'It was when curiosity about Gatsby was at its highest that the lights in his house failed to go on one Saturday night - and, as obscurely as it began, his career as Trimalchio was over.'

Petronius’ Satryicon is a Latin prosimetrum detailing the various mishaps of the unsuspecting protagonist, Encolpius.  The Dinner at Trimalchio episode of the Satyricon is the focus of this post and the subject of AES+F’s digitised panorama.

To give you an idea of how the dinner is about to pan out (spoiler alert), it might be worth letting you know that our protagonist has just escaped an orgy and sadomasochistic torture or as Quartilla likes to call it: an ‘exorcism’. Interested now aren’t you?

The dinner scene itself is a burlesqued display of the bourgeoisie living prevalent in Nero’s reign, and most likely an implicit mockery of good ol’ Nutjob Nero himself. My favourite part is the absurd parade of the first course:

Some extremely elegant hors d’oeuvres were served at this point -by now everyone had taken his place with the exception of Trimalchio, for whom, strangely enough, the place at the top was reserved. The dishes for the first course included an ass of Corinthian bronze with two panniers, white olives on one side and black on the other. Over the ass were two pieces of plate, with Trimalchio’s name and the weight of the silver inscribed on the rims. There were some small iron frames shaped like bridges supporting dormice sprinkled with honey and poppy seed. There were steaming hot sausages too, on a silver gridiron with damsons and pomegranate seeds underneath.

If you got bored halfway through that, then just watch this link here

The 2009 work of AES+F is described on their website as such:

On one hand the atmosphere of ‘The Feast of Trimalchio’ can be seen as bringing together the hotel rituals of leisure and pleasure (massage and golf, the pool and surfing). On the other hand the ‘servants’ are more than attentive service-providers. They are participants in an orgy, bringing to life any fantasy of the ‘masters’, from gastronomic to erotic. At times the ‘masters’ unexpectedly end up in the role of ‘servants’. Both become participants in an orgiastic gala reception, a dinner in the style of Roman saturnalia when slaves, dressed as patricians, reclined at table and their masters, dressed in slaves’ tunics, served them.

Every so often the delights of ‘The Feast of Trimalchio’ are spoiled by catastrophes which encroach on the Global Paradise…

I’m pleased to note that they have obviously read the Satyricon before handling the material; the video captures the harsh juxtaposition of the classes beautifully. The unbridled hedonism of Trimalchio’s feast both lures and disgusts the audience.

At the nucleus of the scene is a man desperate to be the perfect host who, in his fervour, loses sight of the needs of his guests culminating in an explosion of the senses, moral confusion and the swift exit of a mentally violated narrator.

I’m always hesitant to read context onto a situation, but I can’t help but see the parallel between Trimalchio and his feast with Britain and the Olympics. The severe pressure to outperform our competitors both athletically and aesthetically and this incessant need to prove ourselves is making me wish we could all just take a leaf out of Ancient Athens’ book and have naked men wrestle it out for alpha male.

06 Jul This entry was published on July 6, 2012 at 2:10 pm. It’s filed under Art, Photography, Review and tagged Art, Good Read, Greece, Models, Mythology, painting, Photography, Poetry, Rome, Sculpture. Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post.