Trimalchio's Coming of Age

RECENTLY M. D. REEVE HAS ARGUED that when Trimalchio says annos quattuordecim fui he means fourteen; the accusative annos he cites Anth. Lat. 15 SB (= 28 Riese), line 3 annos ludere te decem decebit with Shackleton Bailey's note ad loc. (i.e. decem annos natum) and shows that in Petronius' day duration was normally expressed with the ablative case.1 T. Wade Richardson, finding the linguistic evidence inconclusive, defends the conventional interpretation for fourteen years on the grounds that context and setting demand it.2 As my colleague, Professor Shackleton Bailey, notes, Horace Carm. 4.1.6 circa lustra decem adds weight to Reeve's argument, but Richardson rightly objects to the resulting meaning in Petronius, fourteen, since it seems to imply that service ad delicias lasted only a year. When grammar and sense are in conflict, often the text is at fault, and here the glosses femina and domini betray the interpolator's hand. When and how long did Trimalchio play master's pet? Richardson suggests that Trimalchio's service could have extended from the age of seven, say, ... to twenty-one, but it is perhaps worth noting that the oldest male delicium whose age we know died at eighteen.3 More to the point, on Richardson's interpretation the number fourteen seems

Coming out · Sociology · Classical Antiquity Studies · Gender Studies · Historical and Literary Analyses · History · Linguistics and language evolution

• Roman Prose and Poetry

  Open Access•Thomas K Hubbard•Cambridge History of Gay and…•2014

  Add to list

• Homo inter homines sum – The importance of age for freedmen’s construction of masculinity in Late Republican and Early Imperial Rome

  Open Access•Lisa Hagelin•Eugesta•2020

  Add to list