Reading Petronius

Petronius' Satyrica by their very nature seem destined to attract new interpretation, if only as a distraction from the insoluble problems of an obviously incomplete text. The late 'fifties and the 'sixties saw a plethora of new interpretations, from which the commonsensical guide by P. G. Walsh (Cambridge, 1970) and the no-nonsense commentary on the Cena by the late Martin Smith (Oxford, 1975) seemed to offer some welcome relief. Now the critics are on the move again: a facetious diagram of their dispositions is offered on p. 98 of Tatum and Vernazza, The Ancient Novel: Classical Paradigms and Modern Perspectives (Hanover, New Hampshire, 1990). After all this Slater's offering of readings based on reader-response theory seems to promise more relief, and he could scarcely have picked a more suitable text to practise on: the Satyrica are full of surprises presented by a sometimes puzzled and ambiguous narrator, whatever one might be tempted to guess about any audience or reading public. But this reviewer's reader-response to S.'s reader-responses was a mixture of disappointment and irritation. I start with the Cena, the first episode long enough to enable S.'s approach to work without frustrating interference from lacunae or problems in the sequence of events. S. quotes 26.9: '"quid vos?" inquit "nescitis, hodie apud quem fiat? Trimalchio, lautissimus homo... horologium in triclinio et bucinatorem habet subornatum, ut subinde sciat quantum de vita perdiderit"'. We are told that ' the first thing we learn about Trimalchio is his obsession with time' (p. 55). But S. has to pay the price for thus prescribing any reader's reaction: this was not the first thing that this reader noticed. The first thing / think we have been told about Trimalchio is that he is lautissimus. S. translates 'the richest of men'. Contrast Sullivan's 'terribly elegant' or Arrowsmith's 'real swank'; both take into account, as S. does not, that clock and trumpeter are not marks of wealth as such. Trimalchio's reputation for elegance is being set up to be contradicted by numerous personal mannerisms. Over some of these I should again disagree with S. When Trimalchio commandeers the chamber-pot in public (27.5f.) S. says 'T.'s silver chamber-pot is a reminder that wealth cannot free one from one's bodily functions' (p. 56); nothing here about the misuse of wealth or the contempt for decency and human dignity in the treatment of the slave carrying the pot.