT. 30.2*
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 16 April 2014
Extract
Trimalchio's fabulous epitaph, recited in full by Petronius’ colourful host towards the end of the Cena (Sat. 71.12), has long attracted abundant comment. Similarly, allusions to the underworld in much of the decoration leading to and in Trimalchio's dining room have been the object of intense scholarly discussion of the freedman's morbid characterization. In consequence, it is now accepted that epitaph and funereal allusions make for a deliberate mirage of the netherworld – so much so that ‘… Trimalchio's home is in some sense to be regarded as a house of the dead’. As John Bodel has shown, ‘Petronius signalled his intention to portray Trimalchio's home as an underworld earlier in the episode’. Examples for this include the procession from the baths to Trimalchio's house that preceded the banquet (Sat. 28.4–5) – ‘resembling nothing so much as a Roman cortege’, and the wall paintings in the porticus of Trimalchio's house which made Encolpius stop and pause, as Aeneas had done at the Temple of Apollo at Cumae (Sat. 29.1). The example of the pairing of the Cerberus-like watchdog encountered by Encolpius and friends during their escape (Sat. 72.7) and the painted dog in Trimalchio's vestibule that frightened Encolpius upon his arrival (Sat. 29.1) makes it moreover clear that Petronius engaged in some elaborate ring composition concerning Trimalchio's portrayal as a dead man walking. It is surprising, then, that Petronius should have failed to square the circle as regards Trimalchio's epitaph: Sat. 71.12 appears to lack an earlier match – and this despite the fact that a visitor to a Roman tomb might well expect to be informed about the name of the deceased, and perhaps a few other details, at the moment of entering the tomb.
- Type
- Shorter Notes
- Information
- Copyright
- Copyright © The Classical Association 2014
Footnotes
*
Thanks to Gavin Kelly and Costas Panayotakis for comments on this and other Trimalchian adventures; and to Michael Crawford for discussion of funerary epigraphy. All mistakes are mine.
References
1 For a recent summary of some main contributions (in English) see Hope, V., ‘At home with the dead. Roman funeral traditions and Trimalchio's tomb’, in Prag, J. and Repath, I. (edd.), Petronius: A Handbook (Oxford, 2009), 140–60CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also n. 9 below.
2 See especially Bodel, J., ‘Trimalchio's underworld’, in Tatum, J. (ed.), The Search for the Ancient Novel (Baltimore and London, 1994), 237–59Google Scholar (with earlier bibliography), now to be read in conjunction with Wesenberg, B., ‘Zur Wanddekoration im Hause des Trimalchio’, in Castagna, L. and Lefèvre, E. (edd.), Studien zu Petron und seiner Rezeption / Studi su Petronio e sulla sua fortuna (Berlin and New York, 2007), 267–83Google Scholar, at 270–2; and Arrowsmith, W., ‘Luxury and death in the Satyricon’, Arion 5 (1966), 304–31.Google Scholar
3 Bodel (n. 2), 239.
4 Ibid. 240.
5 Ibid. 243.
6 The precise layout, the location(s) and the rendering of the inscription at the entrance to Trimalchio's dining room are not critical for my argument. For discussion of the text's location see e.g. Bagnani, G., ‘The House of Trimalchio’, AJPh 75 (1954), 16–39Google Scholar, at 29–30, and Prag, J.R.W., ‘Cave navem: Petronius, Satyricon 30.1’, CQ 56 (2006), 538–47CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 539–40. For a suggested layout of the text see Bagnani (this note), 31 (but note his choice of ‘VIVIRO’ in place of ‘SEVIRO’).
7 Maiuri, A., La Cena di Trimalchione di Petronio Arbitro (Naples, 1945)Google Scholar, 157 (and 244). More recent studies have followed this approach without further analysis: see e.g. Cavalca, M.G., I grecismi nel Satyricon di Petronio (Bologna, 2001)Google Scholar, 64; Gamba, G.G., Petronio Arbitro e i cristiani. Ipotesi per una lettura contestuale del Satyricon (Rome, 1998), 143–4Google Scholar; Smith, M.S., Petronii Arbitri. Cena Trimalchionis (Oxford, 1975)Google Scholar, 62.
8 Prag (n. 6), 544.
9 The text of the epitaph at Sat. 71.12 makes it clear that the remains of the deceased are in the tomb: C. Pompeius Trimalchio Maecenatianus hic requiescit. Huic seviratus absenti decretus est. Cum posset in omnibus decuriis Romae esse, tamen noluit. Pius, fortis, fidelis, ex parvo crevit, sestertium reliquit trecenties, nec umquam philosophum audivit. Vale: et tu. The best typological discussion of this inscription – i.e. of a fictional example of an ‘autobiographical’ epitaph – is to my mind still Misch, G., A History of Autobiography in Antiquity, 2 vols. (Westport, CT, 1950), 1.208–30Google Scholar, esp. 223–5; for a socio-historical discussion of Trimalchio's commissioned epitaph see D'Arms, J.H., Commerce and Social Standing in Ancient Rome (Cambridge, MA and London, 1981), 108–16.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
10 CIL I2.2534 = X.6473 (Setia): ‘To Gaius Veveius, her father, [from] Veveia, daughter of Gaius’.
11 All three inscriptions come from Rome: 1) CIL VI.6258: ‘Eutychus the cubicularius made this for his brother Aphrodisius the velarius’; 2) CIL VI.6326: ‘Optata the doorkeeper, the slave of Pa(n)sa. Her friends made this’; 3) CIL VI.8478: ‘To Hierocles, the slave of the Emperor, who was dispensator of public works. [From] Eros his slave’.
12 CIL VIII.25817 (Furnos/Africa Proconsularis) = AE 1978, 880: ‘MEMORIA | BLOSSI HONO|RATVS INGENVS ACTOR | PERFECIT’. For a recent discussion of this inscription in the context of the study of slavery see Schumacher, L., ‘On the status of private actores, dispensatores and vilici’, in Roth, U. (ed.), By the Sweat of Your Brow: Roman Slavery in its Socio-Economic Setting (London, 2010), 31–47Google Scholar, at 43.
13 Saller, R.P. and Shaw, B.D., ‘Tombstones and Roman family relations in the Principate: civilians, soldiers and slaves’, JRS 74 (1984), 124–56Google Scholar, esp. Tables 7, 8, 16, 17, 18 and 32.
14 For a comparison of Trimalchio's house and various scenes of the Cena with real tombs especially at Pompeii see Whitehead, J., ‘The “Cena Trimalchionis” and biographical narration’, in Holliday, P.J. (ed.), Narrative and Event in Ancient Art (Cambridge, 1993), 299–325Google Scholar. See also Prag (n. 6), 545–6, who, despite his reading of the inscription as an honorific text, offers a (near) match to the decoration of Trimalchio's abode in the tomb of C. Cartilius Poplicola from the Porta Marina of Ostia, adorned with fasces, rostrum and an inscription, and more generally concludes (541) that ‘J. Bodel's thesis, that the sequence of elements described prior to the dining room marked out to Petronius’ readers the connections with a descent into the underworld, is reinforced: the doorway to the dining room is decorated like the doorway to a tomb’. For Trimalchio's own connection of tomb and house see Sat. 71.7. The (inter)play between house and tomb is not unique to the Satyricon in Latin literature: see e.g. Stat. Silv. 5.1.237.
15 See Sat. 36.5–8 for the pun on the name of the carver Carpus. For an association of cinnamon with funerals in the ancient literary sources see Plin. HN 12.83, and Plut. Sull. 38; and for a brief modern discussion of the use of cinnamon (and other spices) in funerals see Noy, D., ‘Building a Roman funeral pyre’, Antichthon 34 (2000), 30–45CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 37–8. Naturally, Cinnamus was also the name of actual slaves, without this implying in real life a funerary or funereal connotation, for which see e.g. the epitaph of the dispensator Cinnamus from Rome: CIL VI.9337. The same applies to Carpus as a slave name, for which see e.g. the epitaph of Carpus (and his brother), the slave of a tax guild, again from Rome: CIL VI.8587. The fact that cinnamon was traded over vast distances, bought, sold and resold on the way, may in turn be an allusion to the slave status of Cinnamus: see Miller, J.I., The Spice Trade of the Roman Empire, 29 BC–AD 641 (Oxford, 1969), 153–72Google Scholar for discussion of the ‘cinnamon route’.
16 The gap between honorific and funerary texts became increasingly smaller under the Principate as a result of ‘a growing degree of crossover between honorific and funerary commemoration’ in private contexts in the early Empire: Prag (n. 6), 544.
17 For general discussion of multiple readings and viewpoints in and of the Satyricon see Slater, N.W., Reading Petronius (Baltimore and London, 1990)Google Scholar, and Rimell, V., Petronius and the Anatomy of Fiction (Cambridge, 2002)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and for discussion of multiple (mis)readings in a specific analytical niche see P. Habermehl, ‘Petrus und Petronius. Ein Seitenblick auf neue christliche Lesarten der Satyrica’, in Castagna and Lefèvre (n. 2), 33–49.
18 So labelled by Veyne, P., ‘Vie de Trimalcion’, in id., La société romaine (Paris, 1991), 13–56Google Scholar, at 48 (originally published as ‘La vie de Trimalcion’, Annales ESC 16.2 [1961], 213–47Google Scholar), following an electoral programma from Pompeii: CIL IV.117.
19 Courtney, E., A Companion to Petronius (Oxford, 2001)Google Scholar, 117.
20 Saller and Shaw (n. 13), 127.
21 Borrowed from CIL I2.2660 (Rome): CVIQ|VE SV[OM] | CIPO.