Ancient Roman Drama - Literary Criticism, Ancient Roman Literature - Literary Criticism, Ancient Theater - History & Criticism, Society & Culture in Literature, General & Miscellaneous Italian History, Social Marginality

Saturio's Inheritance

Name: Saturio's Inheritance
Author: Elizabeth Ivory Tylawsky
ISBN: 9780820441283

by Elizabeth Ivory Tylawsky

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Overview

The parasite, the flamboyant and ever-hungry character of the Roman stage, had a complicated family tree reaching back to the beggar of the Homeric poems and to the fashionable circles of philosophizing sophists satirized by poets of Old Comedy at Athens. That caricature evolved into the stereotype figure whose jokes, prolixity, and peculiar obsessions continued to mark his Roman descendant many generations later. Along the way the stage figure of the parasite served as a funny and distorting mirror in which to reflect the preoccupations of the masculine society at whose table the parasite constantly endeavored to dine. The parasite was willing to make jokes and to suffer any degree of degradation and ridicule, provided that he got fed: he thus embodied that marginal member of society who lived always on sufferance. From Homer to Plautus the parasite defined the boundary of inclusion or exclusion in society by his precarious position on its outermost edge.

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Booknews

Satorius, the comedic stereotype of the social parasite staged by the Roman playwright Plautus, had literary roots tracing back to the dependents of the household described in Homer's and the lampooning of Socrates by Aristophanes in . Tylawsky (classics, Yale U.) traces the evolution of Satorius' dramatic ancestors, arguing that the parasite served as the personification of the marginalized person in society where access to the table signified recognition in social relationships. The position of the hungry hanger-on on the stage in Ithaca, Samos, Syracuse, and elsewhere demonstrated the way societies perceptions of access to food closely mirrored positions of who was able to distribute power. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)