Nikola Golubovic (University of Pennsylvania)
The surviving portion of the Satyricon famously starts in the middle of Encolpius’ diatribe against declamation. His objections are about declamation’s tumid style and its alleged corrupting influence on young students. His interlocutor is Agamemnon, a teacher of rhetoric. Agamemnon interrupts Encolpius (non est passus Agamemnon me diutius declamare) and in his own speech largely agrees while shifting the blame from teachers to parents. The passage has attracted much scholarly attention: some have tried to disentangle the scene, which is far from clear (Kennedy), others offered speculative reconstructions of the scene’s lost part (Cosci), and most have labored to explain the two characters’ (and Petronius’) views on oratory (Schmeling, Berti, Cizek, George, Caplan, Walsh). Martin Bloomer’s is a rare analysis that considers the Cena as well, and specifically Agamemnon’s role in it. He argues that Agamemnon’s mere presence as a teacher (since he says almost nothing in the course of the dinner-party) made the freedmen uneasy about the status of their speech and prompted them to speak about their (lack of) education in litterae.
In this paper I argue that it was specifically Agamemnon’s expertise in declamation that elicited responses from Trimalchio and his guests. Throughout the Cena, they try to demonstrate their own proficiency in declamation, believing that this will mark them as high-status individuals. When Trimalchio asks Agamemnon about the controversia he declaimed earlier that day, he uses the highly specialized Greek term peristasis (48.5: dic ergo, si me amas, peristasim declamationis tuae). After scoring a cheap joke at the expense of Agamemnon’s topic, Trimalchio delivers a one-line verdict (hoc, inquit, si factum est, controversia non est; si factum non est, nihil est): this simple syllogism compresses all the traditional criticisms of declamation. Trimalchio not only knows the inner workings of declamation, but also engages in criticism of declamation that was part of the genre. Echion hopes that his son (or a favorite slave) will learn to declaim under Agamemnon’s tutelage (46.3: et iam tibi discipulus crescit cicaro meus… si vixerit, habebis ad latus servulum). When Ganymedes fondly remembers the magistrate Safinius, he praises his oratorical prowess, and especially his delivery and his direct style that did not involve figures (44.9: nec schemas loquebatur sed derectum). These and other examples illustrate the central role of declamation in the social presentation of Trimalchio and his freedmen friends. Petronius has depicted these characters as acutely aware of declamation’s social pedigree. At the same time, Agamemnon is a liminal figure: a Greek with a name as if straight from a suasoria (cf. Sen. S. 2), perhaps also a freedman, he has the power to impart status on students through education in declamation. But his specialist knowledge means that he is also non-elite, because even his profession was marked as servile. The depiction of declamation and declaimers in the Satyricon helps us to understand all criticisms of declamation not as motivated by genuine concerns about education, but as moral statements aimed at regulating social mobility.