L’Omero dei “simposi letterari”, l'Omero della Cena Trimalchionis

Abstract

Expressions, verses and sequences dealt from the Iliad and the Odyssey are the basis of the conversations held in Plato’s and Xenophon’s ‘literary symposia’, representing the privileged repertoire of images and codified situations for both quantity and variety of subjects to which both Socrate and the other characters referred to when they gathered at table, sometimes intervening also on textual exegesis problems. Direct projection of an aural / oral civilization in which the Homeric texts still constitute the tribal ‘encyclopedia’ of the Greek world, the two Symposia reveal their own alterity with respect to the Convivium of the Seven Wise by Plutarch in which the quotations from the two archaic poems now reflect a more bookish and learned practice than an usual conversational practice, so much so as to be introduced by the authorial seal “As Homer says”, being able to dispel any doubts about the authorship of the passages mentioned in the canteen. In turn, a hybridized Homer on an iconographic and literary level, with figurative subjects and executive practices extraneous to the epos will leave Encolpius stunned, exponent of a school education far from the world of freedmen, its behavioral codes, its interests and its tastes. During the Homerists show,offered to the guests (Petr. 59), the scholasticus will attend a staged performance inspired from Homeric dialogues while, in turn, Trimalchio will read a Latin book with chanting voice and then will express personal opinions on the staged fabula and make it intelligible. An unexpected type of ‘Homeric exegesis’, aimed at clarifying the contents of the show and its internal concatenations, besides to the characters that animate the show, will be offered by the amphitryon: an elementary exegesis in its expressive modalities, full of false and distorted mythological representations respect to traditionally performed tasks. In short, a real ‘mediation’ between actio and spectators.