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From harena to Cena: Trimalchio'S capis (Sat. 52.1–3)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

Niall W. Slater
Niall W. Slater
Affiliation:
Emory University
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Extract

Trimalchio is such an established figure of fun in the Satyricon that commentators have been content to note the myths that he jumbles together in his description of his tableware here, without going much further. Clearly his scyphoi portray Medea and her dead children, not Cassandra, and we assume that he can recognize gladiatorial fights when he sees them. Heretofore lacking is any discussion of what scene was actually represented on the capis he acquired from his patron and whether the reader of the Satyricon is meant to be able to decode the scene which Trimalchio so flagrantly misinterprets.

Type
Shorter Notes
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 44 , Issue 2 , December 1994 , pp. 549 - 551
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1994

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References

1 Commentators' interests in the cups have centred on whether the gladiator Petraites constitutes a reference datable to the reign of Nero: e.g. Rowell, H. T., ‘The Gladiator Petraites and the Date of the Satyricon’, TAPA 89 (1958), 14–24Google Scholar and contra Martin, Smith, Petroni Arbitri Cena Trimalchionis (Oxford, 1975), ad 52.3.Google Scholar

2 Slater, N. W., Reading Petronius (Baltimore, 1990), 217Google Scholar n. 7.1 now suspect that we are meant to imagine the workmanship of the capis as crude enough to make Trimalchio's mistaking a cow for a horse at least plausible. The reference to King Minos may then do double duty: to remind us by association of the Minotaur story and to suggest that the decoration is archaic and therefore not so naturalistic in execution.

3 Rose, K. F. C., The Date and Author of the Satyricon (Leiden, 1971).Google Scholar

4 Eclogue VII contains a description of the great amphitheatre and the beast shows within it which Corydon the shepherd has seen during his visit to Rome; see especially Keene, C. H., The Eclogues of Calpurnius Siculus and M. Aurelius Olympius Nemesianus (London, 1887Google Scholar, repr. Hildesheim, 1969), ad loc. and his Appendix, ‘On Eclogue VII’, 197–203. I continue to accept a Neronian date for Calpurnius Siculus, despite the thesis of Champlin, E. J., first stated in ‘The Life and Times of Calpurnius Siculus’, JRS 68 (1978), 95–110Google Scholar; cf. idem, Philologus 130 (1986), 104–12.Google Scholar

5 Champlin 1986 (above, n. 4), 108 does cast serious doubt on Suetonius' figures for the scale of these fights, though his interpretation that they ‘must surely represent an estimate of such incidents for the entire reign’ is only one, and not the most likely, possibility.

6 Crum, R. H., ‘Petronius and the Emperors, I: Allusions in the Satyricon’, CW 45 (1952), 161–8Google Scholar; 162. Contra Smith (above, n. 1) ad loc, who does not accept a Neronian date. Sullivan, J. P., The Satyricon of Petronius: A Literary Study (Bloomington and London, 1968), 126–7Google Scholar and n. 4, believes that Horace, Sat. 2.8, the dinner with Nasidienus, is a model for much of the Cena and sees the collapse of the awning in Horace (54ff.) as an inspiration for the fall of the acrobat in Petronius but also considers the Nero incident a possible source as well.

7 Martial seems to have seen an equally realistic performance a generation later, recorded in his:

One wonders if Domitian were consciously imitating the performance under Nero.

8 Hermeros is not as well attested as Petraites, but one first-century a.d. gladiator by this name is known: see Smith (above, n. 1), ad loc.

9 I am grateful to my colleague Garth Tissol for his helpful criticisms of this note and his suggestion of a title.