Places: The Satyricon

*Southern Italy. Region in which most of The SatyriconSatyricon, The is set. Until the Pyrrhic and Second Punic Wars of the third century b.c.e., much of southern Italy–especially its seaports–was controlled by Greek colonists. Writing in the first century c.e., Petronius used the continuing presence of Greek influence, and the stereotyping by urban Romans of Greek greed, dishonesty, homosexuality, and overblown philosophizing to create scenes of life in southern Italian towns that are both caricatures of Greek stereotypes and assaults on traditional Roman sensibilities.

*Puteoli (poo-CHOH-lee; now Pozzuoli). Southern Italian port city, west of Naples, that Petronius portrays as suffering from high prices, food shortages, and bad gladiatorial games. According to Petronius, Puteoli lacks any real sense of high culture. Despite being a Greek town in origin, it has no room for poetry, and both its philosophy and its art are decadent. Petronius is, however, actually, critiquing Roman culture as a whole, a dangerous thing to do during the age of Emperor Nero.

Puteoli’s role as a major port for eastern goods meant that it had both a prevalence of Easterners and a general ethic focused on money, as embodied in Trimalchio. Encolpius himself, however, is truly an outsider to this ethic, a beggar and an exile, and is thus easily lost in Puteoli’s maze of streets.

The city’s shrine to Priapus, into which Encolpius and Ascyltus stumble, sets the sexual tone of the work. The prevalent homosexuality that is taken for granted throughout Puteoli seems the one characteristic binding Encolpius to the town’s society. That a man such as Trimalchio should serve as the apex of local society marks the city as a poor place indeed.

Trimalchio’s house (trih-MAHL-kee-oh). Puteoli home of Trimalchio, a former slave who is now rich. Unused to wealth, he is vulgar and makes great shows of his riches to impress other people. Petronius’s swipe at the pretensions of provincial people who are newly rich and lack any genuine sense of taste is focused on Trimalchio’s house. Its mural of the freedman’s deeds recalls similar domestic murals in patrician houses depicting celebrated ancestors–rather than the owners themselves. Trimalchio’s crude personal habits and banal, if ostentatious, banquet reflect both on the economic successes of his class and its inability to do more than mimic the established families of Roman society. His home is the meeting place for the mediocre and fawning, ne’er-do-wells and toadies who value and praise Trimalchio for his money and little else.

Lichas’s ship. Vessel on which Encolpius and Eumolpus escape from Puteoli, that evolves into a trap in itself after Encolpius discovers that an old nemesis is a fellow passenger. The deck of the ship becomes a battlefield and then a court for negotiation as the parties dispose of their differences. Their voyage to Tarentum is spoiled, however, by a shipwreck in which Lichas is drowned. Encolpius and Eumolpus make their way ashore at Croton.

*Croton. Southern Italian city where Eumolpus poses as a rich landowner, while Encolpius and Gito pose as his slaves. By cleverly deluding the inhabitants, they live luxuriously as guests of the town. After a year, however, the local people grow suspicious about Eumolpus’s alleged wealth. Encolpius and Gito escape just in time, but the angry townspeople deck out Eumolpus with boughs and sacred vestments, lead him through the city, and hurl him down a cliff.

Croton’s distance from Rome, in the very “toe” of the Italian peninsula, allows Petronius to make it appear even less Roman than Puteoli. Petronius’s depiction of Croton and its society is not as well developed as that of Puteoli, as Croton may have been less well known to him. His emphasis is on fortunes and on fortune hunting: Encolpius and his party claim the former, while pursuing the latter. Stereotypes of Greek greed and dissimulation again come to the fore. The association of magic with charlatans and shysters in Croton goes well with Croton’s depiction as a den of legacy-chasers.