The Satyricon

Throughout the text, various characters pursue pleasure and seek opportunities to enjoy and satiate themselves. Petronius wryly satirizes this obsession with indulgence and excess by repeatedly showing characters becoming overwhelmed by too much of a good thing. This theme is clearly visible during the feast at Trimalchio’s house, when guests are served course after course of lavish food. None of it is simple, nourishing, or even elegant; instead, Trimalchio serves gaudy and excessive culinary displays designed to be showy rather than appetizing. Encolpius’s sense of being overwhelmed and disgusted is revealed in his comments that “we were blissfully unaware that we were still toiling up the hill” (37), meaning that they were still in the early stages of the dinner, and “the very recollection of [savories], believe me, makes me puke” (53). Encolpius is so overwhelmed by the excessive and ostentatious food that he uses a metaphor comparing trying to finish the feast to climbing a steep hill.

The excess of the food, in both quantity and variety, mirrors Trimalchio’s excessive boasting about his wealth, and lack of refined manners. The combination makes Encolpius increasingly desperate to escape from the dinner, to the extent that he tries to run away when the guests move to the bathhouse, and then describes his eventual departure as leaving “as rapidly as if there really were a fire” (66).