Cena Trimalchionis: The man behind the mask

This article re-examines the figure of Trimalchio in Petronius’ Cena Trimalchionis, arguing against the enduring tendency to dismiss him as a purely grotesque parody of the nouveau riche. Through close analysis of the banquet’s spectacles, narrative instability, and Encolpius’ unreliable focalisation, it is argued that Trimalchio’s excesses function as performative self-fashioning rooted in freedman status anxiety, Roman social hierarchy, and social liminality. Rather than mere buffoonery, Trimalchio’s world of illusion exposes the fragility of social hierarchies and implicates the reader in the text’s unsettling play between ridicule, identification, and self-recognition.