History and fiction are each replete with examples of fabulously wealthy individuals whose riches, in the end, bring them neither happiness nor genuine, lasting respect. All D’Evelyn juniors meet such a fictional character in Jay Gatsby, the title character in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, who exhausts his questionably obtained fortune in hedonistic seaside revels and finds that it does not avail him in his goal of reuniting with his lost love, Daisy.
Some know that Fitzgerald had in mind an ancient exemplar of a rich man ostentatiously pouring forth his riches without gaining the success he craves. That exemplar is a character named Trimalchio, featured in the first century B.C. novel The Satyricon by the Roman author Gaius Petronius Arbiter. Latin 4 students read portions of this ancient work in the original Latin. As I introduce this work to them, I note that Fitzgerald consideredTrimalchio and Trimalchio in West Egg as early working titles for The Great Gatsby. Indeed, students sometimes bring to my attention this line from Chapter 7 of Fitzgerald’s novel: “It was when curiosity about Gatsby was at its highest that the lights in his house failed to go on one Saturday night—and, as obscurely as it had begun, his career as Trimalchio was over.” Latin students gain deep insight into the Trimalchio, the exemplar himself, finding that the original fellow (a freed slave who has struck it rich and won the favor of a corrupt emperor,and who then uses his wealth to draw both attention and admirers to himself) is deluded into thinking that his fortune will bring him both adulation (from his slaves, his wife, and his guests alike) and escape from his pathological fear of death, a doom which no treasure can prevent.
When students in Latin 4 read about Trimalchio’s vain effort to buy popularity and lasting greatness in his society, they note that his desire to provide his guests with the “high life,” when combined with his pathologies, leads to a dinner party that is a facsimile of the pagan Tartarus. Tartarus is where those who committed major crimes in this life are punished with poetically appropriate torments in the afterlife. As in Gatsby’s novel, Trimalchio’s guests, drawn to splendor and magnificence, find not lasting pleasure, but rather lingering torment. Trimalchio’s house rules forbid anyone to leave before he is ready to dismiss them, and as the evening wears on, Trimalchio compels his guest to attend him and entertain him in his tortuously hot bathhouse (think of a combination hot tub and sauna). Lured by their greed and their sycophantic desire to please the rich man, his guests allow their vices to drive them into painful and humiliating games and behaviors. As Matthew Hoang, a current AP Latin student put it in an essay last year, “Trimalchio may have been portrayed as a man full of riches and a generous host. But in reality [his] party only resembled the endless eternity in hell with Trimalchio as Pluto. [Petronius] illustrates the big idea that wealth may not give you eternal bliss in the end, but only doom you to the fires of hell.” In great irony, Trimalchio’s wealth cannot remove fear of his own death and consequently he drives his willing guests, blinded by desire for pleasure and luxury, into an earthly facsimile of damnation.
This story has echoed through eternity. It can be heard in the present and will no doubt be worth studying hereafter. Students who read Petronius’ Trimalchio and Fitzgerald’s Gatsby know that the allure of wealth creates a timeless plot that will entwine human lives again, potentially now, potentially, hereafter. One hopes that these students are prepared by their study not to be lost to the Siren song of fabulous riches.
The PHurrowed Brow 