‘Feebly fighting back’: Stuprum in Eumolpus’s Pergamene Boy

Abstract

In Petronius’ Satyrica, Eumolpus tells Encolpius the story of the Pergamene Boy, which recounts his seduction of and sexual relationship with a former pupil, the son of a Roman quaestor. The Pergamene Boy has been recognized to parody Plato’s Symposium, and this chapter shows that the narrator Eumolpus strategically presents the events of the story through the literary and cultural lens of Athenian pederasty in order to trivialise and suppress the victimisation of the boy and his family in a Roman legal and social context. This tale is so successful, in fact, that scholarly assessments largely fail to acknowledge that when Eumolpus seduces and has sex with a Roman boy, he is committing stuprum, a legal charge covering unsanctioned sexual relations with Roman boys, women, widows, and girls. I argue that, by privileging Athenian pederastic norms and ignoring Roman sexual mores, Eumolpus’ Pergamene Boy meets the conditions for contributory injustice as defined by Kristie Dotson. By applying the concept of contributory injustice to a literary narrative from ancient Rome, the chapter shows how narration raises epistemological issues related to authority, reliability, and privilege that are particularly relevant for the legal and cultural recognition of sexual violence.