Freedmen in the "Satyricon" of Petronius.

Abstract

The aim of the dissertation is to elucidate Petronius' representation of freedmen in the Cena. It is argued that Petronius' "realistic" depiction of Trimalchio's milieu served his literary purposes in developing the theme that a freedman is cut off from respectable society and has no hope of improving his condition because he can never escape his servile past. By describing Trimalchio's friends as his colliberti (38.6), Petronius emphasizes a connection between Trimalchio and his peers in terms of their civil status. The freedmen's milieu is depicted as a social underworld and Encolpius' experience at the banquet as a katabasis. The autobiographical frieze in Trimalchio's portico belongs to the context not of domestic but of funerary art; the style of the representation would have reminded Petronius' audience of the allegorical reliefs found on the tombs of ex-slaves of Eastern origin. Hermeros is a figure of central importance. Unlike Trimalchio, who affects the manners of a Roman knight, Hermeros is proud to have worked his way out of slavery. Petronius draws a portrait, without distortion or exaggeration, of a successful independent freedmen and sets it in contrast to the portrait of Trimalchio: taken together, the two characters' attitudes illustrate the true immutability of a freedman's status. By presenting Hermeros as a "typical" freedman, Petronius suggests that his literary representation of a freedman's condition be seen as reflecting the circumstances of real freedmen of the period. The freedmen's speeches recited in Trimalchio's absence (41-46) develop the theme that a freedman's mentality is self-centered and self-perpetuating. Petronius depicts a society bound within the limits of a man's lifetime; the freedmen have no pasts and , as Petronius portrays them, no future. Consequently, they see no existence other than their own. Petronius suggests that Trimalchio's materialism, egoism, and preoccupation with death are explainable by the nature of a freedman's status, which is immutable and inescapable.