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A NOTE ON TRIMALCHIO'S THREE (EQUALS TWO) LIBRARIES1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 March 2017

Kirk Freudenburg
Kirk Freudenburg*
Affiliation:
Yale University
*
Kirk.Freudenburg@yale.edu
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Extract

At Petron. Sat. 48.4 Trimalchio makes a famous boast about owning three libraries:

tres bibliothecas habeo, unam Graecam, alteram Latinam.

I have three libraries: one Greek, another Latin.

Information

Type
Shorter Notes
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 67 , Issue 1 , May 2017 , pp. 323 - 327
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Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 2017 

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Footnotes

1

Sincere thanks are owed to Bruce Gibson and to the anonymous CQ reader for providing comments and helpful criticisms. This paper is much better for their efforts, and any mistakes or misstatements that remain in it are entirely my responsibility.

References

2 Tilebomenus, Jo. Caius [Jacques Mentel] (ed.), Anekdoton ex Petronii Arbitri Satirico (Paris, 1664)Google Scholar.

3 Bücheler, F. (ed.), Petronii Arbitri Satirarum Reliquiae (Berlin, 1862)Google Scholar; Müller, K. (ed.), Petronius Satyricon Reliquiae (Munich and Leipzig, 2003 4)Google Scholar; Smith, M. (ed.), Petronii Arbitri Cena Trimalchionis (Oxford, 1975)Google Scholar; Öberg, J. (ed.), Petronius Cena Trimalchionis. A New Critical Edition (Stockholm, 1999)Google Scholar; Ernout, A. (ed.), Pétrone: Le Satiricon (Paris, 1958 4)Google Scholar; Sage, E. and Gilleland, B. (edd.), Petronius: The Satiricon (New York, 1969 2)Google Scholar; Schönberger, O. (ed. and trans.), Petron Satyrgeschichten (Berlin, 1992)Google Scholar. Schmeling's text of Petronius is forthcoming. His case for tres appears in Schmeling, G., A Commentary on the Satyrica of Petronius (Oxford, 2011)Google Scholar, ad loc.

4 Schönberger (n. 3), 283.

5 Schnur, H. (ed. and trans.), Satyricon. Ein römischer Schelmenroman (Stuttgart, 1968), 211Google Scholar: ‘Welcher Witz hier beabsichtigt ist, ist unklar.’

6 Baldwin, B., ‘Editing Petronius: methods and examples,’ AClass 31 (1988), 37–50 Google Scholar, at 45.

7 As an ‘absurd reading, and so probably correct’, see Sedgwick, W., The Cena Trimalchionis of Petronius (Oxford, 1950)Google Scholar, ad loc. Fuller elaborations of Sedgwick's ‘absurdist’ interpretation have been developed by Starr, R., ‘Trimalchio's libraries’, Hermes 115 (1987), 252–3Google Scholar, and Slater, N., Reading Petronius (Baltimore and London, 1990), 67Google Scholar n. 37.

8 See Geiger, J. and Rosen, H., ‘Osca bybliotheca?’, in Herman, J. and Rosen, H. (edd.), Petroniana: Gedenkschrift für Hubert Petersmann (Heidelberg, 2003), 123–5Google Scholar.

9 Schmeling (n. 3), 205, referring to Smith (n. 3), ad loc.: ‘bibliotheca sometimes means little more than a bookcase with its contents’.

10 Adamik, B., ‘ TRES BIBLIOTHECAS HABEO, VNAM GRAECAM, ALTERAM LATINAM: textkritische, philologische und soziolinguistische Interpretation von Petrons Satyricon 48.4’, Acta Ant. Hung. 45 (2005), 133–42Google Scholar, at 133.

11 Starr (n. 7), 252: ‘a wealthy Roman generally spoke of both his Greek books and his Latin books as composing a single library’. He goes on to point out that the plural designation bibliothecae tends to be used not of private collections but of the big public libraries of the early Empire: ‘[Trimalchio] makes the extraordinary claim that his collections find their parallel only in the imperial libraries’ (253). Taking a slightly different tack is Smith (n. 3), ad loc.: ‘Trimalchio boasts of possessing what a better-educated person would take for granted.’

12 Further on the presumed transmission-history that accounts for a change from duas/II to III/tres, see Adamik (n. 10), 135.

13 For two-item lists using alter–alter, Adamik cites Petron. Sat. 20.4, 27.3, 30.3-4 and 40.3. For longer lists beginning with unus–alter, he cites Petron. Sat. 47.8 and 60.8.

14 Pellegrino, C., ‘A proposito delle tre biblioteche de Trimalchione e dei uitia di Massa (Petron. Satyr. 48.4 e 68.8)’, Sileno 7 (1981), 187–201 Google Scholar.

15 Adamik (n. 10), 142: ‘Während der Konversation mit dem hochgebildeten Rhetor Agamemnon wurde sein Minderwertigkeitskomplex aktiviert, der dann den Abschluss seiner Aufzählung bzw. die Nennung seiner dritten Bibliothek, gewiss von einer seitens der römischen Elite verachteten Sprache, verhindert hat.’

16 On eloquentia as a binary (Greek and Latin) concept in Roman thought, see Gibson, B., Statius, Silvae 5 (Oxford, 2006)Google Scholar on 5.3.90: gemina plangat Facundia lingua (300).

17 Two further examples (of hundreds): Ov. Tr. 1.3.15-16 alloquor extremum maestos abiturus amicos, | qui modo de multis unus et alter erat; Cic. Verr. 2.75 dicit unus et alter breuiter.