Entering the Dining Room

It's worth thinking about the attention Petronius devotes to the entrance to Trimalchio's dining room.  Each doorpost is decorated with fasces cum securibus, rods with axes, and an embolum (hapax legomenon, = rostrum, the beak or prow of a ship), with an inscription stating that Trimalchio's dispensator (a slave who handles money) had given them to Trimalchio, described in the inscription as a sever Augustalis.  In addition to these emblems, there are two tabulae, one with Trimalchio's social calendar (he dines out on the last two days of the year) and one with pictures of the cursum lunae, i.e., the months of the lunar year, and images of the seven planets (or perhaps the deities representing them).  These are the Moon, Mercury, Venus, the Sun, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn.  The seven planetary deities are the gods of the days of the week (with the order being Saturn, Sun, Moon, Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, Venus).  This plaque is thus a calendar, and Encolpius notes that lucky and unlucky days are marked with a stud (bulla).  Thus the entrance to the dining room displays the two things Trimalchio is most obsessed with:  status (indicated by the insignia and social calendar) and time.  Trimalchio's great interest in astronomy/astrology is a recurrent theme.
     The commentators note that Trimalchio has the wrong insignia.  The seviri were a board of six men, usually wealthy freedmen, who oversaw the cult of the emperor.  They received various honors and privileges for their services:  "The seviri, for their part, received various honours, privileges, and an outlet for political dreams, while the emperor gained a reinvigorated loyalty from wealthy and ambitious men, who by virtue of their status as ex-slaves, were ineligible for public office." (Schmeling's commentary).  While the seviri are amply attested in inscriptions, they only appear in a literary setting in the Satyricon.  Seviri were entitled to one lictor, one bundle of fasces, and no axes; rostra, or representations of ship's prows, were displayed by noble Romans who won naval victories, so Cinnamus' gift to Trimalchio is grossly over-inflated.
     Trimalchio also has a slave positioned at the door to ensure that all who enter the dining room do so with their right foot, an exaggeration of the common superstition that journeys must be started and buildings entered with the right (lucky) foot.  In this slapstick scene, you can envision Encolpius, Ascyltos, and Giton all simultaneously lifting their right feet at the slave's command, only to be confronted by another slave who throws himself at their feet to beg them for mercy.  Evidently the three stand on their left feet while he grovels in front of them and explains his situation, then put their feet down and reverse course back into the atrium to ask the dispensator to pardon the slave.  This is one of many situations where slaves are threatened with harsh punishments, only to be forgiven by Trimalchio. "It is an elaborate show:  the one showing mercy is always perceived as a greater man than the one saved." (Schmeling commentary)