Happy Thanksgiving to everyone in CANE-land! I hope you’re all doing well. In our series of blog posts on mythological puzzles, I thought I’d add one with a sort of Thanksgiving theme—that is, a bit of “mythology” from the uber-wealthy Trimalchio who shows off his “knowledge” as he hosts his giant dinner party. Before we get to this, congrats to Teresa Ramsby for getting last week’s puzzle correct! The answer was Andromache!
One of my favorite texts from the ancient world is Petronius’ Satyricon. Although it’s frustratingly fragmentary, it’s an important text that, um, slices through the surface of the grand picture of Rome, exposing some of the underbelly of real life. The most famous part of the work is Trimalchio’s dinner, which, well, feasts on the excesses of the freedman protagonist. It’s marvelous and gripping and gives us, ahem, a taste of what a wealthy freedman’s life might be like. Of course it’s exaggerated, but that’s the point—Trimalchio’s excesses have to be based on some recognizable cultural phenomenon, or rather stereotype.
One prominent stereotype of wealthy freedmen was that they were not educated like the blue-blooded Roman elite. They might have lots of money, but they don’t have the basic “language” of literary knowledge or taste. In Seneca’s 27th letter, we see a parallel to Trimalchio’s lack of traditional Greco-Roman education:
Within our own time there was a certain rich man named Calvisius Sabinus; he had the bank-account and the brains of a freedman. […] His memory was so faulty that he would sometimes forget the name of Ulysses, or Achilles, or Priam, names which we know as well as we know those of our own attendants. […] No such man, I say, calls off the names of his master’s tribesmen so atrociously as Sabinus used to call off the Trojan and Achaean heroes. But none the less did he desire to appear learned. So, devised this short cut to learning: he paid fabulous prices for slaves, one to know Homer by heart and another to know Hesiod, and he also delegated a special slave to each of the nine lyric poets. You need not wonder that he paid high prices for these slaves; if he did not find them ready to hand he had them made to order. After collecting this retinue, he began to make life miserable for his guests. He would keep these fellows at the foot of his couch and ask them from time to time for verses which he might repeat, and then frequently break down in the middle of a word. Satellius Quadratus, one of his entourage and consequently a fawner…suggested to Sabinus that he should have philologists to gather up the bits he dropped. Sabinus remarked that each slave cost him one hundred thousand sesterces; Satellius replied: “You might have bought as many book-cases for a smaller sum.”
Seneca’s near-contemporary Petronius took up this topic and served up a delicious and unforgettable scene known as Trimalchio’s dinner. As seen in the Senecan passage, one of the expected things an elite Roman should know is myth and poetry. And in the course of the meal, Trimalchio acts as literary interpreter, revealing his, well, limited knowledge of that world. Can you identify at least five mistakes Trimalchio makes in the passage below? And what mythical episode is well exploited at the end, showing that the others who put on the show had a good command of the mythical storyworld?
(52) I own about a hundred four-gallon cups engraved with Cassandra killing her children, and they lying there dead in the most lifelike way. I have a thousand jugs which Mummiusleft to my patron, and on them you see Daedalus shutting Niobe into the Trojan horse. […] (59) Soon there was silence, and then he said, “You know the story they are doing? Diomedes and Ganymedes were two brothers. Helen was their sister. Agamemnon carried her off and took in Diana by sacrificing a deer to her instead. So Homer is now telling the tale of the war between Troy and Parentium. Of course he won and married his daughter Iphigenia to Achilles. That drove Ajax mad, and he will show you the story in a minute.” As he spoke the heroes raised a shout, and the slaves stood back to let a boiled calf on a presentation dish be brought in. There was a helmet on its head. Ajax followed and attacked it with his sword drawn as if he were mad; and after making passes with the edge and the flat he collected slices on the point, and divided the calf among the astonished company.
As always, feel free to send your answers to me at president@caneweb.org, and do contact me if there is anything CANE can do for its members!