I. INTRODUCTION
That the extraordinary narrative experiment known as the Satyricon has regularly stimulated scholarly investigation into the relationship between status and freedom is not surprising for a work, the longest surviving section of which features an excessive dinner party at the house of a libertus. Much of the discussion has concentrated on the depiction of the dinner's host and his freedmen friends. Following the lead of F. Zeitlin and others in seeing the depiction of a ‘freedmen's milieu’ in the Cena, J. Bodel argued in a seminal paper published twenty years ago that the Cena opens a window onto the ‘freedman's mentality’.Footnote 1 The last ten years or so have seen a revival of the theme, with much emphasis on the display of an open society in the Cena,Footnote 2 even a Saturnalian world-view, based on a suspension or reversal of the traditional social hierarchies,Footnote 3 all framed by a general air of excessive liberality:Footnote 4 whatever satirical lens the Satyricon’s author is seen to have projected onto Trimalchio and his freedmen friends, they are understood as celebrating ‘freedom's defining difference’.Footnote 5 In the light of such a unifying conceptualization of the Cena’s motley crew, it is not surprising that scholars have come to understand the libertine assemblage as a reflection of ‘the social class of the “freedmen” in first-century a.d. Italy’.Footnote 6 After all, ‘class’ can be defined as ‘a number of individuals (persons or things) possessing common attributes’, and, with specific regard to human society, as ‘a division of society according to status’.Footnote 7
It is perhaps surprising that the scholarly analysis of the relationship between status and freedom has sidelined the Cena’s manumission scenes, i.e. the staged enactments of freedom. Instead, and as stated above, the spotlight has been primarily on the host himself, sporadically enhanced by the odd glance at one or other of his guests.Footnote 8 But given that ‘[Trimalchio's] banquet is an exercise in metamorphosis, where’, as W. Fitzgerald put it, ‘everything turns into something else’,Footnote 9 actual emancipations ‘on stage’, i.e. personified metamorphoses from one status into another, are potentially highly significant for our understanding of the Cena’s portrayal of the relationship between freedom and status, as well as of the Roman construction of seruitus and libertas more generally. It is perhaps not less surprising that the debate has in essence been carried out in a chronological vacuum. This is not to say that scholars have not been keen to contextualize the Cena and its freedmen characters within a specific historical period; rather, that historical approaches to the Cena have in essence been detached from discussion of the date (and authorship) of the Satyricon, just as they have fundamentally been isolated from the analysis of the work's relationship to other texts and literatures of the Imperial period, be they Latin or Greek.Footnote 10
As is well known, the consensus on the work's date that has emerged is for a Neronian date, and with the courtier named Petronius, the arbiter elegantiae of Nero in Tacitus’ Annals, as the text's author.Footnote 11 This idea is so entrenched that J. Prag and I. Repath recently concluded that ‘[…] it becomes little short of perverse not to accept the general consensus and read the Satyrica as a Neronian text of the mid-60s a.d.’.Footnote 12 But this view is not without its problems especially regarding the text's relationship with the Greek novel, and our view of the literary history of the Roman Imperial period in general. A. Laird therefore argued that ‘(a) richer literary history, a fuller picture of the Latin accommodation of Greek material, and, most importantly, more interpretative possibilities for future readings of the Satyricon require flexibility about chronology, as well as about matters of Roman cultural identity’.Footnote 13 In light of the agreed centrality of the depiction of status and freedom to the story dished up for us in the Cena, it should in turn not be surprising that it is precisely at the intersection between the different shades of freedom that we can gain a fresh perspective on the date (and authorship) of the Satyricon: the Cena’s manumission scenes are the key to a new terminus post quem for the text's composition.
II. ENACTMENTS OF FREEDOM IN THE CENA TRIMALCHIONIS
It is a well-known fact that the Romans knew of a number of ways to manumit their slaves. The main modes of manumission under the Empire were manumission uindicta (‘by the rod’), manumission testamento (‘in the master's will’) and manumission inter amicos (‘in the presence of the master's friends’): the first two of these—i.e. uindicta and testamento—fall into the rubric of what scholars typically call formal manumission; whilst manumission inter amicos is a so-called informal manumission mode.Footnote 14 Both types of manumission are in evidence in the Cena.
To start at the end, Trimalchio's announcement of his intention to manumit in his will is a good literary example of (planned) manumission testamento (Sat. 71.1–4). But given the present focus on status transformations in (and during) the Cena, a future testamentary manumission is of no relevance to the analysis of manumissions ‘on stage’, i.e. during Trimalchio's lifetime. Manumission uindicta, which was carried out in front of a magistrate on the basis of a claim that the slave was wrongfully held in servitude, is relevant even though only in a highly parodic manner, as we shall presently see. On the other hand, the Roman slave-master's ability to free in a more informal fashion in the presence of some friends, i.e. inter amicos, is brought out fully in the manumissions staged in the Cena—on three occasions.
The three emancipation scenes are well known to aficionados of the Satyricon, but for quite different reasons to the ones foregrounded here: they are, first, the freedom gained by the boar that appeared twice at the dinner table (Sat. 40.3–41.4); second, the manumission of the slave Dionysus, the god of wine, by way of a pun (Sat. 41.6–7); and, third, the liberation of the acrobat who fell from the stars (or, rather, from just below the ceiling) onto Trimalchio (Sat. 54.4–5). These are taken here in turn, in the order of appearance in the Cena, before the status transitions that these manumissions entailed are explored in detail. First, then, the boar.
II.I APER PRIMAE MAGNITVDINIS (SAT. 40.3–41.4)
secutum est hos repositorium, in quo positus erat primae magnitudinis aper, et quidem pilleatus, e cuius dentibus sportellae dependebant duae palmulis textae, altera caryotis altera thebaicis repleta […] hic aper, cum heri summa cena eum uindicasset, a conuiuis dimissus est; itaque hodie tamquam libertus in conuiuium reuertitur.
A tray was brought in after them with a wild boar of the largest size upon it, wearing a cap of freedom, with two little baskets woven of palms hanging from his tusks, one full of dry dates and the other fresh […] This boar, although the last course of the dinner had claimed it, was released by the dinner guests; and so today, it returns to dinner as a libertus.
Encolpius may not have understood what was going on here, but his neighbour knew: the poor pig was ‘released’ (dimissus est) by the dinner guests the previous evening, even though the dinner had ‘claimed’ it (eum uindicasset).Footnote 15 Scholars have long recognized the linguistic allusions to the world of the games here, especially to that of gladiatorial combat, most notably brought to the fore through the use of dimissus, which plays on the language used in the arena to grant a beaten gladiator life.Footnote 16 But the chosen terms actually multitask, as so much else in the Cena. Thus, the language employed to describe the crucial developments in the boar's release is that found in our legal sources when describing the manumission process. In his summary of the correct legal procedure, Gaius notes in the Institutes that one can manumit (dimittere) those under one's jurisdiction: […] ex suo iure eas personas dimittere.Footnote 17 The emancipation mode known as manumission uindicta (‘by the rod’), briefly mentioned above, takes its name from the legal formula used in the action for assertion of ownership and other real rights. In a legal dispute over ownership for instance over a slave, the opposing parties would each assert their right of ownership over the slave in front of the praetor: each claimant would hold a rod, take hold of the actual property, i.e. the slave, pronounce that they are the lawful owner, and state that they have imposed the claim—VINDICTAM INPOSVI; once both parties made their claim, the praetor would ask them to let go of the property before continuing with the proceedings—cum uterque uindicasset, praetor dicebat: MITTITE AMBO HOMINEM, illi mittebant.Footnote 18
The boar's release plays on the legal procedure used in ownership disputes and, by implication and context, on manumission uindicta, even if in effect the ‘emancipation’ is entirely formless and carried out inter amicos. In any case, the boar dons the pilleus to indicate the status transition. Naturally, only Trimalchio (but not his guests) had the powers to emancipate members of his familia informally, i.e. inter amicos (even if the ‘friends’ were an essential part of the process).Footnote 19 But in this parody of slave manumission, the boar got away no doubt because the dinner guests were already full. Consequently, the porcine returns wearing the pilleus. And as stated above, Encolpius’ neighbour has no problems with interpreting the boar's dress code: non enim aenigma est, sed res aperta (Sat. 41.4). The pilleus was indeed widely understood as a symbol of liberty: Brutus memorably put the pilleus on his coins in 42 b.c., in combination with two daggers symbolizing the assassination of Caesar, and the legend LIBERTAS; and Suetonius’ account of Nero tells the story of the plebs wearing the pillei after the emperor's death.Footnote 20 Almost predictably, Encolpius’ neighbour refers to the boar as a libertus.
But the aper primae magnitudinis is not the only creature in the Cena that indicates their status transition by donning the pilleus: this cap plays also a significant role in the immediately ensuing manumission, again inter amicos—namely that of the god of wine aka the slave Dionysus.
II.II DIONYSVS PVER SPECIOSVS (SAT. 41.6–7)
dum haec loquimur, puer speciosus, uitibus hederisque redimitus, modo Bromium, interdum Lyaeum Euhiumque confessus, calathisco uuas circumtulit et poemata domini sui acutissima uoce traduxit. ad quem sonum conuersus Trimalchio ‘Dionyse’ inquit ‘liber esto.’ puer detraxit pilleum apro capitique suo imposuit.
As we were speaking, a beautiful boy with vine-leaves and ivy in his hair brought round grapes in a little basket, impersonating Bacchus in ecstasy, Bacchus full of wine, Bacchus dreaming, and rendering his master's verses in a most shrill voice. Trimalchio turned round at the noise and said, ‘Dionysus, be free/Liber.’ The boy took the cap of freedom off the boar, and put it on his head.
This scene has attracted considerable comment because of the pun on the word liber.Footnote 21 What may need stressing, however, is Trimalchio's competent use of the technically correct phraseology to set his slave free. Thus, Trimalchio's command is identical with that recorded by Gaius in his Institutes for the manumission of slaves in one's testament:Footnote 22 at qui directo testamento liber esse iubetur, uelut hoc modo: STICHVS SERVVS MEVS LIBER ESTO […]. The phrase was also employed in manumissions inter uiuos, as the example of the emancipation of Messenio in Plautus’ Menaechmi through (Syracusan) Menaechmus makes clear: liber esto. quom tu es liber, gaudeo, Messenio.Footnote 23 Since Trimalchio, like (Syracusan) Menaechmus, is alive and kicking when manumitting his slave, the scene parodies the master's capacity to manumit inter amicos. Unsurprisingly perhaps, just like the most magnificent boar, the beautiful young god of wine dons the pilleus—interpreting Trimalchio's instruction as a command to be free.
The play on the correct terminology is maintained also in the third manumission, that of the acrobat who fell on Trimalchio and who—like Dionysus—is freed ‘on stage’ through the words of his master.
II.III ‘A FALLING STAR’ (SAT. 54.1–5)
cum maxime haec dicente Gaio puer … Trimalchionis delapsus est. conclamauit familia, nec minus conuiuae […] ipse Trimalchio cum grauiter ingemuisset superque bracchium tanquam laesum incubuisset […]
nam puer quidem, qui ceciderat, circumibat iam dudum pedes nostros et missionem rogabat […] in uicem enim poenae uenit decretum Trimalchionis, quo puerum iussit liberum esse, ne quis posset dicere, tantum uirum esse a seruo uulneratum.
Just as Trimalchio said this, a slave … of Trimalchio fell. The slaves raised a cry, and so did the guests […] Trimalchio groaned aloud, and nursed his arm as if it was hurt […] The slave who had fallen down was crawling round at our feet by this time, and begging for mercy […] Instead of punishment there came Trimalchio's decree that the slave should be made a free man, so that it would not be possible to say that so great a man had been bruised by a slave.
The interpretation of this passage is complicated by the lacuna in the text and requires more detailed analysis than the previous two manumission scenes.Footnote 24 Helpfully, the context is provided by the preceding paragraph, to which we need to turn first. A group of petauristarii had entered the dining room and performed in front of Trimalchio and his guests, including a slave who climbed ever higher on one or more ladders, to undertake some rather precarious acrobatics at the top (Sat. 53.11–12):
petauristarii autem tandem uenerunt. baro insulsissimus cum scalis constitit puerumque iussit per gradus et in summa parte odaria saltare, circulos deinde ardentes transilire et dentibus amphoram sustinere. mirabatur haec solus Trimalchio dicebatque ingratum artificium esse. ceterum duo esse in rebus humanis, quae libentissime spectaret, petauristarios et cornicines; reliqua [animalia] acroamata tricas meras esse.
But at last the acrobats came in. A very dull fool stood there with (a) ladder(s) and made a slave dance from step to step and at the very top to the music of popular airs, and then made him hop through burning hoops, and pick up an amphora with his teeth. No one was astonished by this but Trimalchio, who kept saying that it was a thankless profession. There were only two things in the world that he could watch with real pleasure, acrobats and trumpeters; all other shows were silly nonsense.
Following Festus’ entry for petauristas, the acrobats may have been performers who jumped on or from something like a trapeze.Footnote 25 Yet, it is not possible to glean from the surviving text of the Cena whether a trapeze was employed, nor can we be certain about the full range of acrobatics that the petauristarii performed. It is also impossible to ascertain whether the slave who fell was the acrobat whom the baro sent dancing up the ladder, or a quite different slave who fell in the course of whatever acrobatics they were engaged in.
That said, Encolpius is suddenly reminded of the acrobats and the slave's fall and subsequent emancipation later on in the dinner proceedings, when a noise from the ceiling made him panic and worry about more acrobats falling from the sky (Sat. 60.1–4); this scene, too, has a bearing on our reading of the slave's manumission, and needs to be studied in combination with the other two passages:
nec diu mirari licuit tam elegantes strophas; nam repente lacunaria sonare coeperunt totumque triclinium intremuit. consternatus ego exsurrexi et timui, ne per tectum petauristarius aliquis descenderet. nec minus reliqui conuiuae mirantes erexere uultus, expectantes quid noui de caelo nuntiaretur. ecce autem diductis lacunaribus subito circulus ingens, de cupa uidelicet grandi excussus, demittitur, cuius per totum orbem coronae aureae alabastris unguenti pendebant. dum haec apophoreta iubemur sumere, respiciens ad mensam …
We were not given long to admire these elegant tours de force; suddenly there came a noise from the ceiling, and the whole dining-room trembled. I rose from my place in a panic: I was afraid some acrobat would come down from the roof. All the other guests too looked up astonished, wondering what new portent from heaven was announced. The whole ceiling parted asunder, and an enormous hoop, apparently knocked out of a giant cask, was let down. All round it were hung golden crowns and alabaster boxes of perfumes. We were asked to take these presents for ourselves, when I looked back at the table …
Modern scholars have attempted to aid the reconstruction of the happenings through the study of possible historical and literary parallels. J. Révay argued for an intertext with the description of the collapsing dining-room canopy in Horace's Cena Nasidieni, which J.P. Sullivan later termed ‘an obvious model’.Footnote 26 In questioning the suggested literary relationship, M.S. Smith foregrounded a historical parallel with the actor playing Icarus, narrated in Suetonius’ account of Nero, who plummeted in the arena and crashed near the emperor, splashing him with blood.Footnote 27 Further possible literary inspirations are briefly discussed by B. Baldwin, who jokingly titled the slave who fell ‘a falling star’, despite his critique of the suggested literary allusion to Horace.Footnote 28
That the star motif is in fact essential for tracing intertextual connections between the Cena and other texts, including a hitherto unsuspected sparring partner, will become clear in the latter part of this article. For now, it is important to stress that the description of the dinner guests’ concern over the noise (and news) from the ceiling (nam repente lacunaria sonare coeperunt totumque triclinium intremuit … expectantes quid noui de caelo nuntiaretur) mocks the type of retractable ceiling known to have existed in the dining rooms of the filthy rich, including Nero's Domus Aurea;Footnote 29 and that it recalls at once Trimalchio's earlier description of the heavens, which he combined with an exposition of the star signs, immediately preceding the arrival of the freed boar (Sat. 39.5–15): caelus hic, in quo duodecim dii habitant, in totidem se figuras conuertit. Seen in the round, the puer who fell in the course of the acrobats’ performance would have resembled a star falling from heaven; and in Encolpius’ (and the modern reader's) mind, the slave could jokingly be perceived as the puer de caelo Trimalchionis delapsus.
Following the fall, the puer was slow in getting back on his feet. Indeed, the impression one gains of ‘the fallen star’ is not dissimilar to Cicero's description of the pathetic figure cut by Pompey after he had fallen, in a virtual sense, ex astris.Footnote 30 The homo putidus (Sat. 54.1) crawls around on the floor begging for mercy—with success: he is pardoned by his master and manumitted, on the spot—uenit decretum Trimalchionis, quo puerum iussit liberum esse (Sat. 54.5).Footnote 31 Much of the underlying joke thrives on the fun which the passage makes of the emperor's unique legal capacity.Footnote 32 But despite the allusion to manumission by Imperial grant, Trimalchio evidently has recourse to the procedure we call manumission inter amicos in order to emancipate this particular slave. Consequently, in Sat. 54.4–5, Trimalchio manumitted a member of his familia informally, just as he had done on the other two occasions, by having recourse to the procedure known as manumission inter amicos—thereby concluding the business of emancipation on the stage we call the Cena Trimalchionis.
III. LATINVS ESTO
What is striking about the three emancipation scenes is that the manumissions are all exclusively master-driven: they do not follow the pattern privileged by modern scholarship that regards the slave's merit, service or contribution as critical for the master's decision to liberate.Footnote 33 In this, the Cena’s manumission scenes follow the pattern evident in Plautine comedy: there, as R. Stewart has shown, ‘[…] the staging underscores the definition of manumission at Rome as the generous authoritative act of the master’.Footnote 34 Clearly, the depiction of the master's omnipotence was the preferred choice on the Roman stage (even if the Cena’s humour does much to pervert the image of the all-powerful master).Footnote 35
But the master's position of power is also central to our understanding of the Cena’s slave emancipations beyond the initiation of the actual manumissions. Thus, one of the notable features of the three manumission scenes here discussed is the repeated reference to the technically correct language and legal procedure. This is as such not surprising given the Romans’ fondness for legal status definition, even if modern scholars have been reluctant to admit more than a passing interest in the law in the Cena (and the Satyricon more generally).Footnote 36 But if we follow the pointer to the world of legal conceptualization so clearly given in all three manumission scenes, the impression of the master's omnipotence vis-à-vis the slave is reinforced: not only is the master key to the slaves’ emancipation, but, furthermore, slave emancipation in the Cena works to maintain the manumitter's position of power over his ex-slaves beyond emancipation in ways not hitherto acknowledged.
To begin with, it is important to recall that the Romans devised in their juridical writing two principal categories: those of the free, liberi, and those of the unfree, serui; and that slaves in the Roman Empire, once freed, were conceptualized amongst the free.Footnote 37 That said, Roman manumission produced as a rule only ever freedmen, i.e. men (and women) of the status of libertus (and liberta); it did not normally convey freeborn status, i.e. men and women who were regarded as ingenui. Roman citizenship could be awarded as well, depending on the mode of manumission and the satisfaction of certain conditions.Footnote 38 But just as the Romans subdivided the category of the free (into those born free, ingenui, and those freed, liberti), so they divided further the category of persons of freed status into three groups: Roman citizens, Latins and dediticii.Footnote 39 Trimalchio belongs to the first of these three groups, i.e. those endowed with Roman citizenship.Footnote 40 Yet, this is not the case with the god of wine and the acrobat (or the aper).
First, Bacchus: a delicious boy is how Encolpius remembers him—puer speciosus. Notwithstanding the Roman habit of calling even a mature slave ‘boy’, puer, if Dionysus was indeed still a boy, he was unable to gain the status of a Roman citizen upon manumission. In fact, as long as he was under thirty years of age, this would have been the case. But whatever Dionysus’ age, to gain Roman citizenship, the slave needed to be liberated through formal manumission.Footnote 41 But this is not the case: the mode employed by Trimalchio to free this slave is, as we saw above, that which we refer to as manumission inter amicos—a formless act, witnessed by some friends of the master.Footnote 42 As a result, the manumission works to endow the slave with a status that is different to that carried by his master-cum-patron—for as Gaius writes so clearly, if any of the conditions for formal manumission is not met, the freedman will be a Latinus, or what we typically call in English a Junian Latin; this had been so since the passing of the lex Iunia (on which more below).Footnote 43 The status, then, of the newly made freedman is that of a Latinus. And Trimalchio's ambiguous command effectively ordered Dionysus to become a Junian Latin: Latinus esto.
But Dionysus is not the only Latin made ‘on stage’: the acrobat was also manumitted inter amicos, i.e. informally, despite the parody made of the emperor's capacity to award freedom by decree. Logically, this puer, too, became a Junian Latin. Thus, although both Dionysus and the acrobat (and, as we are told, the boar) joined the category of the free as liberti, they did so at a different point on the freedman spectrum to that occupied by Trimalchio. And there are enormous repercussions for our view of these freedmen's status vis-à-vis that of their patron from this observation.
Technically, Latinity was conveyed to the former slave by the state; his (or her) liberty by the former master. Following their manumission, Junian Latins were subject to ties of patronal power, including the duties of obsequium and officium.Footnote 44 In principle, there was no difference in this respect between a Junian Latin and a freedman who held Roman citizenship.Footnote 45 But upon the death of a Junian Latin, their assets returned to the former master as if they were the peculium of a slave. Unlike freedmen who held Roman citizenship, Junian Latins were unable to make wills, which meant that the fruits of their life's labour were reaped by the patron, not by kin or friend; only the acquisition of Roman citizenship would protect the informally (or imperfectly) freed slave from this. Mutatis mutandis, Junian Latins lacked the capacity to inherit. That is to say, a Junian Latin lacked a specific power over property enjoyed by a freedman endowed with Roman citizenship: the power of succession.Footnote 46
During the Republic, informally freed slaves maintained the legal status of seruus—for they ‘[…] were slaves under the older concept of ius Quiritium and free men under the praetorian edict […]’.Footnote 47 The lex Iunia changed this. But the libertas that the law awarded those freed under its provision was intellectually construed from the freedom enjoyed by coloniary Latins, whilst it was granted by force of the new statute—for coloniary Latins they were not: a legal dodge in other words. The disabilities concerning succession reflect nicely the legal half-way house that the lex Iunia created for those manumitted under its provision. And Gaius consequently called their libertas a fiction—ea fictio.Footnote 48
In sum, whilst the legal status of an informally freed slave under the lex Iunia was by all accounts improved compared to the legal status of a slave—granting the Junian Latin, amongst other things, the privilege of conubium and of the ius commercii—it was structurally different in a number of crucial aspects from the legal status of a formally freed slave who received Roman citizenship upon manumission. For all practical purposes, a Junian Latin was a freedman (or freedwoman) of second grade; not only were they juridically bound by patronal ties, but the lack of Roman citizenship meant that they had no final control over their assets either: they were deprived of the benefits of family.
In the language of the scholar of slavery, Junian Latins remained natally alienated; the law actively embraced their (continued) social death beyond manumission.Footnote 49 In a sense, Junian Latinity was a legal ring composition: from slavery to freedom and back again. Just like the birds who were caught within seconds after they escaped the boar's gut in the scene preceding the manumission of Dionysus (Sat. 40.5–6),Footnote 50 the slave freed informally was only allowed to taste freedom, not more: aquam liberam gustabunt (Sat. 71.1). Libertas made in (Trimalchio's) heaven was a fiction.
IV. CONTEXTUALIZING LATINITY
The argument presented so far has shown the Trimalchian take on freedom to be substantially more complex than often acknowledged. But the significance of the award of Latinity in the Cena in place of freedom with citizenship can only by fully appreciated if evidence for real Junian Latins is taken into account—which in turn opens up, finally, a fresh look at the date of the Satyricon. Any attempt at contextualising the freedom created by Trimalchio meets however with one significant problem, i.e. the difficulty in identifying Junian Latins in the sources.Footnote 51 This also means that it is extraordinarily difficult to assess how challenging it was for these liberti to escape the vicious circle called Latinity after manumission. But there are some Junian Latins that we can identify.
Ladies first: Helena, Paramone and Techosis—three women from Roman Egypt who are known from the surviving documentary records produced for their emancipations; all three were manumitted inter amicos after the stipulation and subsequent payment of a price.Footnote 52 But we never hear of them again. Next, there is L. Venidius Ennychus from Herculaneum—a Junian Latin who in a.d. 62 gained ciuitas together with wife and daughter through anniculi probatio, i.e. the presentation of a child of one year of age, recorded in the Tabulae Herculanenses.Footnote 53 Besides anniculi probatio, the Romans thought up a number of challenges, the meeting of which would allow a Junian Latin to gain ciuitas, thereby recognizing the severe legal and social disabilities that this category of freedmen experienced. These challenges included, with further conditions and qualifications attached to them, the building of a house at Rome, contributing to the provision of grain at Rome, and service with the uigiles in the capital. Alternatively, Roman ciuitas could be awarded through a special grant from the emperor. Another remedy consisted in a second manumission carried out by the patronFootnote 54 —so-called iteratio—in one of the formally recognized ways.Footnote 55 Unsurprisingly perhaps, the evidence for the acquisition of citizenship through the challenges that focus on Rome is slim. There exist however some good examples for the acquisition of citizenship by Imperial grant as well as through iteratio in the correspondence of the Younger Pliny that help to locate Junian Latinity more clearly in the complex web of Roman libertas and seruitus.Footnote 56 Moreover, Pliny's interest in the theme that characterizes the manumissions in the Cena functions as a key to his vision of imperial government—which, as will be seen, is critical for a proper understanding of the programme behind the Cena’s enactments of freedom.
We begin in a.d. 107. In the spring of that year, Pliny wrote to his grandfather-in-law, Fabatus, concerning the possibility of arranging for some of Fabatus’ informally freed slaves to be given Roman citizenship through iteratio, in the form of a (second) manumission uindicta. In the letter, Pliny informs Fabatus that Calestrius Tiro was setting out as proconsul to Baetica via Ticinum (Pavia); and that Pliny could arrange for Calestrius Tiro to make a detour to pass through Como—which would allow Fabatus to set free formally the slaves whom he previously set free informally through the same procedure that Trimalchio employed when setting free the boar, the god of wine, and the one who fell from the stars—i.e. inter amicos:Footnote 57
hic nunc pro consule prouinciam Baeticam per Ticinum est petiturus. spero, immo confido facile me impetraturum, ex itinere deflectat ad te, si uoles uindicta liberare, quos proxime inter amicos manumisisti.
He is now setting out for Baetica as governor of the province, and will pass through Ticinum. I hope, in fact I am sure, that I can easily persuade him to leave his direct route to pay you a visit, if you really intend to liberate by vindication the slaves you recently manumitted amongst your friends.
Pliny concluded the letter by emphasizing his good relations with Calestrius Tiro and by urging Fabatus to accept his offer—which indeed he did, as a later letter commenting on Calestrius Tiro's visit to Como makes clear.Footnote 58 Undeniably, the acquisition of citizenship by Fabatus’ Junian Latins would have been a substantially more difficult enterprise had it not been for Pliny's socio-political clout.
There is little reason to think, however, that special awards of citizenship from the emperor were easier to get hold of; or that the patron was less instrumental in the request to the emperor.Footnote 59 A good example of the patron's role in the request for citizenship for Junian Latins from the emperor is available once more through Pliny's correspondence, in this case concerning a group of Junian Latins over whom Pliny inherited the rights of patronage from his friend Valerius Paulinus, and for whom Pliny sought Roman citizenship from Trajan, in his third year as governor in Pontus-Bithynia:Footnote 60
Valerius, domine, Paulinus excepto Paulino ius Latinorum suorum mihi reliquit; ex quibus rogo tribus interim ius Quiritium des. uereor enim, ne sit immodicum, pro omnibus pariter inuocare indulgentiam tuam, qua debeo tanto modestius uti, quanto pleniorem experior.
Valerius Paulinus, Sir, having passed over his son Paulinus (in his will), has bequeathed to me the (patronal) right over his (Junian) Latins. On this occasion I pray you to grant Roman citizenship to three of them only; it would be unreasonable, I fear, to petition you to favour all alike, and I must be all the more careful not to abuse your generosity when I have enjoyed it on so many previous occasions.
Pliny's proximity to the emperor clearly facilitated these Junian Latins’ acquisition of Roman ciuitas: Trajan graciously grants the magnum beneficium to all three upon Pliny's request.Footnote 61
But the seeming ease with which Pliny arranged for the grants of citizenship is unlikely to have been a typical experience for all patrons and, hence, for their informally freed slaves. Brief consideration of the channels open to promotion to Roman citizenship status demonstrates the problems inherent in the process. First, there was the heavy concentration on the capital city that would have disadvantaged Junian Latins elsewhere in Italy or the Empire. Second, there was the male-gender bias in most promotion modes that disadvantaged female Junian Latins—women like Helena, Paramone and Techosis. And the same structural problem applied also to child and adolescent Junian Latins: L. Venidius Ennychus, whom we met earlier on, took after all over twenty years to shed Latinity through anniculi probatio—perhaps implying his informal (or imperfect) manumission in childhood. But Ennychus’ efforts might also have been thwarted by high infant mortality rates, which made the raising of children to the age of one difficult at best. And, Pliny apart, there was the difficulty in gaining access to the legal authorities, especially if one's location was removed from the seats of government: not many slave-owners in the Roman Empire enjoyed a direct line to the emperor, or could easily persuade a Roman magistrate that a deviation of some one hundred miles (one way) to assist in the granting of ciuitas would merite le détour.Footnote 62 A.N. Sherwin-White therefore concluded that ‘outside Rome Junian Latins must have constituted a numerous group of under-privileged half-citizens’.Footnote 63 P.R.C. Weaver was more graphic in his assessment of the place of Junian Latinity in Roman society: ‘a large undetected black hole at the heart of the “slave” society that is Rome’.Footnote 64 Tacitus went one step further still when he reported the view that Junian Latins were in essence still in their slave shackles, i.e. subject to the continued bonds of slavery: uelut uinclo seruitutis attineri.Footnote 65
Pliny's successful intercession with Trajan on behalf of the three Junian Latins over whom he inherited the rights of patronage provides both a historical example and a literary model for the award of ciuitas to informally freed slaves of the type parodied in the third manumission scene in the Cena—i.e. by Imperial grant. But Pliny's correspondence with Trajan concerning these Junian Latins is quite seriously different in a number of crucial ways from the picture sketched in the Cena. In his letter, Pliny sets himself up as a facilitator for the acquisition of the freedom that comes with citizenship. And his action is actively embedded in the Imperial structures within which he works and to which he contributes, under Trajan. The exchange lacks any sense of ambiguity. Pliny appears as measured, controlled, sober and humane in his dealings with these Junian Latins. And so does Trajan. Just as in other parts of his correspondence, Pliny creates and celebrates a particular image of emperor and senator that is framed by specific ‘imperial virtues’:Footnote 66 here, Trajan is associated with indulgentia, fitting with Pliny's sketch of the man from Italica in Spain as a ‘good emperor’, whilst Pliny himself shies away from anything immodicum, choosing instead to adhere to his moderatio. In general, in Book 10, Pliny works hard to elaborate his own role vis-à-vis the emperor, framed by a sustained effort ‘to preserve his self-image by reinforcing the distinction between the good senator and the bad senator’.Footnote 67 And the choice to include these letters in his published correspondence works to create an image of manumission in general, and Junian Latinity in particular, that is safely and appropriately wedged between the emperor and his official: the Plinian letters concerned with the fate of Junian Latins offer, like the rest of Book 10, what G. Woolf terms ‘an upbeat view of the Roman world’.Footnote 68
Freedmen, including Junian Latins, constitute a recurrent feature in Pliny's exchange with Trajan. Twelve of these are named in Book 10 (and another six in the earlier books), spread across thirteen of the 124 letters that make Book 10 (and six in the earlier books).Footnote 69 Of these named freedmen, the single largest group is that made up of Junian Latins—seven in total.Footnote 70 In contrast, only three slaves are named in the whole of the Plinian correspondence.Footnote 71 A. Gonzalès concluded therefore that ‘l'impression qui se dégage est celle d'une grande présence du monde des affranchis dans l'entourage immédiat ou élargi de Pline’.Footnote 72 Whatever the realistic backdrop, it is plain that Pliny allocates to freedmen a vital role in his correspondence with Trajan—and assigns to himself, as briefly stated above, the seminal role in their acquisition of Roman citizenship. Indeed, Pliny carefully crafts his role to culminate in the final stage of their journey to ciuitas: Gonzalès consequently contends that Pliny ‘arrive, en quelque sorte, à l’étape ultime de cette promotion, celle de l'accès à la citoyenneté romaine’—and that this Plinian perspective characterizes Pliny as the key to the creation of ciuitas: ‘De ce point de vue, son rôle est essentiel.’Footnote 73 Put differently, C. Plinius L.f. Ouf(entina) Caecilius Secundus, the senator on Imperial duty, is the agent through which the libertas of the Roman citizen is created, thereby uplifting the affected individuals from the fiction of freedom that is Junian Latinity. Trimalchio, in gross contrast, helps to create this fiction, be it by accident or through a seeming loss of control, drunk and uninhibited.
Slavery (and, in consequence, libertas) is of course more generally critical to Pliny's sketch of empire. One example may suffice here. Earlier on in his published correspondence, Pliny employed the specific topic of slave and estate-owner as a means to construct Imperial praise: both in his letter to his mother-in-law about a possible future ‘estate swap’, as in his letter to Plinius Paternus about a group of slaves that had been bought for him, Pliny aims to create what S.E. Hoffer has called an ‘ideal world of the harmonious strife of cooperation between ranks, between slave and free, and between republican Senate and imperial Princeps’.Footnote 74 The Plinian discourse on slavery serves to sketch a model for the ideal empire under Imperial government. Indeed, slavery is a central, even uniting theme in Pliny's correspondence.Footnote 75 And Pliny's Junian Latins are crucial in this sketch of the benefits of (good) government. Pliny's handling of Junian Latinity not only ends, as we saw, with the acquisition of Roman ciuitas, but is moreover characterized by a number of positive attributes exemplified by senator and emperor, as well as an image of Roman imperial government that is well-ordered, reliable and secure:Footnote 76 Plinian buon governo clashes outright with the sketch of Junian Latinity in the Cena that is characterized by chaos, surprise and uncertainty.
The matter that shaped both Pliny's exchange with Trajan and the Cena’s manumission scenes is a preoccupation with the quality of the freedom awarded to informally freed slaves and, hence, the nature of Roman libertas more generally. Roman discourse on slavery and freedom was obviously not restricted to Pliny's letters and the Cena, and both texts would have had multiple intertextual and conceptual sparring partners.Footnote 77 But their focus on Junian Latinity is so strong as to suggest a particular relationship between the Plinian correspondence and the Cena that would merit further detailed scrutiny to throw properly into relief the proposed interplay. That the interplay is significant can be documented swiftly through a line that concludes one of the letters discussed above—with perhaps surprising consequences. For the three Junian Latins over whom Pliny acquired the right of patronage and for whom he solicits Roman ciuitas by special decree of the emperor are C. Valerius Aper, C. Valerius Dionysius and C. Valerius Astraeus—the boar, the god of wine and the one from the stars:Footnote 78
sunt autem pro quibus peto: C. Valerius Astraeus, C. Valerius Dionysius, C. Valerius Aper.
The ones for which I ask are Gaius Valerius Astraeus, Gaius Valerius Dionysius and Gaius Valerius Aper.
The onomastic interplay is striking; but it is also unsettling as regards the traditional dating of the Satyricon. For if modern scholarship were not obsessed with a Neronian date for the Satyricon, would one not read Trimalchio's ‘emancipatory’ actions as a deliberate perversion of Pliny's neat model of the relationship between slavery, freedom, citizenship, the emperor and his official? However important or unimportant we consider the Plinian correspondence in the intellectual universe of his days—which has implications for our view of the letters’ attractiveness for (later) allusion—it would be difficult to argue that Pliny, measured, controlled, sober and humane as he depicts himself in his letters to Trajan about the three informally freed slaves, made fun of an earlier text by showcasing three Junian Latins in his correspondence with the emperor, at the beginning of the second century a.d., slaves whose cognomina moreover overlapped incidentally with the names of the three Junian Latins created in the Cena. It would be equally difficult to propose that C. Valerius Paulinus thought it funny to name three of his slaves after the three manumission scenes in the Cena, and that these three men somehow moved on as a bundle into Pliny's patronage. These would be forced arguments.Footnote 79 Coincidence is not a persuasive alternative either. It is much more natural to think that the author of the Satyricon deliberately played on the model of Imperial self-representation offered in Pliny's letters in order to pursue to theatrical perfection the goal of staging the fiction that is Roman libertas—and to do so exactly at the intersection between the different shades of freedom. The learned dinner-guest would have sat in anticipation to catch the falling star after the manumissions of the aper and Dionysus made clear what—or rather who—was to be expected next.Footnote 80
V. CONCLUSIONS
The crafty staging of the three manumissions in the Cena Trimalchionis constitutes one of the finest onomastic plays in Latin literature. But, playing with names is not an activity that is unique to the Cena. Varro most famously named the four interlocutors who assembled at the start of the third book of his De re rustica after birds: Cornelius Merula, Fircellius Pavo, Minucius Pica and Marcus Petronius Passer.Footnote 81 Pliny, too, followed this ‘onomastic’ tradition. As I. Marchesi has shown, the names of the two men to whom Pliny's first and last letters are addressed in Books 1 and 9 respectively—Septicius Clarus and Pedanius Fuscus—are meaningful; the names provide the formal model for the play on light and darkness that is offered in the Plinian description of his day from dawn to dusk: ‘(i)t is a particularly refined onomastic game, one deeply indebted to poetic techniques of allusion’.Footnote 82 Horace, of course, had been there before.Footnote 83 But the novelty in the Plinian version consists in underscoring Pliny's vision of the well-ordered and focussed unit, where everything has its due place and meaning, and where night and day, private and public, otium and negotium complement one another in perfect style.Footnote 84 And what better place to take the mickey out of Pliny's harmonizing Imperial gaze than through an onomastic game that exposes as playfully as brutally the Plinian artifice of the very best of empires and the fairest of governments in Book 10, and to do so right at the point where it hurt most—i.e. the senatorial construction (literally in the case of the three Junian Latins!) of the libertas of the Roman citizen?
If this argument is accepted, there are enormous repercussions for our view of the date of the Satyricon. Should Aper, Dionysius and Astraeus have been known figures outwith Pliny's correspondence, the new terminus post quem for the date of the Satyricon might reasonably be set around a.d. 100. More likely, perhaps, and better-fitting with the literary contexts that we are dealing with in the first instance, is the public dissemination of the three men's fates through Pliny's letters. Thus, depending on the view one takes of Pliny's career and the publication dates of his correspondence, the new terminus post quem for the date of the Satyricon must be a.d. 111, on a ‘low count’, i.e. the earliest suggested date for the publication of the letter in question.Footnote 85 More realistic still, and taking full note of issues of time over the required editorial work and the letters’ circulation, as well as of the speed with which the relevant parts of the Cena could have been written thereafter, it may be safer to put the new terminus post quem a couple of years thereafter, say a.d. 115.Footnote 86
Whether the date of composition of the Cena fell into the reign of Trajan, or later, is a question that lies outwith the scope of the present inquiry. Similarly, it is not my aim here to explore the type of intertextual readings that led W.-j. Yeh to argue for Flavian influence on the Satyricon, and R. Martin for the identification of Pliny's lector Encolpius as the text's author, or even for authorship shared by an ‘atelier des écrivains’, possibly including the Younger Pliny himself, and even Tacitus.Footnote 87 But the first half of the second century a.d. makes for a refreshing new starting point to study the Satyricon in the context of other texts of that period that explore, classify and define the idea of libertas. The obvious sparring partner (amongst the historians) is indeed Tacitus (whose comment on Junian Latins may by now have acquired an interesting new flavour). Logically, a full comparison with Pliny's letters is equally called for: to read, for instance, the Cena as a text written after the Plinian rebuke of Septicius Clarus and the accompanying diverse dinner descriptions will not just be fun, but will lead to numerous new insights.Footnote 88 But there is also substantial scope for comparative analyses of much earlier Latin literature with a Republican stance, including the historians, as well as the products of uniquely special episodes in Rome's transition from Republic to Empire: the overlap between the Augustan claim in the Res Gestae to have liberated the Republic—in libertatem uindicaui—with Encolpius’ description of the boar's release cannot be coincidence.Footnote 89 And then there is the wealth of Imperial literature, which has been central in earlier critiques of a Neronian dating, as recently again for J. Henderson who, following Martin, has rightly stressed the Cena’s potential borrowing from Martial:Footnote 90 the ‘Dinner with Zoilus’ is an obvious starting point to explore the Cena’s intertextual allusions to Martial; likewise, the amanuensis Demetrius’ acquaintance with the waters of the underworld upon his manumission deserves greater comparative study with Trimalchio's aforementioned aquam liberam, and its implications for the portrayal of libertas well over a century after the advent of Imperial government at Rome.Footnote 91
There is, then, much work ahead if we are to contextualize the Satyricon in general, and the Cena in particular, in the sea of Latin and Greek literature of the second century of Imperial rule—and best without a chronological ceiling anywhere in the so-called High Empire. But before the rush starts to identify Trimalchio's (not so) pretty boy with Antinous, or our puer speciosus with Juvenal's puer delicatus Bromium,Footnote 92 it should be stressed that the purpose of new analyses cannot consist in exchanging Nero with (for example) Hadrian (and so forth), but that they must aim at the creation of a richer literary history, including what Laird called ‘a fuller picture of the Latin accommodation of Greek material’—and to rethink some important aspects of Roman cultural, social and political identities of these and earlier periods. And, ultimately, this effort must entail putting greater trust in our knowledge of the literature and history of the period than in some spurious identification of author and of date. And if we do, we will no doubt come to appreciate the Cena’s exploration of the themes of slavery and freedom ever less as the tired mockery of a ‘freedmen's milieu’ that we currently favour, but, more likely, in much the same way in which we appreciate the use of these themes in many other authors, i.e. as what C.L. Whitton called ‘a productive source of literary inspiration’ and as a ‘powerful metaphor in social and political discourse’.Footnote 93 It is not less likely that we will come to appreciate the Cena itself as a ‘senatorial’ (or, ‘Imperial’) project,Footnote 94 just like Pliny's letters—albeit deconstructive in mode,Footnote 95 i.e. not directed at the establishment and maintenance of the new public transcript under Imperial government,Footnote 96 but at the satirical ridicule precisely of such efforts. Regardless, however, of how we come to understand the specific consequences in detail, one thing may be regarded as certain already; and that is that the arbiter elegantiae of Nero referred to in Tacitus’ Annals cannot have been our text's author, nor any other figure from the Neronian period—however ‘perverse’ this thought may be. Whatever the time left for Trimalchio to live, time is up for what V. Rimell has called ‘(t)he Satyricon’s Neronian over-consumption’:Footnote 97 the excess has been ours, not that of the text.
In awarding Dionysus and his conseruus (as well as the boar) their liberty the way he did, Trimalchio placed the newly made freedmen quite distinctly below himself on the legal and social ladder.Footnote 98 And in so doing, he reinforced that ladder, actively maintaining the traditional social hierarchies.Footnote 99 Rimell wrote that ‘libertas, as it is enacted and discussed in the Satyricon, is plagued by paradox’.Footnote 100 And this paradox is brought out to perfection in the manumissions of the ‘star performer’, the god of wine and the boar, who, contrary to being completely free after their actual or proverbial grab of the freedom cap, will remain, like the ‘ambitious contemporary writing’ discussed by Rimell, subject to ‘the constraints of the past’ and ‘continued enslavement’.Footnote 101 Anyone knowledgeable enough about slave emancipation would have picked up on the differentiation between the freedman Trimalchio, on the one hand, and the slaves (and pig) freed ‘on stage’, on the other, through the manumission mode employed.Footnote 102
As opposed, then, to staging an act of undue liberality or a growing lack of control, leading to a suspension of the normal protocols of social interaction that is indicative of a Saturnalian world-view and an open society, the Cena’s ‘personified’ metamorphoses mirror to perfection the ‘principle of doubleness, contrariety, paradox’:Footnote 103 Trimalchio loses and gains (control) at one and the same time. And the harmonizing drift seen by much modern scholarship in the relations between master and slaves in the Cena, along with the elision of all types of freed statuses with each other (as well as with those of the free), begins to crumble too, if the reader brings with him or her not only Bodel's ‘accoutrements of literary learning’ but also a ‘complement of the contemporary world’ that includes the law:Footnote 104 the ius cenae (Sat. 35.7) gives what is dished up for us its most distinctive flavour.Footnote 105 Trimalchio did not so much lose his control upon the manumission of Dionysus and the acrobat as the obligation to feed and clothe these slaves, expecting to recover into his patrimony the fruits of these freedmen's labour upon their deaths. It appears, then, that the princeps libertinorum remains after all G.B. Conte's ‘real victor of the Cena’Footnote 106 on the occasion of slave emancipation.
None of the above is to deny that Trimalchio, too, was influenced by his servile past—whatever his display of authority and control over those freed ‘on stage’. There exist, in other words, attributes that Trimalchio possesses in common with his Junian Latins: some shared elements. But the metamorphoses foregrounded here act as a sharp reminder of the flexibility of thought that is expressed throughout the Cena; and for the diversity and variability of freedmen statuses—social and legal—that our author's imagination was able to stage: evidence for the depiction of a ‘class’, its ‘mentality’ or ‘milieu’, these are not. What this tells us about the application of such concepts and terms onto what must be the most opulent dinner party in Latin literature and its highly idiosyncratic characters can be summarized in good Trimalchian fashion then: si factum non est, nihil est.
