Practicing Death in Petronius' "Cena Trimalchionis" and Plato's "Phaedo"

Author(s): Daniel Holmes

Source: The Classical Journal, Vol. 104, No. 1 (Oct. - Nov., 2008), pp. 43-57
Published by: The Classical Association of the Middle West and South, Inc. (CAMWS)
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/27750212
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 PRACTICING DEATH IN PETRONIUS'
CENA TRIMALCHIONIS AND PLATO'S PHAEDO

Abstract: While scholars have long recognized Petronius' ironic use and inversions
of Plato's Symposium in his Cena Trimalchionis, this paper argues that Petronius
has a further Platonic intertext, the Phaedo. There are two chief parallels: an ironic
correspondence in the use of mythical imagery, namely Theseus' journey through
the labyrinth, and the Cena's final scenes, which consciously echo the final scenes of
Socrates' life as depicted in the Phaedo.

Scholars have long recognized that Petronius uses a contrast with

Plato's Symposium to underscore the pretensions, narrow outlook
and lack of refinement of the freedmen in Trimalchio's milieu.1
Whereas in the Symposium Athens' highly educated elite discuss the
nature of eros, Trimalchio's triclinium rarely wavers from the topics
of money, food and death. One of the most vivid images of the Cena
is the final one: Trimalchio lying "dead" in bed, slumped on cush
ions, trumpets blaring, slaves moaning and, finally, firemen breaking
in with axes (78.5-7). The dinner party, so dominated by the theme
of death, thus reaches its fitting climax. In this context, Petronius
owes a further debt to Plato's account of Socrates' final day and death
in the Phaedo. I argue here that there are two chief parallels: first,
an ironic correspondence in the use of mythical imagery, namely
Theseus' journey through the labyrinth used as an image of a jour
ney through death in life. Second, and more concretely, the Cena's
final scenes?from the reading of Trimalchio's will to his mock
death?consciously echo the final scenes of Socrates' life as depicted
in the Phaedo. These contrasts and parallels further delineate the
limbo-like lives of Trimalchio and his freedman companions.
The Cena Trimalchionis is an elaborately structured and symmet
rically balanced piece, in which a series of episodes return in reverse
order only to begin again. As Bodel concludes: "This structural pat
terning enables the narrator to shape the events he relates to reflect
the experience of them at the time: Trimalchio's house was a trap
from which there seemed no exit.... [a] labyrinthine experience of
1 Cameron (1969); Bodel (1999) 39-41; Courtney (2001) 103-4, 109-10,123; cf. n. 4,
below. I wish to thank Jenny Strauss Clay, Ted Courtney, Stephanie McCarter, John
Paul Russo and the anonymous readers of CJ for their helpful comments at various
stages in the writing of this article, the final version of which was immensely im
proved by the keen editorial eye of S. Douglas Olson.

THE CLASSICAL JOURNAL 104.1 (2008) 43-58

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44 DANIEL HOLMES

returning inexorably to the point of origin, only to begin the cycle

again/'2 Undergirding this complex structure, however, is a more
generically sympotic one based broadly upon Plato's Symposium.3 A
narrator, whose role in the action of the symposium soon falls into
the background, describes his arrival, reception and washing at the
hands of servants. After eating (although in the Cena we find our
selves only half-way through the courses, and amid food and decor
described in intricate detail), a series of five speeches is capped by a
sixth. Later the guests hear knocking at the door, and the feast is in
terrupted by a drunken friend, an akletos xenos (Habinnas at Cena 65.6,
Alcibiades at Smp. 212c) whose presence introduces heavier drink
ing, but who also focuses attention on the character of the central
personage (Trimalchio, Socrates), where it remains until the arrival of
gatecrashers (firemen at Cena 78.7, revelers at Smp. 223b) breaks up
the gathering.4
In contrast to the Symposium, the most striking and repeated theme
in the Cena is death. This is Trimalchio's obsession, and Petronius
never fails to connect him with the morbid, funereal or Hades-like.5
Before we even meet Trimalchio, we are told that he has a clock and
a trumpeter in his dining room so that he can always know how
much of his life has passed (26). We later learn that he has discov
ered the precise length of his life from an astrologer (76). His proces
sion from the public baths to his home on a litter, accompanied by
pipes, imitates a Roman funeral procession (28.4-5).6 At dinner, one
of his routines is to bring out a skeleton and recite verses on man's
mortality, and his guests in turn readily take up the theme of death
and funerals (e.g. 42.3-43, 61). The interrupting guest Habinnas, who
is also Trimalchio's closest friend, has just arrived from a funeral and
is a stone mason who specializes in building tombstones (65.5). To
gether the two men discuss in detail the plans for Trimalchio's own
tombstone (71.5-72.1). Thereafter, the party sinks more and more
into the morbid, until finally Trimalchio rehearses his own funeral,

2 Bodel (1999) 44; see p. 45 for his detailed diagram based upon Hubbard's (1986).
As will soon be apparent, much of my introductory material is based upon Bodel
(1994) and (1999).
3 Cf. Cameron (1969).
4 For more detailed discussions of the connections between the Cena and the
Symposium, see Dupont (1977); Bessone (1993); Bodel (1999) 39-41; Courtney (2001)
103-4,109-10,123.
5 Dunbabin (1986) and (2003) 103-10 argues that "[w]hen Petronius makes Tri
malchio return constantly to the theme of death ... he is only exaggerating a popular
fashion for which we have extensive other evidence; it should not be taken to reflect a
special morbid preoccupation" (quote at 132-3). While the opposition between death
and the symposium is a common theme in sympotic literature (see also Murray (1988)
239-57), I do not believe that Petronius is merely making fun of a popular fashion and
Trimalchio's exaggerated use of it, but is identifying a theme integral to our under
standing of this nouveau-riche freedman.
6 Cf. Gagliardi (1984).

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 PETRONIUS AND PLATO'S PHAEDO 45

leaving the rest of the party behind with the words: "Pretend that I
am dead. Recite something lovely" (78.5).
The motif of death is further brought out by the well-documented
image of Trimalchio's house as a tomb and a labyrinthine under
world.7 The house is situated in a Campanian colony, most likely
Puteoli,8 near Lake Avernus, the cave of the Sibyl (48.8) and the
mythical entrance to Hades. It is guarded by a painted dog (29.1)
and later by a real one that must be placated with a sop (72.7), as
Virgil's Cerberus was placated by a drugged honey-cake tossed by
the Sibyl during Aeneas' descent into Hades (6.417-23). The subject
of the mural in Trimalchio's house (29.2-5), a biographical cycle of
his life, is of a type found in this period exclusively in funerary art,
not in domestic space.9 Thus his house appears from the outset to be
more like a mausoleum than a traditional Roman home, especially if
we recall the prevalence of Totenmahl (funerary banquet) scenes on
funerary monuments in Rome.10
A recurring and related motif is the image of Encolpius and his
friends caught in a labyrinth. When the young men finally escape Tri
malchio's feast, we see them wandering (errantibus) the streets blindly
only to be "disentangled" (expliciti) by the cleverness of Giton (79.2):

Prudens enim pridie, cum luce etiam clara timeret errorem, omnes pilas
columnasque notaverat creta, quae lineamenta evicerunt spississimam noc
tem et notabili candore ostenderunt errantibus viam.11

For prudently on the day before?since even when it was still broad day
light he feared the maze?he had marked all the posts and columns with
chalk, and these strokes overcame the tremendously thick night and with
their astonishing glow showed the path as we wandered.

Like Ariadne, Giton left bright marks on the columns with chalk.
Likewise, when the company tried to escape earlier, Giton?again
playing Ariadne?tried to lead them out, only to be confronted by
the porter who told them, "You are wrong if you think you can exit
by the way you came. None of the guests have ever been let out by
the same door; they enter at one and exit by another." The narrator

7 Cameron (1970); Fedeli (1981); Bodel (1994); Courtney (2001) 117.

8 Sullivan (1968) 46-7.
9 Bodel (1994) 242: "If biographical cycles were painted in private homes in
Petronius' day, we do not hear of the practice and none has survived. Such parallels as
exist for the style and composition of Trimalchio's mural derive exclusively from fu
nerary art." Bodel further argues that Encolpius' pausing to inspect the mural calls to
mind Aeneas' inspection of the autobiographical decorations of Daedalus on the doors
of the temple of Apollo (Aen. 6.20-4). Cf. also Bagnani (1954).
10 Cf. Dunbabin (2003) 125-32.
11 The text here and throughout is drawn from Mueller (1995); the translations are
my own.

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46 DANIEL HOLMES

Encolpius adds, "What were we wretches to do, trapped in a laby

rinth of a new kind?"12
In the ancient Near East, Greece, Italy and elsewhere, labyrinths
were widely associated with tomb decorations as symbols of a place
of no return, and actual labyrinths were used as tombs for kings.13
Journeys through labyrinths came to represent a living descent
or katabasis through the realm of the dead. In Aeneid 6, to which
Petronius alludes extensively,14 Virgil sets the story of Theseus and
his journey through the labyrinth on the Cumaean gates at the entry
to Hades (6.23-30). As depicted there, Theseus saves the 14 Athenian
youths sent to Crete to be sacrificed, by slaying the Minotaur and,
with Ariadne's help, escaping the labyrinth, the inextricabilis error
built by Daedalus.1 Theseus' descent into the labyrinth is a precursor
to and foreshadowing of Aeneas' own descent into Hades. As Cam
eron concludes, "The labyrinth symbolizes for Petronius the idea of
death itself, and it is a metaphor, as it surely is for Virgil too, of the
journey through death in life."16 Thus the porter's declaration that
those who enter Trimalchio's house never leave by the same door
becomes more pointed when we recall that Virgil's Sibyl warns
Aeneas that the descent into Hades is easy, and the task is to find
one's way out again (6.126-9).
Two factors further this connection between the Cena and the
Thesean labyrinth. First, Trimalchio's chef, who contrives all the fan
tastic and deceptive dishes, is named Daedalus (70.2), like the builder
of the labyrinth. Second, although it is difficult to ascertain the seating
arrangements precisely, the number of named guests (not counting
the akletos xenos, Habinnas) in addition to the host is 14 (Encolpius,
Ascyltus, Agamemnon, Menelaus, Hermeros, Diogenes, Proculus,
Niceros, Phileros, Plocamus, Ganymedes, Seleucus, Dama and
Echion), like the twice seven who accompanied Theseus.17 The usual
number of guests at a Roman cena was nine, and the references to
traditional seating arrangements recall such a meal (e.g. locus primus
31.8, in imo imus 38.7, libertini loco 38.11, praetorio loco 65.7). The num
ber thus seems strangely large and deliberate: Trimalchio with his 14

12 72.10-73.1 "Erras," inquit, "si putas te exire hac posse qua venisti. Nemo unquam
convivarum per eandem ianuam emissus est; alia intrant, alia exeunt." Quid faciamus homi
nes miserrimi et novi generis labyrintho inclusi.
13 See Clark (1979) 133?45 for the associations between labyrinths and death; for
an example of a labyrinth as tomb, see n. 15, below.
14 Cf. Cameron (1970); Bodel (1994); Connors (1998) 33-6; Courtney (2001) 117.
15 As Bodel (1994) further notes: "Vergil's phrase inextricabilis error recalls Varro's
description of the legendary tomb of Lars Porsena as labyrinthum inextricabile (ap. Plin.
Nat 36.91)."
16 Cameron (1970) 405.
17 It is curious that Homer's Catalogue of Women in the nekuia of the Odyssey
consists of 14 women, and that the number Odysseus encounters outside the cata
logue is likewise 14.

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 PETRONIUS AND PLATO'S PHAEDO 47

guests in his labyrinthine house, feasting on the delights of Daedalus'

creation, emerges as a kind of anti-Theseus, not bringing salvation to
his troupe, but leading them ever around in a shadowy realm where
life and death converge.
Courtney believes that the source of the use of mock-epic kata
baseis to deride individuals as "living-dead" is Plato's Protagoras,
where Socrates describes the sophists present at the decadent Callias'
party through quotations from Odysseus' nekuia (315b-d). Hippias
becomes Sisyphus in Hades, while Prodicus becomes Tantalus.18
Bodel, however, points out that later philosophic and comic writers,
as well as authors of Menippean satire, used the same technique to
deride their rivals and others.19 Indeed, even before Plato, Aristo
phanes made fun of the sophists and Socrates in particular by liken
ing them to ghosts (psychai) who fritter their time away indoors and
become pale and lifeless (e.g. Nu. 94-104). In Birds (1553-64), Socrates
becomes an Odysseus who summons up psychai in a parody of the
nekuia, although the only ghost that appears is his pale companion,
"Chairephon the bat."
Nevertheless, Petronius does have Plato in mind, but not by imi
tating the satiric jibe at the sophists in the Protagoras. Rather, much of
the satiric effect of the imagery of death, funerals and the afterlife
comes from its service as an ironic and distorted mirror of themes
and imagery in Plato's Phaedo. At the beginning of that dialogue,
Phaedo gives Echecrates an extended explanation for the delay in
Socrates' execution. As it happened, the period of Socrates' trial and
imprisonment coincided with a religious mission of 14 youths to De
los honoring Apollo for Theseus' successful journey to Crete and his
slaying of the Minotaur accompanied by the "twice seven." For this
reason no public executions could be carried out, and Socrates had to
await the ship's return (58a-c). Echechrates then asks who was pre
sent at Socrates' death (59b-c).

EX: "Etuxov 5e, cb OaiBcov, tives TrapayEvouEvoi; OAIA: Outo^ te Sri o

?TTo??oScopos tcov ETTixcopicov TTapfjv Kai Kprro?ou?os Kai 6 "uaTrip aUTOU koi
ETi 'Epuoysvris kcci 'ETriyEvng kcu AiaxivriS kcu AvTi??Evng- rjv Se kcci Kttigittttos 6
TTaiaviEug kcci Meve^evos kcci ccAXoi tive$ tcov ETTixcopicov. TTXaTcov oe oTuai
f|O0EVEi. EX: Ilevoi 5e tive$ Trapfjaav; OAIA: Ned, Iiuuias te ye 6 ?ri?aTog Kai
Ks?ris Kai Oaiocbvons Kai MEyapo?sv EukAeiBtis te koi Tspyicov.

Echecrates: Who happened to be present, Phaedo? Phaedo: Of native Atheni

ans there was Apollodorus, and Critobulus and his father, and Hermogenes,
Epigenes, Aeschines and Antisthenes; there was also Ctesippus the Paeanian,
and Menexenus and some other Athenians. But Plato, I believe, was ill.
Echecrates: Were any foreigners there? Phaedo: Yes, Simmias the Theban, Ce
bes and Phaedonides, and Euclides and Terpsion from Megara.

18 Courtney (1987) 409.

19 Bodel (1994) 239-40.

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48 DANIEL HOLMES

It is surely no coincidence that Phaedo mentions seven Athenians;

then two more, and finally five foreigners?a total of 14. In the Phaedo,
Socrates has his own Thesean mission and his own companions to
save in the labyrinth of death. This correlation has often been noted,
and Gotshalk concludes that "the slaying of the Minotaur by Theseus
at the head of a company of fourteen, foreshadows in definite fash
ion the conversation of Socrates ... and that conversation, led by Soc
rates, both attests and concerns a life in which one becomes effectively
freed from the fear of death (slays the Minotaur)."20 Like a philoso
phic Theseus, Socrates, caught in both the literal prison of Athens
and the prison of his body, will free himself from the labyrinth and
with his logoi will save both himself and his own twice seven.
The bulk of the dialogue of the Phaedo arises out of Cebes'
amazement at the equanimity and even cheerfulness with which
Socrates faces his impending death. To defend his equanimity, Soc
rates initially describes what death and dying are like. As he says,
"perhaps it is very fitting for one who is about to make his journey
[to Hades] to investigate and tell stories about what we think the
sojourn there is like" (63e). In defense of his description of the after
life, Socrates will soon have to prove the immortality of the soul; but
the dialogue as a whole is his and his companions' confrontation
with their own mortality and the fear of death in this life.21 It is thus
appropriate that Plato?like Vergil and Petronius later?frames the
dialogue with allusions to Theseus and his descent into the labyrinth
to kill the Minotaur.
The central portion of the Phaedo contains Socrates' four argu
ments concerning the immortality of the soul. Simmias and Cebes are
not convinced by the first three and, as Socrates himself acknowl
edges at the end of his fourth and final "proof," the hypotheses on
which his arguments are based (in particular, the theory of forms)
have yet to be examined (107b). He does not necessarily prove that
the soul is immortal and thus that death is not to be feared by good
men. Rather, he leads his companions through different arguments
and in the process exhorts them to a life of philosophy, through
which one will be liberated from bodily fears.
As in the Republic, Socrates rounds out his argument with an ac
count of the afterlife and the journey of the soul after death. He
states that the journey to Hades is not a straight path, but one with
forks (gxioeis) and windings (ttepioBoi); there is thus need for a guide
(107e-8b). The wise soul will follow its guide, whereas the lover of
the body will have to be forced. Socrates claims to infer this from the
rites and practices here on earth. But which rites? Commentators

20 Gotshalk (2001) 4; cf. also Klein (1975); Spitzer (1976); Dorter (1982) 4-5; Burger
(1984) 17-20.
21 See Socrates' conclusion to their discussion (114d-15a); and Rowe (1993) 2-3.

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 PETRONIUS AND PLATO'S PHAEDO 49

usually suggest the rites performed at Hecate's crossroads,22 but I

propose instead that Socrates refers to the rites that take place during
the current festival of Apollo in celebration of Theseus' escape from
the Minotaur and the labyrinth. Plutarch (Thes. 12) speaks of the
dance Theseus originated on Delos: "and he did a dance with his
companions, which people say the Delians still perform today, imi
tating the turnings back (ttepioSoi) and exits in the Labyrinth, with
movements in and out that occur in a particular rhythm."23 This
would fit Socrates' point and is especially apt because the theme of
Socrates-as-Theseus has already been established. Thus his role in
the dialogue as philosophic guide for his companions through the
labyrinthine realm of death is mirrored in the daim?n that leads men
through the forks and windings on the journey to Hades.
At 117b, Phaedo describes how Socrates took the cup that con
tained the hemlock:

Kcu ds Xa?cov Kai u?Xa i'Xecos, go 'ExsKpaTEs, o?Bev Tpsaas o?oe Sio^?Eipas
oute tou XP^^^OS o?te to? TTpOGCOTTOU, OtXX' COOTTEp ElCO?El tc(Upr)5?V
uTro?XEyas TTpog t?v ?v9pc?TTov, Ti XsyEis, Ecpn, TTEpi toOSe to? TTCOUaTOS Trp?s
to ctTrocrrrETaai tum; e^egtiv t\ o?;

He took it, and very gently, Echecrates, not trembling or changing his
complexion or his demeanour, but as he was accustomed to, he looked up at
the man in the manner of a bull and said, "What do you say about pouring a
libation of this drink to someone? Is it possible or not?"

Socrates had spent his life philosophizing, or as he earlier calls it

"practicing death,"24 and had thereby faced down death; now, when
physical death approaches, he is able to stare down death (the bull,
the Minotaur) with the bull's own stare as he always had done?and
even with some humor.25
Both the Phaedo and the Cena thus use the Theseus / labyrinth
motif to elicit the broader idea of the journey through death in life, of
man's engagement with his own mortality. When the Cena is read in
the light of the Phaedo, this imagery emphasizes the vivid contrast in
their conceptions of death and life, body and soul. Like Socrates,
Trimalchio leads his companions in a Thesean katabasis through
death in life. But whereas for Socrates death presents a release and

22 Those who argue that the rites are those of Hecate emend the manuscript
TiEpioSoi to TpioSoi. This was first suggested by Olympiodorus and adopted by Burnet
(1911) and Rowe (1993).
23 'Ek 8e Tfjs KprjTris cxttottXegov els AfjXov koteoxe ex?Peuo? ueto tc?v tii?ecov
XOpEiav f|v ETi v?v ettiteXeTv AnXious Xsyouai, ufunua tcov ev Tcp Aa?up(v6cp
TTEpi65cov Kai 5ie?68cov ev tivi pu6[icp TrapaXXd^Eis kcci cxveXi^eis e'xovti yiyvouEvnv.
24 On philosophy as practicing death, see below.
25 Burger (1984) 213, on the other hand, argues that at this point Socrates becomes
the Minotaur: "For this brief moment, perhaps, Socrates succumbs to the fear of death,
or at least he presents that appearance to his audience."

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50 DANIEL HOLMES

purification, for Trimalchio, as we shall see, death presents, not a

separation from, but an extension of bodily pleasures. For Socrates
the labyrinth consists in the series of speeches with his friends that
seek to overcome the fear of death; for Trimalchio it is a maze of
pleasures that eternally turn back upon themselves without surfeit.
Once these broader parallels in imagery are established, further
thematic connections emerge. Socrates justifies his equanimity in the
face of death by defining it as the separation and liberation of the
soul from the body. He teaches that a philosopher should fear noth
ing in death, because the action of philosophy is in fact to practice
(67e) and be concerned about being dead and dying (64a),26 that is, to
practice separating and freeing the soul from the body, as though
from fetters (64a-c). Only in death will true wisdom arise (66e). As
Socrates sums it up, anyone who fears death proves himself a
philos?matos (lover of the body) rather than a philosopher (68c).
When it is time for Socrates to drink the hemlock, therefore, he does
not put off death by delays and drinking and eating into the night
(116e-17a), but calmly downs the poison as soon as it is ready. This
attitude to and mode of death became the model for Roman Stoics,27
and Tacitus, through his accounts of the suicides of Seneca and
Thrasea Paetus in the Annals, testifies to its paradigmatic character in
the Neronian period.28 Like Cato the Younger (who is said to have
read the Phaedo the night before he died) earlier,29 these men commit
suicide in imitation of Socrates, amid conversations about philoso
phy and virtue, and both pour libations to Jupiter the Liberator
(15.64-5; 16.34-5)?an allusion both to political libertas and to the
idea of death as a liberation from the body.30 Whether or not the
author of Satyrica is the Petronius Arbiter of Tacitus' Annals and thus
a contemporary of both Seneca and Thrasea,31 the Platonic depiction
of Socrates' death had manifestly become and remained the, image
par excellence of the philosophic individual's power to overcome the
fear of death, especially when confronted by a regime hostile to rea
son and philosophy.32
26 The verb here is etthtiSeugo, which Rowe (1993) ad loc. translates as "be busy
about," but Burnett (1911) ad loc. "practice." At 67e Socrates says that those who "phi
losophize correctly" are practicing/training in (uE?ETaco) dying, as both Burnett (1911)
on 64a and Rowe (1993) ad loc. note.
27 See, for example, Cic. Tusc. Disp. 1.73-4,103.
28 Connors (1994) 228; Edwards (2007) 154-9.
29 Sen. Ep. 24.6-8.
30 Edwards (2007) 157.
31 For the details of this debate, see Rose (1971).
32 Tacitus provides yet another variant on the theme during the reign of Nero, in
the form of the death of Petronius Arbiter himself. Like Socrates, Petronius faces death
with equanimity and courage. But unlike Socrates, Seneca and Thrasea, he draws out
his death into the night, eating and conversing with friends on trivial matters, "noth
ing about the immortality of the soul or such things as please philosophers (sapien
tium, Annals 16.19)." If Tacitus' Petronius is the author of the Satyrica, Tacitus seems to

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 PETRONIUS AND PLATO'S PHAEDO 51

In the final quarter of the Cena, Petronius plays with Socrates'

ascetic definition of philosophy as practicing death, by showing us
Trimalchio literally practicing dying and death. Like the rest of the
host's antics, the scenes appear well-rehearsed, with all the servants
and performers acting on cue, as they presumably do every day.
More concretely, the death scenes largely parallel Plato's account of
the very end of Socrates' life. I set out the parallels in the table below.

Phaedo
1. Socrates gives his last wishes
(115b).
2. Socrates discusses his indif
ference to burial (115c).
3. Socrates bathes alone (116a).
Interlude: In Socrates' absence,
his companions review what
had been said (116a).
4. Socrates dismisses his wife
and the women of the house
hold so that there can be
less weeping and lamentation
(116b).
5. The sun sets (116b). Socrates
refuses to dine and drink until
late (116e).
6. Socrates drinks poison, lies
down, asks that a cock be paid
to Asclepius (cf. Cena 4), and
dies in peace (117b-18a)._
noise and confusion (77.7-78.8).
Cena
1. Trimalchio relates what he is
leaving to his family and reads
his will (71.3-4).
2. Trimalchio relates the designs
for his monumentum in detail
(71.5-72.1).
3. All the guests bathe (72.2
73.3).
Interlude: Encolpius and friends
try to escape "labyrinth" (72.5
73.2).
4. Trimalchio and his wife quar
rel. She remains weeping and
sulking (74.4-77).
5. Trimalchio wishes to eat and
drink until dawn (73.6); a cock
crows, falsely indicating sunrise
(74.1); Trimalchio orders that it
be killed and cooked (74.4).
6. Trimalchio orders his fine bur
ial things brought out. He lies
down and feigns death amid

The parallels in both general structure and detail are too extensive
to be a matter of coincidence and, when read in conjunction with
the Socratic model, allow for a clearer view of the underpinnings of
Trimalchio's life.

depict a man somewhere between the outright hedonism of Trimalchio and the utter
asceticism of Socrates. But we cannot rule out that Tacitus' description of Petronius'
death may be indebted to his reading of the Cena itself. Or if the Satyrica post-dates
Tacitus, the description in the Cena may draw upon Tacitus' account of the death of
Petronius Arbiter in the Annales.

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52 DANIEL HOLMES

Socrates' death is in complete accord with the views on death

and the nature of the soul he espouses throughout the dialogue. Soc
rates himself does not bring up the question of his final wishes;
instead, Crito asks what he enjoins (ettigteAAeis)33 upon his compan
ions concerning his children or anything else. Socrates makes no
final requests of his friends other than that they look after their very
selves, that is their souls, and he leaves them nothing but their con
versations, which will act like tracks (i'xvti) to guide them on the path
to a good life (115b). When Crito then raises the topic of his burial,
Socrates dismisses his friend's concern with a laugh and yet another
joke, reiterating what has been said from the first: his true form is not
his body, but his soul (115c). Thus Socrates himself will be gone
before they bury his body. Socrates then bathes, something that,
according to the Symposium (174a), he rarely did. Now, however, he
does so, in order to save the women of his household the trouble of
washing his corpse. Stewart points out that this bath also symbolizes
a ritual purification (katharmos) based upon the Orphic / Pythagorean
doctrine of death as purification that Socrates uses throughout.34
Following the pattern of Socrates in the Phaedo, Trimalchio be
gins the finale of the Cena by announcing his final wishes. This then
issues into an extensive description of his burial plans. Thereafter he
announces that they should bathe. Trimalchio initially introduces the
topic of his will as a sign of his sympathy and benevolence toward
his slaves. After telling them that he will manumit them in his will,
he goes on to reveal that his wife, Fortunata, will be his heir. The
purpose of this exercise is then immediately turned on its head. Tri
malchio goes on: "And I am making all this public, in order that my
household may love me now as though I were dead." On this cue,
his slaves fawn about him until an actual copy of his will is brought
and read, while his slaves now groan, presumably pretending to
imagine Trimalchio dead (71.3-4). Petronius spares us the details of
the will, but we can imagine its extravagant nature. A document
whose customary purpose is to provide for others in the future be
comes a tool to elicit sympathy and envy in the present.
The contrast between Socrates' sincere concern for the welfare of
his friends' souls and Trimalchio's selfish misuse of his will could
not be more striking, and certain slips of the tongue by the latter
point to what becomes a more important theme as the Cena pro
gresses, namely the confounding of life and death.35 Whereas previ
ously the most prominent attitude Trimalchio took to death was one

33 As Burnet (1911) ad loc. notes, ettigteXXeiv is the vox propria for a man's last
wishes.
34 Cf. Stewart (1972). For references to Orphic doctrine in the Phaedo, see Burnett
(1911) and "Orphicism" in his index.
35 On the importance of this theme in the Cena, see also Arrowsmith (1966) 306
12; Courtney (2001) 96,121.

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 PETRONIUS AND PLATO'S PHAEDO 53

of carve diem,36 we see more and more the idea of taking earthly
pleasures into the next life. As Trimalchio continues to drink, he
imagines the love he will gain from his household when he is dead.
When he announces that he is setting his slaves free in his will, he
prefaces this by saying "if I am kept alive" (me salvo)?a slip of the
tongue, but, as we will see, a revealing one.
Directly after the will has been read, Trimalchio describes the
elaborate monument that will be his tomb and which, he says, will
bring him "life after death" (71.6). We might at first think that he
believes that his monument will bring the vicarious immortality
tombs customarily afford. But Trimalchio means this literally, invert
ing Socrates' view of death as a moment in which the real self leaves
the body; he will actually live in the tomb. As he concludes: "it is
quite mistaken to deck out one's house while alive, and not take care
of the house one must inhabit for longer" (71.7). Here will be de
picted everything he enjoys in this life: dogs, perfumes, his favorite
gladiators, fruit trees, his wife, and jars sealed with gypsum so that
the wine will not run out (71.11). The tomb itself will be decorated
exactly like his current house (which was itself decorated like a
tomb), which features depictions of gladiators (29.9), biographical
scenes (29.4), a horologium (29.5) and jars of wine sealed with
gypsum (34.6). Later, during the quarrel with his wife, Trimalchio
bursts out (74.17):

Et ut depraesentarium intellegas quid tibi feceris: Habinna, nolo statuam

eius in monumentuo meo ponas, ne mortuus quidem lites habeam.

And in order that you (Fortunata) may immediately know what you have
done to yourself: Habinnas, don't put a statue of her on my monument, lest
even when I am dead I have arguments with her.

Later in his mock death scene, he anoints his guests with his favorite
nard and wonders: "I hope it turns out that I like this as much dead
as alive" (78.3). Unlike Socrates, Trimalchio does not expect to pass
to a different and better existence, but to continue his death-like life
in his life-like death.
Earlier in the Phaedo, Socrates offers a picture of the post-mortem
fate of the ph?os?matos that corresponds closely with that of Trimal
chio here, describing souls that so loved and were obsessed by the
body and its desires for food, drink and sex (82b) before death that
they would not depart pure and uncontaminated even in death, but
continued to be infused with the body.

36 See, e.g., 34.10 where Trimalchio recites: Eheu nos miseros, quam totus homuncio
nil est! / Sic erimus cuncti, postquam nos auferet Orcus. / Ergo vivamus, dum licet esse bene.

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54 DANIEL HOLMES

'Eu?pi?Ec; oe yE, cb 91XE, to?to oiEo?ai xpu* eTvgu Kai ?ap? Kai yscooEs Kai
opaTov, ? 5f] Kai e'xouaa rj Toiaurn vyuxTl ?ap?vETai te Kai e'Xketoi ttocXiv eis tov
?paTOV tottov 96?cp tou dlOO?S TE koi "AlOOU, GOGTTEp XEyETai, TTEpl toc
uvriuaTa te Kai Toug Ta9ous kuXivBouuevf), TTEpl ? 5rj Kai 009611 cn-ra ^ajxgov
GKioEiofj 9avTd?LiaTa, oTa TrapExovTai ai Toia?rai yuxai EiBcoXa, ai ur]
Ka0apcos dTToXu?ETaai dXX? tou ?paTo? UETExouoai, 5i6 Kai ?pc?vTai.

And, my friend, we ought to believe that [the corporeal] is burdensome,

heavy, earthly and visible, and that such a soul possessing the corporeal is
weighed down and dragged back again into the visible world, through fear
of the invisible and of Hades. It flits, as they say, about the monuments and
the tombs, around which the shadowy phantasms of souls have been seen.
Such images are the products of souls that were not purely set free but have
a share of the visible, which is why they are seen.

There could scarcely be a better description of Trimalchio and his

ghostly companions as they flit about this tomb-like house. Here
again Petronius makes literal what Plato described at least somewhat
allegorically and for a philosophic point. The image of Trimalchio as
a philosomatic anti-Socrates is brought home as the epigram of Tri
malchio's tomb reaches its finale (71.12): nec unquam philosophum
audivit ("I never listened to a philosopher"). Unbeknownst to Tri
malchio, this idea of a "living death" and its dangers had been
summed up earlier by one of his own anecdotes. He tells of his visit
to the Sibyl, who, according to Ovid (Met. 14.129-53), was granted
everlasting life, but in a body that continued to wither with age. Her
cries for death as a release (dTro8avETv 6eAco, "I want to be dead,"
48.8), offer a vivid explication of the horrors of Trimalchio's hoped
for afterlife.
While Socrates7 bath is a vivid symbol of his death as a kind of
purification, Trimalchio's acts as a means for the group to renew
their appetites and shake off some of their drunkenness. In terms of
the structure of the entire Cena, which began with games and a bath
(27-28.1), however, the bath and the games played there indicate
that the intricate ring-composition of the work is beginning to close.
It ought, like Socrates' bath, to represent an ending; but when the
structure begins to repeat itself (as Bodel's diagram shows37), it
points to an eternal return of the same debauched dinner party.
Habinnas nicely sums this up in his response to Trimalchio's pro
posal for bathing: de una die duas facere, nihil malo, "I like nothing bet
ter than making two days out of one" (72.4). The same day will be
repeated ad infinitum.
The baths in the Cena and the Phaedo are followed by similar
events. Socrates returns, addresses the women and tells them to leave
so that there will be less crying and fussing (116b, 117d), and with

37 Bodel (1999) 45.

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 PETRONIUS AND PLATO'S PHAEDO 55

the sun beginning to set upon the mountains, he rebukes Crito for
suggesting that he should put off drinking the hemlock. Others, Crito
says, eat, drink and have sex, thus delaying their deaths (116e-17a).
But Socrates immediately and without trembling takes the hemlock,
quiets his companions, lies down and dies in silence as the drug
works its way up his body. His famous last words to Crito, asking
that he pay a cock to Asclepius, the god of healing, most likely repre
sent an offering for the future health of his soul on the point of being
healed by its separation from the body.38
Here is the description of Trimalchio's return from his bath
(73.5-74.5):

ergo ebrietate discussa in aliud triclinium deducti sumus... Trimalchio inquit

...'Ttaque tangomenas faciamus et usque in lucem cenemus." haec dicente
eo gallus gallinaceus cantavit. qua voce confusus Trimalchio vinum sub
mensa iussit effundi lucernamque etiam mero spargi. immo anulum traiecit
in dexteram manum et "non sine causa/' inquit, "hie bucinus signum dedit;
nam aut incendium oportet fiat, aut aliquis in vicinia animam abiciet.
longe a nobis. itaque quisquis hunc indicem attulerit, corollarium accipiet."
dicto citius de vicinia gallus allatus est, quem Trimalchio iussit ut aeno
coctus fieret.

Then, when our drunkenness had been shaken off, we were led into another
dining room ... Trimalchio said "...So let us drink deep and feast all the way
till sunrise." As he was saying this, a cock crowed. Upset by its cry, Trimal
chio ordered wine to be poured under the table, and even the lamp to be
sprinkled with pure wine. Indeed, he transferred a ring onto his right hand
and said, "Not without reason did that trumpeter give his signal. It is likely
that either there is going to be a fire, or someone nearby is going to give up
the ghost. May it be far from us! So anyone who gets this informer will re
ceive a present." Almost as soon as he spoke, the cock was brought in from
nearby, and Trimalchio ordered that it be cooked in a saucepan.

With their appetites renewed, Trimalchio urges his companions to

eat and drink until sunrise. A cock's crow would usually indicate
that sunrise is not far off and a new day is beginning. In Trimalchio's
ever-dark world, however, it portends a fire or an impending death,
and in an attempt to avert the disaster, he not only tries every
apotropaic trick in the book, but has the offending bird killed,
cooked and later eaten at the table. Socrates does not need an omen
that he is about to die, but knows it and refuses to sully his death
with excessive eating and drinking. The killing and eating of the
cock also stands in striking contrast to Socrates' pious request for "a
cock to Asclepius"; Petronius takes this image of the purificatory
healing of life and gives it to Trimalchio to eat.

38 Cf. Burnet (1911) ad loc.; Rowe (1993) ad loc.

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56 DANIEL HOLMES

Prior to his death, Socrates dismisses his wife and the women
folk so as to avoid the usual weeping. Prior to Trimalchio's "death"
we witness a long and violent fight between him and his wife, which
leaves her moaning and crying over her injuries (74.9-13, 75.9), while
he relates his own rise to wealth and power. This sketch may have
been influenced in part by Socrates' own account of his philosophical
development in the Phaedo, where he describes his movement away
from learning or discovering the teleological principle of cause to
an approach based on a method of "hypothesis" using a nautical
analogy. Socrates famously describes his new attempt as a "second
sailing" (99c-d) which turns out to be a safer method for human be
ings. Likewise Trimalchio relates that, after his first fleet of ships was
wrecked, he made his fortune by building a second fleet that were
bigger, better and luckier (alteras fed maiores et meliores et feliciores,
76.5). When Trimalchio's actual death-scene comes, it does not end
on a quiet note of health (Asclepius) but, as Encolpius, says, reaches
"the utmost sickness" (ad summam nauseam) amid the noise of trum
peters (78.5). Trimalchio orders his grave-clothes brought out, along
with the ointment and wine he wants at his funeral. As Socrates was
progressively paralyzed by the hemlock, so Trimalchio is by his own
overdose of wine. The dinner ends with him lying totally drunk
(ebrietate turpissima gravis) on his death bed (torus extremus) amid
piles of cushions.
Trimalchio thus emerges not only as an anti-Theseus, but as an
anti-Socrates. For the Socrates of the Phaedo, the priority of the soul
over the body makes death something to be confronted with equa
nimity and, finally, embraced as a release of the soul from the body,
as absolute freedom. Socrates' courage in facing death represents, in
turn, the freedom he manifested in life. Trimalchio, on the other
hand, as Bodel notes, lives in a social limbo: "as a freedman he has
the status of a human being, but as an ex-slave he bears the indelible
marks of his former servitude, when he possessed no more rights
than those of an animal."39 During his life as a slave he was, to his
master, body in toto, subject to his commands, and the deliciae of both
master and mistress for 14 years (75.11). Given the freedom to be
come his own master, he remains a slave to his past life and to the
body over which he once had no control and to which he now strives
to offer every elusive pleasure. Trimalchio in his underworld house
practices death not as philosophy, but as a vain attempt to secure a
satiety of corporeal pleasures and prolong his enslavement to the
body ad infinitum.
Daniel Holmes
University of the South

39 Bodel (1994) 253.

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 PETRONIUS AND PLATO'S PHAEDO 57

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