Donald Trump's Roman predecessor

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’ 1^st 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?

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 20^th 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. 

Chiasmic quiz solution: 1. Trump, 2. Trimalchio (Sat. 75), 3. Trimalchio (Sat. 52), 4. Trump.