Role-Playing, Reconciliation, and Repetition: Parodies of Peacemaking on the Petronian Ship of State

Abstract The action on board Lichas’s ship in Petronius’s Satyrica presents a rich, repetitive, and multilayered parody of mediation, treaty-making, and the role of emotion in conflict and its aftermath, played out on the most personal level. When Encolpius and Giton are discovered, having accidentally taken passage with Lichas and Tryphaena whom they have egregiously betrayed, the poet Eumolpus seizes the role of mediator and attempts to defend them with an entirely fictitious account of their actions and motivations. His rhetoric only enrages Lichas and produces open warfare on shipboard. Ingenious role-playing by Giton (staging an attempted self-castration) drives Tryphaena to desperate pity and epic parody in appealing for peace, allowing Eumolpus to dictate and conclude a formal treaty among the parties. Initial performances of the actions and emotions of peacemaking amidst a halcyon calm at sea seem successful, but jealousies quickly reemerge, requiring further efforts by Eumolpus to restore harmony. His poetic efforts during the banquet failing, Eumolpus then narrates the story of the Widow of Ephesus, whose misogynistic comedy elicits laughter from all – except for Lichas and Tryphaena. Crosscurrents of jealousy reemerge, and Eumolpus seems to resort to new diplomacy and oaths ( iurat Eumolpus verbis conceptissimis , 113) as the text becomes more fragmentary – and the ship is suddenly overwhelmed and wrecked by storm. Prospects for reconciliation founder with the ship (of state?) and its captain, while the perpetually inventive manipulators of language survive to perform again.