Slaves Will Be Slaves

Petronius Arbiter, in Trimalchio's Dinner Party, the third chapter of his book Satyricon, mocks the nature of slaves. He was a top official in Rome, namely the "Judge of Taste" in Nero's court (129). Regardless of the responsibilities he had, he was an aristocrat. The history of Rome was written from an aristocratic perspective because they were the ones who had the money, ambition and free time to document history. Petronius believed that slaves are low class, and that a slave that has been set free, id est a freedmen, is still a slave at heart, ergo worthless. Not with all the money in the world could he develop the taste of the upper class. In ancient and modern times alike, money cannot buy a good personality or social sophistication.

While the freeborn Roman boy went to school to learn rhetoric, math, et cetera, the slave boy worked from a very young age. Whether they worked physically, mathematically or sexually, they still worked, which is a prime difference between them and the freeborn (although the poor freeborn worked, they often were displaced by slaves because slaves were free labor). Sarah Ruden, the translator of this edition of Satyricon, comments that freedmen were like immigrants in America today. Only the particularly ambitious won their freedom. This process has a modern equivalent in which only the most ambitious immigrants tend to make it to American soil. This process of "self-selection" weeds out the lazy (155). Slaves that had won their freedom had worked very hard from a very early age and thus had the experience needed to be successful and amass fortunes. However, what the freedmen could not possibly have learned from that kind of experience is the behavior and manners of a respectful Roman aristocrat. Personality is naturally instilled by living among others in your social class. One cannot completely learn a foreign culture unless he is adopted at an early age by a family in that culture. Although slaves lived with families, they performed completely different functions ergo had completely difference experiences and upbringings. Unfortunately for the freedmen who that made it and became rich, they were still socially inferior to the freeborn.

Petronius shows that the host of the dinner party, Trimalchio is a crude freedman. He has no respectable virtues. He is cruel to his slaves despite the fact that he was once a slave. He threatens death to those who leave the estate without permission (19). He sexually abuses his pet slave because he was molested as a child by his master (19, 146). He is a social outcast in Roman culture because he was sodomized, however he rationalizes that "it's okay if your master makes you do it" (146). He uses language that a blacksmith might use (23). His wife was a prostitute before he bought her freedom. For the cultured Roman, it would be repulsive to even take bread from her hand, let alone marry her (26).

Some very sublime, perhaps debatable evidence of the thesis is presented by Petronius using a metaphor to express his view that a slave will always be a slave. If a slave is freed, he's still the same person, a low life. Petronius writes a scene where a boar wearing the hat of a freedman is brought into the dining room. It was supposed to be the dinner for the previous night but they "set him free" (29). However, a free boar is still a boar, and now he is dinner. The hat changes nothing. Petronius asserts his personal belief that slaves will be slaves no matter what changes on the outside, they will always be slaves on the inside.

From the viewpoint of the aristocracy, merchants were generally considered to be of a very low class. Trimalchio, which ironically means "prince" in Hebrew (18), gained his freedom because he was an accountant and the sexual servant to both the master and the mistress of the household. He inherited money and freedom when his master died. He amassed great wealth by using that money in trade. Regardless of how great a merchant he was, he was still a merchant and merchants had poor taste, in general. He attempts to mimic the culture and social standing of his social superiors which he had matched or exceeded in wealth from trading, although he has no roots in the upper class. This new money situation is a dilemma for freedmen.

Trimalchio has the general idea of what a dinner party is supposed to be like but he misses the point.