 |
| Wealthy Romans feasting |
29-41
The chat of Seleuco, one of
the freedmen
But let us arrive to the
chat of freedmen. We follow one of them, Seleuco. He begins with a statement
opposed to the minimum of cultus-the care of one’s own person :"ego-inquit-non
cotidie lavor; baliscus enim fullo est, aqua dentes habet, et cor nostrum
cotidie liquescit" (42), I said, do not wash myself every day; in fact
the bath is a laundryman, the water has the teeth and our heart every day
melts. It could be a pose cinycal-socratic because this libertus has some
foolish ambitions philosophic, or it is the refined author Petronio who flirts
with the reader who knows the comedy Clouds
by Aristofane (422 b. C.) where the old Strepsiade says that nobody between the
men of the school of Socrates went to the bath for washing himself (oujd j eijς balanei'on h[lqe
lousovmenoς, v.
837)
The Chorus of another comedy by Aristophanes, the Birds (414 b. C.), qualifies Socrates as
a[louto" (v. 1553),
not washed.
So, let us come to the “philosophy” of Seleuco. He speaks about the vanity (vanitas) of human life inspired by a
funeral from where he is just returned: "Heu, eheu.
utres inflati ambulamus. minoris quam muscae sumus, muscae tamen aliquam
virtutem habent, nos non pluris sumus quam bullae" (42, 4), alas, we
walk as leather bag inflated. We are less than flies. Flies at least have some
talents, we are not more than bubbles.
Follows a tirade against
doctors. His friend fell ill a short time before and after soon died: "medici illum perdiderunt, immo magis malus fatus; medicus enim nihil aliud est quam animi consolatio" (42, 5), the doctors killed him, or
better still a bad fate, the doctor is only solace of depressed mind. It is
remarkable fatus, masculine instead
of regular neuter fatum
Finally Seleuco
speaks against the women, since the wife of the dead was reluctant to cry:"sed
mulier quae mulier milvinum genus" (42, 7), but a women who is a women
is a predatory race (milvus means
kite). So follows a catastrophic diagnosis of love:"sed antiquus amor
cancer est ", an ancient love is a cancer.
Another libertus Phileros continues the funeral speech
making use even of a quotation from Oedipus king by Sofocle:"Plane fortunae filius. In manu illius aurum
plumbum fiebat (Satyricon, 43),
indeed a son of the fortune In his hand the lead becamo gold. Oedipus of Sophocles
says: "ejgw; d' jejmauto;n pai'da
th'" Tuvch" nevmwn-th'" eu\ didouvsh" oujk ajtimasqhvsomai" (Oedipus
king, 1080-1081), I, considering myself son of the Fortune, that who gives the
good, shall not dishonoured (he means as abandoned child) . Then Phileros goes
on making unmasked use of sermo plebeius,
popular speech: " Et quot putas
illum annos secum tulisse? Septuaginta et supra. sed corneolus fuit, aetatem bene ferebat, niger tamquam corvus",
and how many years you think he had on himself? Seventy and more. But he was
hard as the horn, he did not show his age, as black as a raven. An example of the
ingenious linguistic pastiche of this
work.
Trimalchio
has also some foolish ambition to be a philosopher. He seems to echo some words
of Epistula 47 by Seneca about the
slaves :"Servi sunt". Immo homines", they are slaves, but also men.
Well, let's listen to Trimalchio :"et servi
homines sunt et aeque unum lactem biberunt, etiam si illos malus fatus
oppresserit " (Satyricon, 71),
also the slaves are men and they have drunk the same milk, even if a bad fate
has crushed them.
We may see that to
eat, to feed, is the prevailing thought also in his "philosophy". We
may note again fatus, masculine, instead of regular fatum. In this work we can
find also vinus (wine) for vinum and balineus (bath) for balineum:
the neuter gender rarefies, rhen disappears.
These liberti,
friends of very rich, "tycoon", Trimalchio are a class of
unscrupulous businessman, uneducated and domineering. With emperor Claudio
(41-54) three freedmen were ruling as ministers in the court: Callisto,
Pallante, Narcisso.
Callisto was minister a
libellis i. e. he managed the department that received the pleas.
Pallante was minister of finances a rationibus, and was lover of Agrippina. Under the last years of
Claudio he had arbitrium regni, the
full power on the State. Nerone removed and eliminated him (Tacito, Annales, XIV, 65)..
Narcisso minister ab
epistulis, manager of imperial letters, was eliminated by Agrippina without
Nerone knowning, as soon as his son became emperor. Tacito writes that this
libertus gave the order to kill Messalina, the wife of Claudio and mother of
his sons Ottavia and Britannico, two youngs that Nerone made kill (Annales, XI, 37).
In Trimalchione, the
author Petronio represents the giant of the private enterprise. He is ridiculous with his blunders
and even pathetic. He wants to appear as eques
(the second class in Rome from centuries) with his golden rings and has the
pretension to seem a cultured man with his absurd, nonsensical quotations; so
with his behaviour and his speech he reveals all his huge ignorance and
vulgarity. Not without some touch of ingenious originality.
But in the end he is only princeps libertinorum, the first of freedmen of his city, some town
of southern Italy.
Seneca in Ep. 31 cancels this social
classification: "Quid est enim eques
Romanus aut libertinus aut servus? nomina ex ambitione aut iniuria nata",
what is in fact rider aut freedmen aut slave? Names born of ambition or
injustice.
What really ennobles
is the wisdom: "bona mens omnibus
patet, omnes ad hoc sumus nobiles. Nec reicit quemquam philosophia nec eligit:
omnibus lucet" (Ep. 44), a good mind is accessible to everybody, as
regards this all we are nobles. The philosophy doesn’t repel nor selects
anybody: it shines for all the persons.
But the society
described by Petronio is rotten more than the Danmark of Hamlet: the last part
of Satyricon takes place in Croton, a
town whose population is divided in two parts: old men without sons and heredipĕtae (Satyricon,
124, 2) hunters of inheritance.
CONTINUA
Nessun commento:
Posta un commento