Ecphrasis, Spectacle and Vision: Poetic Reception of the Satyrica in Martial and Statius

J. Mira Seo (University of Michigan)

Throughout the Satyrica but especially in the extended Trimalchio episode, the protagonist, Encolpius, demonstrates his inability to read both artificial spectacle and ‘real events’. On the larger level of the narrative, as Conte (1996) has analyzed, Encolpius proves an unreliable narrator of plot, lacking the “necessary critical awareness” to appreciate his own deluded “mythomaniacal” condition. Similarly, Encolpius’ encounters with spectacle and art, both artificial forms of display, reflect a problematic reception of visual image (Elsner 1993). The astonishment and willful misinterpretation typical of Encolpius in his confrontations with spectacle have been interpreted as satirical of the extravagantly theatrical culture of Nero’s court (Slater 1990, Bartsch 1994, Champlin 2003); despite the explicitly anti-Neronian rhetoric of Martial and Statius, their poetics often establish the same problematic relationship between spectacle and viewer through similar expressions of astonishment and revelation. Martial in the Liber Spectaculorum and especially in his tags for deceptive gifts in the Xenia and Apophoreta frequently incorporates ecphrastic description and astonished surprise, while Statius’ Silvae feature many poems that praise the wondrous spectacle of Domitian’s visual culture (Sil. 1.1, 1.6, 4.2).

This paper discusses the paradigm of Neronian viewing established in Petronius as received and interpreted in the poetry of Martial and Statius. Viewing and participating as an audience was paramount to Nero’s court, and therefore Martial and Statius had to rehabilitate the spectacular in order to adopt this mode of poetic praise. By exploring similarities in themes of visuality and description in the Satyrica and these Flavian poets, this paper seeks to assess to what extent Neronian visuality was recuperated, and how successfully by Martial and Statius. Where and how do these poets draw the line between astonishment and gullibility as an audience? How viable, in a post and therefore anti-Neronian court, is the quality of spectacle, and how unproblematic is the viewer’s role?