Eumolpus is allowed to tell the story of the widow of Ephesus in dashing style; Trimalchio's foolish astrology
has a sharp edge to it (39): anyone born under the sign of the ram, he remarks, has a 'a hard head, a brazen
forehead, sharp horns. Many professors are born under this sign
In the conversation of the guests at Trimalchio's dinner, Petronius deploys a racy colloquial Latin to brilliant
effect. The talk is fast and varied: dour, gossipy, and sentimental. We even catch a foretaste of Sam Weller. '"Oro
te," inquit Echion centonarius, "melius loquere. 'Modo sic, modo sic' inquit rusticus; uarium porcum
pcrdiderat"' (45) ('"Please, please," said Echion the rag-merchant, "don't talk so gloomily. 'There's light patches
and there's dark patches', as the yokel said when he'd lost his spotted pig"').
Trimalchio himself is one of those characters, like Shylock, who ought to be a monster but turns out oddly
endearing; whether Petronius designed this effect is perhaps an open question. His behaviour is self-
contradictory, in this case not because the author has no consistent view of his character but because it is in the
nature of that character to be a mass of inconsistencies. A former slave who has attained enormous, even
preposterous riches (he contemplates buying property in Sicily so that he will be able to travel all the way to
Africa on his own land (48)), he is anxious to play a part, but unable to decide what part to choose.
At one moment he tyrannizes over his slaves, at another he apes the philosophers, declaring that slaves are
human beings and have drunk the same milk as other men. He observes sagely that one should talk culture at
dinner, and treats his guests to an outrageously confused account of the Trojan War; but he cannot forgo the rival
pleasures of inverted snobbery: the epitaph he has composed for himself declares (71), 'Virtuous, brave and true,
he began humbly, left 30,000,000 sesterces, and never listened to a philosopher.' He has a skeleton brought in to
remind him of his mortality (34)-a gesture which would be more impressive were the skeleton not made of
silver. He is superstitious and sentimental, his puns are childishly awful, and his attempts to be stylish are
disastrously vulgar (he uses a silver chamber-pot in public, and then wipes his hands on a slave's head). Some of
his remarks are what Englishmen call Irish: he has cups depicting 'Cassandra's dead children' so skilfully
engraved 'that you would think they were alive' (52); he has told his slaves that he means to free them in his will
'so that my household may love me now just as though I were dead' (71). Constantly he craves affection: 'No one
in my house loves me more,' he says, as he feeds his dog (64). At the end of the feast, now thoroughly drunk, he
decides to rehearse his funeral. Trumpeters are summoned, his shroud fetched, and lying on a heap of cushions
he announces (78), 'Pretend I'm dead. Say something nice.' This is childish behaviour, certainly; perhaps
childlike also. The scene seems an extravagant flourish on Petronius' part to mark the climax of Trimalchio's
feast, so it is sobering to learn from Seneca's letters of a certain Pacuvius who behaved in just such a fashion. It
is Petronius' strength that he is a fantasist who does not lose touch with reality.