Manières de tyran à table de la satire latine : l’institutionalisation de l’excès dans la convivialité romaine

Abstract

Latin satire is a primary source for learning about table behaviour in Ancient Rome. Far from being a faithful portrayal of reality, the representation of the pleasures of the cena (banquet) in this literary genre is based on exaggeration and hyperbole with an aim at stigmatizing corrupt behaviour that draws in and endangers the citizenry. For the cena, which is a socializing ritual, necessarily includes citizens, or free men, that leave at the entrance of the triclinium (dining room) their duties and functions (depositing their rings, symbols of their rank, their shoes and their togas, ornaments of the forum) to don a loose vestment that permits bodily abandon. In this way, the dinner ritual is at once civilizing and menacing, for the freed body of the individual is in limbo and risks, at every instance, infamia or dishonour. The political risk of the Roman citizen during the banquet is not the least of his dangers, and the satirical literature of the time pays particular attention to the portrayal of gourmands – simple citizens, famous people, even emperors – beset by the appetite and behaviour of a tyrant. The tyrant is a senatorial elaboration of the anti-citizen, a troubling figure that exerts power by submitting it to his – libidinous – passions and who, at table, acts as an institutionalized foil, upsetting the codes of ars bene cenandi (the art of pleasant dining) to put in its place a new society of conviviality founded on the principles of violence.