The multi-millionaire
businessman is holding a lavish dinner party at his luxury home. He returns to
the table after a lengthy visit to the restroom:
Folks – excuse me folks! – my bowels have been a little low-energy these last couple days. Doctors, all the doctors, did their thing, couldn’t find a cure. But I invented my own medicine! I’m a smart person, really smart. Otherwise my stomach, it’d be growling like a bull for sure. A bull! So lemme just tell you, if any of you people gotta, you know, go, just, like, go. No need to be embarrassed, folks. Just do it! We all get gas. Let me tell you, there’s nothing worse than keeping it in. And the Lord God Almighty would agree with me on that one. Seriously. Even if you gotta pass gas during dinner, go right ahead, I won’t stop you! I have the best doctors, that say don’t, don’t hold it in. Very unhealthy! If you need to take a dump, though, you can go outside to the restroom! But gas, it rises up to your brain and then infects the rest of your body. Believe me. I personally have known people, many, many people that died because they didn’t take that advice. Sad!
Remind you of anyone?
This is a loose
translation of the words of Trimalchio, the great comic character in Petronius’
1st Century CE Roman novel known as The Satyricon. Returning
recently to the Cena Trimalchionis (Trimalchio’s Dinner Party) episode, I was
struck by the similarities between Trimalchio and a certain candidate for
Leadership of the Free World. This ignorant buffoon (Trimalchio, that is) has
come from humbler origins, though: he is a libertus, a freedman or former
slave; his Semitic name suggests that his family came to Italy from the Middle
East. Likewise, Donald Trump’s name betrays his own immigrant origins, his family
having sailed west from Scotland (we’re sorry about that, world).
Trimalchio is vulgar,
rude, crude, boorish, boastful, ostentatious and completely devoid of taste. He
is also fabulously wealthy, having made his money in import/exports: I was once
like you guys, he tells his guests, but I was tough enough to get where I am
now. Guts is what you need, the rest is bullshit. Buy low, sell high, that’s my
motto. (Satyricon 75)
 |
| Fellini's Satyricon |
He is not deliberately
insulting his guests; he simply lacks empathy or any capacity to weigh the effect of his words on the sensitivities of his audience. Indeed, earlier in the night he has unwittingly offended his friends
while, to his mind, he is showing them respect:
verum Opinianum praesto. heri non tam bonum posui, et multos honestiores cenabant.
This is the finest
vintage wine you’re drinking. I didn’t serve such good wine last night, and the
guests were much higher class. (Sat. 34)
Occasionally there is
flash of genuine wit in Trimalchio’s table talk, but even then it is put in the
service of self-aggrandisement. When a guest begins a story with the words,
there was once a poor man and a rich man… Trimalchio interrupts: quid est
pauper? What’s a poor man?
Another trait shared
by Trump and Trimalchio is their insistence on emphasising that what they are
telling you is the truth: believe me is a favourite phrase of both:
Credite mihi, assem habeas, assem valeas
Believe me, if a penny
is all you’ve got, a penny is all you’re worth (Sat. 77).
A variation of this
assertion of truth is scis tu me non mentiri (you know I’m not lying) from
Trimalchio; there will be no lies from Trump at the RNC. I will leave it to the reader to
consider why trustworthy characters would feel the need to remind their
audiences of their honesty quite as often as they do; a kind psychologist might
interpret it as evidence of an inferiority complex, the certainty of their
opinions being over-compensation for deep ignorance. Trimalchio talks about his
antique collection: I’m the only guy on earth that owns genuine Corinthian plate…I’m
not an ignoramus, I know that Corinthian metal was invented when that slippery
customer Hannibal captured Troy… (Sat. 50)
He is apparently
unaware that this is a complete mishmash of Roman history and Greek legend,
just as Trump is sure there are no Russians in Ukraine.
Trump’s own ignorance
apparently includes a belief in superstitions. He is said to throw salt over
his shoulder at meals, and believes in lucky golf balls. It is not known if he
believes in astrology, as Trimalchio certainly does. He explains the various
traits of the Signs of the Zodiac to his guests: I was born under Cancer the
Crab, so I have lots of legs to stand on, and many possessions on land and sea,
for either one suits a crab. Incidentally, The Donald was born under Gemini:
Trimalchio explains that the sign of the Heavenly Twins is associated with a
pair of horses, two yolked oxen, people who want it both ways, and guys with big bollocks
(Sat. 39).
And on that subject, rather
than further desperate hammering of the relevance of Latin literature to
current issues, let us now break for a short quiz on the sexual boasts and
creepiness of our two heroes. Quaero: who said the following, Trump or
Trimalchio?
1. If I told the real stories of my
experiences with women, often seemingly very happily married and important
women…
2. I always succeeded in getting my
mistress off – you all know what I mean. I’ll say no more because I don’t wanna
boast.
3. You should see my wife dance – believe
me, nobody knows her way round a pole like she does.
4. Don’t you think my daughter’s hot? She’s hot, right?
4. Don’t you think my daughter’s hot? She’s hot, right?
Check your answers at the end.
We have probably had
quite enough points of comparison between Trimalchio and the GOP's unlikely candidate. What of the differences? Well, apart from the fact that they are jokes
separated by 2000 years, it strikes me that Trimalchio, for all he is a
buffoon, never makes a deliberately racist comment. Oh, and unlike Trump,
Trimalchio is bald…
Any readers who care
about the avowed intent of this blog will by this time be thinking, is this not
just an opportunity for a cheap shot at an easy target? What happened to the
bit about “classical references in modern literature”?
Well, before that, an
interesting story about the author of the Satyricon, Gaius (or maybe Titus)
Petronius. Our Petronius was arbiter elegantiae, or style consultant and
confidant, to the emperor Nero; he may well also have been a consul in 62 CE.
Unfortunately, he got on the wrong side of Tigellinus, prefect of Nero’s Praetorian
Guard, and was obliged to commit suicide after being threatened with arrest on
trumped-up charges of treason.
 |
| Makovsky, Death of Petronius |
The historian Tacitus relates that
Petronius attempted to plead his case in person to Nero, who was on a visit to
Campania. Petronius got no further than Cumae, where he realised that the game
was up. Rather than get his death over with quickly, however, Petronius decided
rather to check out in his own good time and on his own terms. He invited some
friends round, then opened his veins, but would bandage them up again if the
conversation seemed to be getting interesting. He then had dinner, rewarded
some of his slaves and ordered that others be flogged. Before he died, he
composed a full account of Nero’s sexual activities, together with a list of
his male and female partners, which he then sent to the Emperor.
But to return to Petronius’
modern literary connections. Our own comparison with Trump is not the first
time Trimalchio has been associated with an ostentatious nouveau riche
American. F Scott Fitzgerald’s draft titles for The Great Gatsby included
Trimalchio and Trimalchio in West Egg. He was eventually persuaded that the
reference was too obscure for the reading public; but apparently he later
regretted dumbing the title down. If he had stuck to his guns, might we have
seen Baz Luhrmann’s Trimalchio
starring Leonardo DiCaprio, I wonder?
Trimalchio’s best
known appearance in modern literature, however, is as the speaker in the epigraph
of the most important poem in 20th Century English literature: TS
Eliot’s The Waste Land.
“Nam Sibyllam quidem Cumis ego ipse oculis meis vidi
in ampulla pendere, et cum illi pueri dicerent: Σιβυλλα
τι θελεις; respondebat illa: αποθανειν θελω.”
In actual fact I saw the Sibyl at Cumae
with my own eyes hanging in a bottle, and when the boys said to her, Sibyl,
what do you want? She would reply: I want to die (Sat. 48).
There were a number of Sibyls, or female
prophets, in antiquity. The most important to the Romans was the Sibyl of
Cumae, whom Trimalchio here drunkenly claims to have met. The story is that the
god Apollo fell in lust with her, and offered to grant her any wish in return
for her favour. She asked to live for as many years as the grains of sand she
held in her hand; but unfortunately neglected to request eternal youth and
health to go along with her long life. Accordingly, as she got older she
withered away physically to such an extent that she could be kept inside a
bottle; in the end, only her voice remained. It’s an odd coincidence that Cumae, where the world-weary
Sibyl couldn’t die, is the same place Petronius chose to end his own life.
So what is the relevance of the epigraph to
The Waste Land? Does the poet see himself (or his persona) as a weary prophet,
waiting for death? More about prophecy and The Waste Land in the next post.
