Petronius, Sat. 98.8-9: Giton’s Literary Texture

CARMIGNANI, M. F.

Atlanta

Congreso; I International Colloquium on Intertextuality in Latin Literature; 2023

UNICAMP-UFPR-UNC

From the end of the Cena Trimalchionis in chapter 79, begins a section in Petronius’ Satyricon where the “literary texture” becomes increasingly dense, where one could even speak of a great allusive epic frame (Homeric and Virgilian) in which allusions to and motifs of the Greek novel (both the idealistic and the travel novel), elegy, Roman satire and mime are interwoven. This intricate web of allusions works as a way of characterizing Encolpius, the narrator-protagonist of the novel, masterfully defined by Conte (1996) as a “mythomaniac narrator”: a narrating character who reads the reality around him through the parameters offered by the world of the best known and highest literary models – generally represented by the great figures of the epic, the heroes of the Iliad, the Odyssey and the Aeneid –, but who does not realize the huge gap between himself and that sublime world. However, there is another character who assumes a leading role in these chapters: Giton. This paper deals with the words of Giton in Sat. 98.8-9, whose speech can be read intertextually as a pastiche of Homeric, Virgilian and Ovidian epic elements, but also as an intertextual dialogue with Encolpius' own monologue (Sat. 81.3). Giton’s speech describes him as a scholasticus with very particular characteristics in relation to Encolpius.