Wealth of Failure: Satires by Horace and Petronius

Michael Peter C. Dansereau

Petronius’ Cena Trimalchionis and the eighth satire of Horace’s second book of satires both tell the tale of a dinner party organized by an arrogant, wealthy, and verbose host. These hosts, in their zeal to gain approval and respect from their guests, alienate and disturb them, until both sets of guests flee their respective banquets entirely. The methods used by the hosts are similar in some ways, different in others, but consistently ineffective. Horace uses his satire to critique the ostentation of his time and the frivolity of the upper echelons of Roman society. Petronius, inspired greatly by Horace, seeks to do much of the same, but with a specific focus on the backwards power dynamics- the wealthy slaves holding dominion over the poor freeborn Romans- he believed to be emerging during his time by building on the work of his predecessor. Specifically, Petronius does this in the ways he expanded and altered the character of the host, who is given the excess of wealth Nasidienus wished to portray, and which he gained under far more suspicious circumstances, and a far more crude way of spending it. Trimalchio wants himself to seem an incredible man to his guests, and uses his wealth to poorly hide this goal from their perception.

The primary lens through which both satirists are satirizing is that of a lavish, expensive, and very bad dinner party, and to facilitate this goal, Horace creates the character of Nasidienus. Nasidienus, the earlier of the two hosts, establishes some of the common characteristics shared by both hosts. The most notable of these is his exuberance. The banquet begins with a “Lucanus aper: leni fuit Austro captus, ut aiebat cenae pater” (Horace, Satires 2.8), a Lucanian boar caught during a southerly wind, as the host kept saying. It does not take a firm grasp of Roman culture to realize that an entire boar is an extravagant appetizer. It takes impressive wealth to be able to afford such luxury, and even an even greater wealth of generosity to spend money so freely for the entertainment of others– at least that’s what Nasidienus believes, and he acts in accordance with those beliefs to gain the favor of his guests. Horace aims to critique the ostentation of his time, and Nasidienus, as a generous aristocrat and incompetent sycophant, is the target of his attacks. Nasidienus is clearly wealthy, but not as wealthy as he would like to be. Instead of accepting his position and acting within his means and ability, he attempts to cover up his failings, such as when “puer alte cinctus acernam gausape purpureo mensam pertersit” (Horace, Satires 2.8), a high girded slave boy cleaned the maple-wood table with a purple cloth, or when all his preparation does not prevent a curtain from falling and ruining his main dish (54-56). In these moments especially, Horace uses allusions or parodies of epic poetry to emphasize the frivolity of the entire situation. When the curtain destroys the lamprey, it does not just fall, it falls “trahentia pulveris atri quantum non Aquilo Campanis excitat agris” (Horace, Satires 2.8), dragging such a quantity of black dust that was not excited in Campanian fields by the north wind. Then Nasidienus “posito capite, ut si filius inmaturus obisset, flere” (Horace, Satires 2.8), with his head lowered wept as if a son had met an untimely death. The characters of Horace are not alone in being a mockery of hedonism; his very words serve that purpose as well by mocking the rhetoric of epic poetry.

As for the guests’ reaction to Nasidienus and his ridiculous attempts at flattery, there is very little good they have to say. Nasidienus may be willing to spend exuberant amounts of money on his banquet, but unfortunately for him, he also believes that he must explain the quality of every dish at length. This habit does not meet with the approval of his guests, who constantly make sport of their host. This makes Nasidienus, on top of being an incompetent host, look completely unaware of his surroundings and the concerns of his guests. He is self-centered and obsessed with appearances. Horace, while going into great detail about the specific ways Nasidienus threw his wealth at the party to make himself look better, simultaneously provides the commentary from the guests berating Nasidienus for his efforts. Horace uses the guests as a means to critique the host without directly involving his persona, a tradition Petronius seems to invert by having Encolpius be the primary critic of Trimalchio. In both poems, neither the guests nor the host exit the banquet with their pride intact. In the case of Horace, the guests flee from the generosity of their host, who, despite his failings, was still generously providing for them, and Nasidienus looks like a fool for failing his banquet to such a degree that the guests felt the need to flee. In Petronius’ Satyricon, his hero and narrator, Encolpius, looks the coward for fleeing a harmless situation and claiming that “ego enim si videro balneum, statim expirabo” (Petronius, Satyricon 72), if he sees a bath, he will perish immediately. Not only is he depicted in a poor light, taking such terror from such a mundane situation, his host is made inconsiderate by putting his guest through such torment, exaggerated as it may be.

Petronius’ host, Trimalchio, is very much an extension of Nasidienus, a more modern (or rather what Petronius would have considered modern) iteration of the character. Where Nasidienus has limited wealth, covering up his failings with a purple cloth and too many words, the coffers of Trimalchio are seemingly limitless. Nasidienus makes appeals to those in a higher station than him, and seems to have concocted the entire feast to impress Maecenas. Despite all his efforts, when the banquet ends, Maecenas probably thinks worse of him, and certainly not better. Trimalchio, in contrast, seems to run his own social circle, and seeks to improve their impression of him rather than improve his social or political standing. He brings out meal after meal through an endless caravan of slaves, his performers endlessly serenade the party, and his jewels are limited in their luxury, not by cost but social and religious restrictions. The two hosts differ in this way because the authors intended to critique disparate aspects of their wealth: Horace berates the ambition of Nasidienus as much as his wealth, whereas Petronius targets the unnecessary waste of Trimalchio’s wealth and the questionable means of attaining it. Trimalchio, unprompted, gives his guests a history of his life, starting as a slave he worked his way to a high position in his house through morally corrupt means: “Tamen ad delicias femina ipsimi domini annos quattuordecim fui” (Petronius, Satyricon 75), nevertheless, he was his master’s darling by fourteen. He goes into more detail about his business exploits thereafter, including that he retired from business only to return upon the encouragement of a Greek astrologer, but it is of the same general form: he gained more and more money, [quote about having more than his country], through amoral and disreputable means. Between the means through which he obtained his wealth, the way he spends it, his treatment of his guests, and his lack of education, the message of Trimalchio’s character seems to be that wealth is corrupt, and those in power do not have historical/genealogical merits they should, nor a proper understanding of how to act in their station. Trimalchio brags of having been born a slave and failed business ventures in section seventy-five, and is interested only in furthering his own reputation among his guests, without any concern for them nor anyone else.

Nasidienus and Trimalchio both share a certain garrulity that accentuates their failures even further, as if they are indirectly telling their guests every inhibition that leads them to such lavishness. Nasidienus is constantly talking up his meals, such as when he says to Maecenas, his premier guest, “Albanum, Maecenas, sive Falernum te magis adpositis delectat, habemus utrumque" (Horace, Satires 2.8), that if he wished for varieties of expensive wine, other than the renowned Chian already brought out, they were also available. He presents the wines in this manner to depict himself as a connoisseur, a person who knows which wine is best, but who also has a respectable stockpile to complement his wine of choice. He didn’t want to sully the luxury of his choice of wine by bringing out the less fancy options alongside it, but he didn’t want the guests to believe he only possessed a single variety. While the goals Nasidienus has here are logical, his execution is haphazard and the result makes him seem more like a bumbling host seeking the approval of his guests more than their entertainment. The one redeeming quality of his failure with the wine is that it was a single short sentence, a variety of sentence which is not common to Nasidienus. He spends more time than could ever be deemed reasonable describing the exact specifications of his meals, and often why those specific conditions improve the quality. First came the boar, which was caught during a light southerly breeze. Then the lamprey, whose description exceeds any other section of the poem in its length. Third and finally, the crane was brought out to replace the destroyed lamprey and whose description is not relayed, but which was bad enough to cause all the guests to flee the banquet before tasting it. Every lengthy description is an extension of the wealth Nasidienus throws at the banquet, which seems to be beyond his means. Just as he covers up his poor quality table with purple cloth, he ensures that not a single guest will fail to understand the prestige of the feast he has collated for their benefit. This fear reflects the frailty of wealth just as much as the actions of Nasidienus: Horace depicts the exuberance of Nasidienus, but also implies that all those efforts would be in vain if there were not a force guiding the guests towards appreciating it. The fickleness of luxury is such that, even in its grandest form, it can be easily missed, which is even then preferable to its merits being forcefully shoved into the forefront of its observers’ attention. Nasidienus spent so much money on the feast, but did not feel comfortable allowing the guests to observe his wealth for themselves, he needed to force them into understanding how grand all his plans were. His efforts, however, do not endear the guests, nor help them appreciate the efforts he has gone to impress them, but rather bore them, and make them resentful of the lectures he gives to force their understanding.

Where Nasidienus and his fear that his efforts will be missed demonstrate the pointlessness of extravagance to its consumers, Trimalchio reflects the equal and opposite futility of wealth for its owners. Trimalchio focuses his efforts on trying to garner his guests’ respect more so than to impress or entertain them, though that is how he chooses to achieve his goals. He does not just talk about how impressive his banquet is, or how much money it cost him, or how brilliant he is. Rather, he puts on sorts of performances, subtle as they are appealing to his guests. Several times, one of his slaves will drop a cup or a dish, and he uses these various opportunities to display his kindness or pragmatism or whatever other trait he wants his guests to believe he possesses. For example, in section fifty-two, a slave boy drops a goblet, and Trimalchio demands the slave kill himself until the pleas of his guests change his mind. When the guests applaud his leniency, Trimalchio becomes visibly more cheerful. Assuming that Encolpius is correct in assuming these displays are planned, and there is no indication that he is not correct, the goal of Trimalchio in pretending to harshly punish his slave seems to be less for the sake of punishment and more to show how generous he is when he changes his mind at the audience’s behest. These displays get to the point where Encolpius, the narrator and central character, starts to fear another one is coming, and he thinks they are all planned ahead of time to look like random coincidence. Trimalchio also shares with Nero (whether intentionally by Petronius or not) a misguided love for the arts and the willingness to share it with his guests. He sings throughout, and has his slaves do the same. The crowning moment of Trimalchio’s self-centered and persistent performances was his reading of his will and funeral plans. He wanted to be loved and respected as if he were dead, and he wanted everyone to know how generous he would be with his wealth. He almost seems to encourage his guests to pretend to love him for the sake of his inheritance. Trimalchio even goes so far as to take a part of it away from his wife, as if saying that he is generous, but only to those he likes. The first performances were not entertaining, but by the end, they were truly wearing down Encolpius. Petronius does not give Trimalchio the same attributes as Nasidienus, nor does he have the same purposes. Both hosts attempt to impress their guests for selfish reasons, but where Nasidienus seems to be trying to gain social standing by impressing Maecenas, a prominent member of Augustus’ government, Trimalchio seems to aim to bolster his pride through his guests’ approval. Nasidienus is Horace’s example of how wealth, especially without the proper virtues to bolster it, fails to impress, and Trimalchio is Petronius’ example of how wealth fails to fulfill. Despite all the incredible wealth, dozens of slaves, luxurious house, successful business(es), Trimalchio still feels the need to seek the approval of strangers. He may have achieved a significant measure of success, but he is still unable to garner the respect of his dinner guests, as they flee from his party to escape more of his ramblings.

Petronius, when writing the Cena Trimalchionis, was greatly inspired by Horace, and his satire on the dinner of Nasidienus. He clearly based the character of Trimalchio off of Horace’s host, Nasidienus, but the two authors had very disparate reasons for writing their satires. Where Horace wanted to critique the wealth of his time, Petronius sought to critique the wealthy. The two poems share many similarities because of the influence of one on the other and the similarity of their themes, but they also have many differences because of the small divide between their authors’ goals. Nasidienus is wealthy but not as much as he would like to be, verbose to the point of relentlessness, and oblivious of his guests’ thoughts and feelings. Trimalchio is wealthier than he knows what to do with, shares a similar verbosity with Nasidienus, and is entirely ignorant of his guests’ suffering. Nasidienus is a mild irritant at worst, a wealthy person trying vainly to improve his social standing. Trimalchio, while never actively malicious, is more harmful to his guests as a host, with more money than he can use in a lifetime, despite his best efforts, and the desire only to gain their approval. Both hosts are a symptom of a corrupt society, which Horace and Petronius wished to point out to all their readers, but the societies they lived in were different, and so were the aspects of corruption that each author wished to make known. Ultimately, the biggest gap between their similar purpose in writing their satires was their target: the wealth versus the wealthy, and both authors have their own way of attacking their target, with ample similarities and differences between the two.

Sources

Loeb, James, “Horace, Satire 2.8” Loeb Classical Library, edited by Jeffery Henderson, Harvard University Press, 2022, pp x-x

Loeb, James, “Petronius, Satyricon” Loeb Classical Library, edited by Jeffery Henderson, Harvard University Press, 2022, pp x-x

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“Poetry in Translation.” Poetry In Translation, https://www.poetryintranslation.com/index.php. 

Rimmel, Victoria, “The satiric maze: Petronius, satire, and the novel.” 

Rudd, Niall, “The Satires of Horace.” Cambridge University Press, 1966