Quotidie peius: un liberto rimpiange il passato (Petronio 44).

Abstract

Quotidie peius: a freedman regrets the past.

The commonplace of the praise of the past is used, for its ironic potential,
in order to characterize Ganymede, one of the freedmen in Petronius’ Cena
Trimalchionis. The analysis of the speech of this laudator temporis acti
shows the relationship between this staid topic of conversation and the
cogency of rhetoric that drives his language from popular features towards
a higher stylistic level, with sudden changes of register that produce an
ironic effect and represent a particular variant within the Petronian realism.

annamaria.cotrozzi@unipi.it