In piscibus (sc. nascuntur) obsonatores et rhetores: thus Trimalchio concludes the sign-by-sign interpretation he gives in Petr. 39 of the astrological repositorium that has been served some chapters before (35.1-5). While the obsonatores - ‘buyers of fish' (TLL 9.234.49-70), from ὀΨωνέω, ‘buy fish and other dainties' (LSJ s.v.) - pose no problem, the rhetores have mystified interpreters since Peter Burman, who frankly confessed: ‘Causam non video, cum pisces vulgo muti habeantur, rhetores vero loquaces. Fortasse corrupta vox. An vectores aut veteratores? Haereo.

Korenjak, Martin

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INPISCIBUS OBSONATORES ET RHETORES: PETR. 39.13*Inpiscibus (sc. nascuntur) obsonatores et rhetores: thus Trimalchio concludes the sign-by-sign interpretation he gives in Petr. 39 of the astrological repositorium that has beenserved some chapters before (35.1-5). While the obsonatores - 'buyers offish' (TLL9.234.49-70), from 6i{Jioveaj, 'buy fish and other dainties' (LSJ s.v.) - pose no problem,'the rhetores have mystified interpreters since Peter Burman, who frankly confessed:'Causam non video, cum pisces vulgo muti habeantur,2 rhetores vero loquaces. Fortassecorrupta vox. An vectores aut veteratores? Haereo.'The text is certainly sound. Similar associations of a certain kind of person with aseemingly unrelated or even contrary sign can be found earlier in the catalogue: cf.Petr. 39.10 in uirgine ... fugitiui et compediti and especially 39.11 in sagittariostrabones? Moreover, rhetores corresponds to scholastici in 39.5 (see below), and thestructure of the phrase exactly matches 39.11 in scorpione uenenarii et percussoresand the immediately preceding in aquario copones et cucurbitae. An interpretativesolution is called for.Many commentators4 have tried to solve the riddle by adducing parallels fromtechnical astrological literature. This, however, will not do for several reasons. First,the parallels cited are not exact because they are not valid for the whole of Pisces, butonly for particular days, actually the 19th or the 13th to 16th (Firm. Mat. 8.30.7, Vett.Val. 1.3.57), or because the persons born under the sign will not be rhetores, but onlyprone to (malicious) gossip (Man. 4.573-6, Hippolyt. Haer. 4.26.2, Heph. Astr. 3.9.15,16.5); the best parallel that has shown up until now, puer natus in signo piscis ...eloquens erit, still speaks of eloquence only in general terms and comes from afifteenth-century manuscript.5 Secondly, the loci similes are matched by loci contrariithat classify the sign itself as mute (Vett. Val. 1.2.78, Firm. Mat. 2.10.5, Heph. Astr.1.1.216, Teucer ap. Rhetor, in Corp. Cod. Astr. 7.211.4) and predict that people bornunder it will stammer or speak slowly (Vett. Val. 2.36.19, Heph. Astr. 2.2.39). Inaddition, ancient astrological treatises provide the reader with such an immense amountof possible professions and characteristics for each sign of the zodiac that the worth ofthe inexact parallels cited above approximates to zero. But the worst thing is thatTrimalchio does not seem to be concerned with scientific astrology at all. As SvenI would like to thank Manuel Baumbach, Gerald Bechtle, Florian Schaffenrath, Stefan Tilg and theanonymous readers for their helpful comments and criticisms.Cf. first de Vreese (1927) 203-7, then e.g. Eriksson (1956) 68; Smith (1975) 91.Cf. Engemann (1969) 1007-8.On these passages, see e.g. de Vreese (1927) 39-82; Eriksson (1956) 61-2, 64-5.De Vreese (1927) 215; Smith (1975) 92; Pellegrino (1975) 281; Grondo'na (1980) 25 n. 61.Cod. Vat. Urb. Lat. 1398 (Svenberg (1963) 99.15-20).Core terms of use, available at https:/www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1750270500000518Downloaded from https:/www.cambridge.org/core. University of Basel Library, on 11 Jul 2017 at 17:27:08, subject to the CambridgeIN PISCIBUS OBSONATORES ETRHETORES: PETR. 39.13 135Eriksson has shown, his catalogue in Petr. 39 is a splendid example of popularastrology,6 improvised according to the principles of similarity and association and notrefraining from allusions to the present situation and to the members of the party.7 Soone would do better to abandon the technical treatises and rather search for anexplanation based on popular ideas about fish and rhetores or capable of providing alink to the actual situation of the Cena.That is what Jacques de Vreese tries to do when he points to the Platonic idea ofrhetoric as a counterpart to the art of cooking, which underlies Encolpius' denigrationof contemporary rhetoric in Petr. 1.3-2.1, and to the metaphor in 3.4 that likensthe rhetor'?, catching of disciples to fishing.8 He also points out that the rhetoresrefer, just like the opening mention of scholastici (39.5), in some way to Agamemnonand his friends, so that the catalogue is framed by allusions to the learned guests, anidea applied more specifically by Eriksson: the scholastici should be related toEncolpius and Ascyltus, the rhetores to Agamemnon.9 Whereas this last observationis certainly correct - whether the allusions constitute compliments to the hospitesdocti, or, as seems more probable, are jokes at their expense -,10 the hints at Plato'scomparison and at the fishing-metaphor cannot be considered equally useful. As tothe first, the idea of rhetoric as cooking cannot be evoked by the combination ofPisces and rhetores in itself. De Vreese seems to think that the obsonatores functionas a kind of missing link, but they could only do so on his misguided (see above)assumption that obsonatores can also mean 'cooks'.1' The hint at 3.4 looks promisingat first sight, since the speaker there is Agamemnon himself, and his fishing-simileis preceded by another one (3.3) that involves the hunt for cenas diuitum by fictiadulatores and announces his own parasitic role in the Cena Trimalchionis.nNevertheless it turns out to be problematic, too, since the application of thefishing-metaphor to rhetores hunting for disciples seems to be unique in ancient6 Eriksson (1956) 38-84. His dichotomy of popular vs. scientific astrology may be a bit too strict, sincethe first certainly receives some inspiration from the second, but on the whole his point is well made: cf.the following examples from Petr. 39 that seem to have no parallels whatsoever in any scientific astro-logical treatise: born under aries: people with caput durum, scholastici, arietilli (39.5); under taurus: quise ipsi pascunr (6); under gemini: colei (7); under cancer. Trimalchio himself - ideo multis pedibus stoet in mari et in terra multa possideo (8); under aquarius: copones, cucurkitae (12); under pisces:obsonatores (13).7 For this last point cf. especially the scholastici (Petr. 39.5, see below); qui se ipsi pascunt (6), a hint 'atthe contrast between himself (sc. Trimalchio) and his guests, who are glad to accept dinner at his expense'(Smith (1975) 90; cf. also Pellegrino (1975) 274); Trimalchio himself (8); the cataphagae (9), a hint atthe voracity of the guests?; and the mulieres (9), 'mit Riicksicht auf die anwesenden Damen?' (Eriksson(1956) 61, with a general remark on the technique).8 De Vreese (1927) 207-13; cf. later Eriksson (1956) 68-9; Pellegrino (1975) 281; Walsh (1996) 169;Courtney (2001) 89." De Vreese (1927) 213, 227, 244; Eriksson (1956) 56.58.10 The scholastici are coupled with people having frontem expudoratum and with arietilli, possibly'ungrateful persons' (Friedlander (1906) 244); for the rhetores see below. Cf. for both possibilities deVreese (1927) 232-3; Eriksson (1956) 56, 61; for the second one Courtney (2001) 88-9.1 • Cf. de Vreese (1927) 203-7, 211.'- Noted first, it seems, by Walsh (1970) 85.Core terms of use, available at https:/www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1750270500000518Downloaded from https:/www.cambridge.org/core. University of Basel Library, on 11 Jul 2017 at 17:27:08, subject to the Cambridge136 MARTIN KORENJAKliterature.l3 If we ask for a minimum of realism in Petronius' rendering of Trimalchio'sspeech, we cannot accept that the idea should readily come to Trimalchio's mind, letalone that his guests should understand the resulting allusion.14 Can we concedethat realism may be temporarily suspended and assume that for a moment Petroniushimself speaks in Trimalchio's voice, addressing not the guests, but his own audience,who have read 3.4 and thus can decipher the allusion? Maybe - but he really wouldgive them a hard time. In order to understand the allusion, his readers would have toremember 3.4 at no less (and possibly much more) than two books' distance15 and toestablish a mental link between it and 39.13 with nothing but the coupling of fish andrhetoric in two apparently different contexts to start from.l6 That someone should havebeen able to do so, strains credulity. If an easier explanation can be found, it should bepreferred.In the search for such an explanation it seems profitable to go back to what alreadystruck Burman as the crux of the passage: the idea that eloquent rhetores should beborn under the sign of mute fish. Following this approach, a solution can indeed befound that respects the limits of Trimalchio's, his guests' and the readers' intellectualcapacities and additionally specifies the above-mentioned reference to the situation ofthe Cena. In antiquity, it was not rare for a speaker to break down in court or on otheroccasions through extreme stage fright so that he could no longer deliver his speech.17Accordingly, there existed a standardjoke about rhetoresig who proved unable to speak- either at the decisive moment or even in general. For example, in Mart. 8.7 an angryclient complains to his lawyer: Hoc agere est causas, hoc dicere, Cinna, diserte, I horis,Cinna, decem dicere uerba nouem? I Sed modo clepsydras ingenti uoce petisti Iquattuor. O quantum, Cinna, tacere potes! In AP 11.145 a certain Sextus is ridiculed:ELKCOV f| Ze£oTou |ie\eTg, Ze^aToc 8e aiwrrcr I eiKwv r\v pf|Tup, 6 8e pf|Twp eiKovoc. Ten more epigrams from the Anthologia graeca (AP 11.149, 151, API. 317-18),Fishing is, of course, used as a metaphor for various other human activities: cf. Poschl etal. (1964)476-7s.v. 'Fischfang'. The other two cases where catching fish means catching disciples (Ev. Matt. 4.19 andEv. Marc. 1.17, D.L. 2.67) have nothing to do with rhetoric. Neither are they connected with each othernor to the present instance: each of them is prompted by its own very specific context (Schmid (1955)446-7).A similar objection could already have been raised against Trimalchio's alleged Platonic inspiration: Platois surely beyond his and his audience's intellectual horizon.According to the convincing reconstruction of Harrison (1998) 583-4, the first book of the Cena originallyconsisted of Petr. 26.7-46.8. Harrison furthermore claims an average length of about 20 Teubner pagesfor the single books of the original Satyricon (583). 3.4 is at a distance of 18 pages from 26.7 in Miiller(2003), but since the text of 3.4-26.7 contains many long lacunae, the original distance must have beenmuch more than 20 Teubner pages - how much more, there is no way to tell. On the whole problem ofthe Satyricon's book-division see Miiller (2003) XXI-I1I.Petr. 39.13 contains no verbal echo of 3.4.Korenjak (2000) 108-14; see especially the examples listed at 108 n. 38.Rhetor I priTojp can mean 'teacher of rhetoric' as well as 'public speaker', the first notion beingpredominant in Latin, the latter in Greek (OLD s.v. a, b; LSJs.v. 1, 4). The joke is made indiscriminatelyabout members of both groups. Of the examples cited below. Martial speaks about lawyers, Ausoniusabout a teacher; the pr|Topec of the epigrams from the Anthologia graeca remain unspecified.Core terms of use, available at https:/www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1750270500000518Downloaded from https:/www.cambridge.org/core. University of Basel Library, on 11 Jul 2017 at 17:27:08, subject to the CambridgeIN P1SCIBUS OBSONATORES ET RHETORES: PETR. 39.13 137Martial (8.17) and Ausonius (Ep. 45-7, 51-2 Green) can be cited as further evidencefor the topos. To be sure, these texts do not compare a mute rhetor to a fish, but theidea is nonetheless close at hand. In Luc. Pise. 51 another kind of intellectual, namelya stupid philosopher, is styled as a mute fish. In Artem. 2.14 a sophist's dreaming ofbig fish predicts professional failure, because fish are mute. And the Akathistos hymn17.1 explicitly formulates the comparison: pf|Topoce TToXucf>06yyoi>c we ix6i>acdcjxovouc opcodev em croi, 0eoTOKe. If, as it seems likely, Trimalchio ridiculesAgamemnon and his profession along these lines, this would produce an exact parallelto his immediately preceding remark in aquario copones (Petr. 39.12), which pokesfun at the proverbial propensity of innkeepers to dilute their wine with water:19 in bothcases, a profession would be satirised by presupposing that its representatives do theopposite of what they are supposed to do. More important, Trimalchio would deftlycriticise the actual conduct of Agamemnon, who has not uttered a single word sincethe beginning of the Cena,10 displaying a behaviour judged rude and offensive inantiquity.21 In fact, he will be censured openly for that very reason some paragraphslater (but probably still in the same book)22 by Echion: ... tu, qui potes loquere, mmloquis ... pauperorum uerba derides (46.1)!INSTITUT FtiR KLASSISCHE MARTIN KORENJAKPHILOLOGIE DER UNIVERSITAT BERNCf. Burinan (1743) ad loc; de Vreese (1927) 182-3; Smith (1975)91; Pellegrino (1975) 279-80. ProbablyTrimalchio also wants to highlight his own generous distribution of wine among the guests (Petr. 39.2.52.7). As with the mute rhetores, the topos is often found in epigrams, especially in Martial: cf. Mart.1.56, 3.57, 9.98; C1L 4.3948.This stands out. Since the actual beginning of the Cena at Petr. 31.3 nearly half of the text has been directspeech, and apart from Trimalchio himself (33.1-2, 5; 34.1,2,5, 7, 10; 35.6-7; 36.5,7; 39.1-15), fourother (groups of) speakers have been named: Encolpius (31.5, 36.7, 37.1), a uetus conuiua (33.8), anunspecified group of persons (34.5). and Encolpius' neighbour (36.8; 37.2-38.16). Agamemnon's attitudeseems especially strange when compared to that of his young and inexperienced friend Encolpius. Withone exception (65.5), the old rhetor will also stay quiet during the rest of the Cena. Shey (1971) 83 rightlyremarks: 'in the Cena, Agamemnon's silence is noteworthy.'On silence at dinner as uncivil behaviour cf. Plut. Lye. 20.3, Mor. 147f, 218b, 660b; also Mor. 682a, 694b(obligation to contribute to the conversation). But Agamemnon has his reasons to stay quiet: cf. Petr.48.4-8 (Trimalchio asks him to narrate what he has declaimed today, but interrupts the answer with oneof his witticisms); 50.2-4 (addresses him but does not even bother to wait for an answer); 52.7(Agamemnon knows his acclamations - and not his words - will secure another invitation).See above, n. 15.Core terms of use, available at https:/www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1750270500000518Downloaded from https:/www.cambridge.org/core. University of Basel Library, on 11 Jul 2017 at 17:27:08, subject to the Cambridge138 MARTIN KORENJAKBIBLIOGRAPHYBurman, P. (1743) T. Petronii Arbitri Satyricon quae supersunt cum doctonim virorum commenlariis (2nd.ed.), Amsterdam.Courtney, E. (2001) A companion to Petronius, Oxford,de Vreese, J. (1927) Petron 39 und die Astrologie, Amsterdam.Engemann, J. (1969) 'Fisch, Fischer, Fischfang', RAC 7, 959-1097.Eriksson, S. (1956) Wochentagsgotter, Mond und Tierkreis. Laienastrologie in der romischen Kaiserzeit.Stockholm.Friedlander, P. (1906) Petronii Cena Trimalchionis (2nd. ed.), Leipzig.Grondona, M. (1980) La religione e la superstizione nella Cena Trimalchionis, Brussels.Harrison, S. J. (1998) 'Dividing the dinner: book divisions in Petronius' Cena Trimalchionis', CQ 48,580-5.Korenjak, M. (2000) Publikum und Redner. Ihre Interaktion in der sophistischen Rhetorik der Kaiserzeit.Munich.Miiller, K. (2003) Petronii Arbitri Satyricon reliquiae. Editio iterata correctior editionis quartae(MCMXCV), Munich and Leipzig.Pellegrino, C. (1975) Petronii Arbitri Satyricon, Rome.Poschl., V. et al. (1964) Bibliographie zur antiken Bildersprache, Heidelberg.Schmid, W. (1955) 'Die Netze des Seelenfangers. Zur Jagdmetaphorik im philosophischen Protreptikos desDemetrius Lacon (Pap. Here. 831)', PP 10, 440-7Shey, H. J. (1971) 'Petronius and Plato's Gorgias', CB 47, 81^1.Smith, M. S. (1975) Petronii Arbitri Cena Trimalchionis, Oxford.Svenberg, E. (1963) Lunaria et zodiologia latina, Goteborg.Walsh, P. G. (1970) The Roman novel, Cambridge.(1996) Petronius, The Satyricon, Oxford.Core terms of use, available at https:/www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1750270500000518Downloaded from https:/www.cambridge.org/core. University of Basel Library, on 11 Jul 2017 at 17:27:08, subject to the Cambridge

In piscibus obsonatores et rhetores: Petr. 39.13

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