Questioni conviviali: osservazioni sui triclini di Trimalchione

This article addresses some questions about the interpretation, material culture, and text, of the Cena Trimalchionis. It deals with the locus novo more primus reserved for the host (31, 8), an extravagant position that may allude to a Greek way of dining, which was coming back into vogue with the spread of a new kind of couch, the so-called stibadium (II). The key in- formation is also re-examined in order to provide a plausible – albeit conveyed by a subjective description – reconstruction of the arrangement of the other guests: Hermeros reclines near the host, like Nomentanus in the Cena Nasidieni; Fortunata reclines to the right of Scintilla, as the expression in gremio makes clear; the libertini locus is probably to be identified with the medius in imo; Croesus perhaps sits ad fulcrum (III). At least seventeen people take part in the dinner: this number seems excessive, but documentary and archaeological evidence shows that it is actually not (IV). Conjectures are also formulated about Habinnas’ request that For- tunata recline for the comissatio, the last part of the banquet (V), which will be continued in a second triclinium (73, 5). In this last passage the expression ita ut supra is probably an early interpolation, which refers to a similar change of triclinium in Quartilla’s episode (VI).