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Ecphrasis and cultural identification in Petronius' art gallery

2007; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 23; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/02666286.2007.10435785

1943-2178

Basil Dufallo,

Historical, Religious, and Philosophical Studies

Abstract At section 83 of Petronius' Satyricon, Encolpius enters a wondrous art gallery hung with a variety of paintings. Surveying its contents, he finds himself drawn to what he perceives to be the work of the great Greek masters Zeuxis, Protogenes and Apelles, whom he praises in extravagant terms for their realism. He becomes fixated on images depicting the gods' loves for young boys: ‘In one’, he says, ‘the eagle was carrying the Idaean boy [Ganymede] into the heavens, in another fair Hylas was repelling the shameless Naiad’. ‘Apollo’, he goes on, ‘was condemning his guilty hands [for killing Hyacinthus], and was adorning his unstrung lyre with the newborn flower’ (Sat. 83.1-4). Both of Encolpius' preferences here — for great Greek artworks and for depictions of boy-love — fit in well with what we have already learned about him by this point in the Satyricon. We know that, along with his ongoing training in Latin rhetoric, the Greek-named Encolpius shares the aspirations — or pretensions — to Greek culture displayed by many others in the Graeca urbs (Greek city) that forms the setting for this part of the text. We know, too, that Encolpius has just lost his boytoy, the young Giton, to his former companion Ascyltos, and has spent three days in agonized seclusion. The paintings Encolpius sees in the gallery prompt him to cry out ‘as though alone’ (83.4 tamquam in solitudine), ‘So, then, love touches even the gods. Jupiter in his heavens did not find an object for his love, and descending to earth to transgress, nevertheless did no one any harm. The nymph who preyed on Hylas would have controlled her love, if she had believed that Hercules would come to prohibit it. Apollo called the shade of his boy back in the form of a flower, and all the other myths, too, have told of embraces without a rival. But I bound to myself a companion more cruel than Lycurgus’ (8304-6).