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Trimalchio

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Translated by Harry Thurston Peck

Trimalchio is a character in the 1st-century AD Roman work of fiction Satyricon by Petronius. He features as the ostentatious, nouveau-riche host in the section titled the "Cēna Trīmalchiōnis" (The Banquet of Trimalchio, often translated as "Dinner with Trimalchio"). Trimalchio is an arrogant former slave who has become quite wealthy as a wine merchant.[1] The name "Trimalchio" is formed from the Greek prefix τρις and the Semitic מלך (melech) in its occidental form Malchio or Malchus.[1] The fundamental meaning of the root is "King", and the name "Trimalchio" would thus mean "Thrice King" or "greatest King".[1]

Character description

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His full name is "Gaius Pompeius Trimalchio Maecenatianus";[2] the references to Pompey and Maecenas in his name serve to enhance his ostentatious character. His wife's name is Fortunata, a former slave and chorus girl. Trimalchio is known for throwing lavish dinner parties, where his numerous slaves bring course after course of exotic delicacies, such as live birds sewn up inside a pig, live birds inside fake eggs which the guests have to "collect" themselves, and a dish to represent every sign of the zodiac.

The Satyricon has a lengthy description of Trimalchio's proposed tomb (71–72), which is ostentatious and lavish.[3] By the end of the banquet, Trimalchio's drunken showiness leads to the entire household acting out his funeral, all for his own amusement and egotism.

Cultural references

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The term "Trimalchio" has become shorthand for the worst excesses of the nouveau riche.

  • Trimalchio and Trimalchio's dinner is referenced in many English novels, from The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle (1758) to Pompeii (2003).[4]
  • There is a single mention of Trimalchio in F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby as his showy parties and background parallel those of Gatsby: Chapter 7 begins, "It was when curiosity about Gatsby was at its highest that the lights in his house failed to go on one Saturday night – and, as obscurely as it began, his career as Trimalchio was over." Trimalchio and Trimalchio in West Egg were among Fitzgerald's working titles for the novel.[5] In the 2013 movie adaptation, a minor character is named Trimalchio.
  • Trimalchio's feast is alluded to in the short story "Toga Party" by John Barth, which was included in The Best American Short Stories 2007, in reference to Tom and Patsy Hardison's lavish toga party.
  • Thomas Love Peacock mentions Trimalchio and Niceros in his preface to Rhododaphne (1818).
  • Albert Pike in the "Entered Apprentice" chapter of his Scottish Rite Freemasonry text Morals & Dogma (1871) references Trimalchio as an example of a legislator who spends the public purse lavishly or extravagantly – operating from their own vices and egotism. He counsels Scottish Rite Freemasons to stand against such lawmakers.[6]
  • In The Triumph of Love by Geoffrey Hill (1998), Trimalchio appears throughout the poem as one of its many personae.
  • C. P. Snow references Trimalchio in Chapter 28 of In Their Wisdom (1974). The self-made magnate Swaffield hosts a party in order to restore favour with influential figures within the Conservative party, “…he acted as though giving a Cabinet Minister a good dinner was likely to make him a friend for life. Would it have been better, sceptics could have pondered, to avoid the ghost of Trimalchio and give that Cabinet Minister a cheese sandwich at the local pub?”. The party was held on Thursday 20 July 1972 at 27 Hill Street, W1, “There were, though, considerable departures from Trimalchio about the July party. It had to be stately, Swaffield decided before he got down to planning…”.
  • DBC Pierre's novel Lights Out in Wonderland climaxes with a dinner party closely modeled on that of Trimalchio.[7]
  • Robin Brooks refers to Trimalchio in The Portland Vase,[8] recounting the tale of a glass maker who claimed to have made unbreakable glass. On demonstrating this and confirming he had not shared the production method, the craftsman was beheaded to protect Roman Industry.
  • Cormac McCarthy’s novel The Passenger has the Falstaffian character John Sheddan state to the protagonist Bobby Western, “Trimalchio is wiser than Hamlet” to summarise his discourse on the condition of modern man.
  • H.P. Lovecraft's short story "The Rats in the Walls" includes a nightmare of a "Roman feast like that of Trimalchio, with a horror in a covered platter."[9]

References

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  1. ^ a b c Bagnani, Gilbert (1954). "Trimalchio". Phoenix. 8 (3): 88–89. doi:10.2307/1086404. JSTOR 1086404.
  2. ^ Branham, R. Bracht (2019-11-07). Inventing the Novel: Bakhtin and Petronius Face to Face. Oxford University Press. p. 116. ISBN 978-0-19-257822-8.
  3. ^ Arrowsmith, William (1966). "Luxury and Death in the Satyricon". Arion. 5 (3): 304–331. ISSN 0095-5809. JSTOR 20163030.
  4. ^ Harrison, Stephen (2009-01-30), Prag, Jonathan; Repath, Ian (eds.), "Petronius's Satyrica and the Novel in English", Petronius (1 ed.), Wiley, pp. 181–197, doi:10.1002/9781444306064.ch11, ISBN 978-1-4051-5687-5, retrieved 2024-10-15
  5. ^ Vanderbilt, Arthur T. (1999-01-01). The Making of a Bestseller: From Author to Reader. McFarland. p. 96. ISBN 978-0-7864-0663-0.
  6. ^ Pike, Albert (1871). Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry.
  7. ^ Gatti, Tom (2024-08-21). "Lights Out in Wonderland by DBC Pierre". The Times. Retrieved 2024-08-21.
  8. ^ Brooks, Robin (Robin Jeremy) (2004). The Portland Vase : the extraordinary odyssey of a mysterious Roman treasure (1st ed.). New York, NY: HarperCollins. p. 22. ISBN 0-06-051099-4. OCLC 54960357.
  9. ^ Pitcher, Luke (2013). "'Horror in a Covered Platter': Lovecraft and the Transformation of Petronius". In Gildenhard, Ingo; Zissos, Andrew (eds.). Transformative Change in Western Thought. Routledge. p. 418. doi:10.4324/9781315084640-14. ISBN 9781315084640. Lovecraft's image neatly inverts Petronius's. Encolpius mistakes pork for other foodstuffs; Delapore initially believes humans to be pigs. The appropriation of Petronius, then, is more subtle than a simple one-to-one correspondence. Lovecraft has identified an element in the presentation of cuisine in the Cena Trimalchionis: the disguise of foodstuffs so that they lose or conceal their original characteristics.

Further reading

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  • Bagnani, G. "Trimalchio." Phoenix 8, no. 3 (1954): 77–91.
  • Baldwin, B. "Trimalchios's Domestic Staff." Acta Classica 21 (1978): 87–97.
  • Bodel, J. "The Cena Trimalchionis." Latin Fiction. Ed. Heinz Hofmann. London: Taylor and Francis, 1999, 38–51.
  • Frangoulidis, S. "Trimalchio as Narrator and Stage Director in the Cena: An Unobserved Parallelism in Petronius’ Satyricon 78." Classical Philology 103, no. 1 (2008): 81–87.
  • MacKendrick, P. L. "The Great Gatsby and Trimalchio." The Classical Journal 45, no. 7 (1950): 307–14.
  • Newton, R. M. "Trimalchio's Hellish Bath". The Classical Journal 77, no. 4 (1982): 315–19.
  • Petersen, L. H. The Freedman in Roman Art and Art History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006.
  • Ramsby, T. "'Reading' the Freed Slave in the Cena Trimalchionis". Free At Last!: The Impact of Freed Slaves on the Roman Empire. Ed. Sinclair Bell and Teresa Ramsby. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2012. 66–87.
  • Schmeling, G. "Trimalchio's Menu and Wine List." Classical Philology 65, no. 4 (1970): 248–51.
  • Slater, W. J. (ed.), Dining in a Classical Context. (Ann Arbor, 1991).
  • Ypsilanti, M. "Trimalchio and Fortunata as Zeus and Hera: Quarrel in theCena and Iliad. Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 105 (2010): 221–37.
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Media related to Trimalchio at Wikimedia Commons

Library resources about
Trimalchio
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