Bodies in Motion, Bodies at Rest

This essay explores fictionalized meals in Roman satire, with a focus on Petronius's Satyricon and Lucian's Dialogues ofthe Courtesans. I am intrigued by the central role meals play in these texts, and especially the attention to bodily performances that mark them. Where philosophical symposia highlight diners' restrained corporeal displays, and consumption of food, drink, and sex, is minimized, and even avoided, satirical meals scenes redound with depictions of eating, drinking, defecating, vomiting, fighting, and sex. Moreover, it is in these same texts, which highlight the excessive convergence of bodies at the meal—too much talking, too much food, too many slaves, too much emotion, too much singing, just plain too much— that slaves and courtesans become central actors in the convivial scene. What, I ask, accounts for these ribald meals in Roman satire? What might they indicate about meal culture in the Roman world? I am interested, then, in examining bodily performances as they are inscribed in these texts. My argument cautions against reading them simply as windows onto the social realities of ancient dining practices. 1 Yet I argue that the representations of the meal reveal how status and power were negotiated through subtle corporeal performance: sitting, standing, reclining, and the like. It is this aspect of meal culture that renders it a fitting literary scene for these satirists' rhetorical projects aimed, ultimately, to critique Roman notions of elite subjectivity.2 KeywordsBodily PerformanceBodily PracticeRoman WorldStage MasculinityElite SubjectivityThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves

Aesthetics · Argument (complex analysis) · Art · Consumption (sociology) · Elite · Literature · Negotiation · Political science · Politics · Power (physics) · Rhetorical question · Social science · Sociology · Classical Antiquity Studies · Gender Studies · History

• Food and Meals

  Soham Al-Suadi•Oxford Handbook of the Synoptic…•2023

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