The Satyricon

Throughout the text, various characters pursue pleasure and seek opportunities to enjoy and satiate themselves. Petronius wryly satirizes this obsession with indulgence and excess by repeatedly showing characters becoming overwhelmed by too much of a good thing. This theme is clearly visible during the feast at Trimalchio’s house, when guests are served course after course of lavish food. None of it is simple, nourishing, or even elegant; instead, Trimalchio serves gaudy and excessive culinary displays designed to be showy rather than appetizing. Encolpius’s sense of being overwhelmed and disgusted is revealed in his comments that “we were blissfully unaware that we were still toiling up the hill” (37), meaning that they were still in the early stages of the dinner, and “the very recollection of [savories], believe me, makes me puke” (53). Encolpius is so overwhelmed by the excessive and ostentatious food that he uses a metaphor comparing trying to finish the feast to climbing a steep hill.

The excess of the food, in both quantity and variety, mirrors Trimalchio’s excessive boasting about his wealth, and lack of refined manners. The combination makes Encolpius increasingly desperate to escape from the dinner, to the extent that he tries to run away when the guests move to the bathhouse, and then describes his eventual departure as leaving “as rapidly as if there really were a fire” (66). Encolpius might have enjoyed a more elegant and restrained feast, but the excess that Trimalchio displays leaves him desperate to conclude the visit. The lengthy and interminable nature of the seemingly never-ending party also furthers the theme of excess, such that indulgence and pleasure become a kind of prison rather than a source of enjoyment.

When Encolpius, Giton, and Ascyltus try to sneak out, one of Trimalchio’s servants tells them that “none of our guests is ever let out through the same gate; they come in one way, and go out another” (61). Not only does this quotation imply that a lack of freedom is associated with a life of overindulgence, but it also alludes to the notion of Encolpius being trapped in a kind of hell. In classical mythology, the gate to the underworld was guarded by the three-headed dog Cerberus and marked by a river where a ferryman named Charon took souls across the river from the land of the living to the land of the dead. In this comical scene, including the presence of a dog and water, Encolpius and the others plead to be released from the grotesque underworld of Trimalchio’s banquet, back into the ordinary world of normal life.

Like eating and drinking, sex is also something that characters pursue to excess. During the ritual with Quartilla, her maid, and various other servants, Encolpius, Ascyltus, and Giton are compelled to keep having sex for a long stretch of time, even though they become overwhelmed and exhausted. At one point, when Encolpius notices that Ascyltus is not engaged in any sexual activity, he complains “is Ascyltus the only one in the dining-room enjoying a holiday?” (17). By comparing a rest from sexual activity to a holiday, Encolpius shows that the sex he is having feels like labor rather than a source of enjoyment. Much like with eating during Trimalchio’s feast, sex becomes a tedious exercise when it is carried to excess. Through these representations of eating and sex, Petronius satirizes and criticizes the decadent lifestyle of many elite Romans.