Apples to Apples: Forbidden Fruit in Petronius’s Cena Trimalchionis*

summary:

Apples in classical antiquity were often given as love gifts and could also be employed as erotic magic intended to produce sexual desire against the recipient’s will. Trimalchio’s apples are likewise both desirable and deceptive and suggest erotic danger. They also form a thematic network strengthening the Cena’s katabasis motifs. Since Priapus protects garden fruit and punishes fruit thieves, dangerous apples (along with the god’s pastry epiphany) reinforce the theme of Priapus’s wrath and suggest that Petronius may have structured the Satyrica around the conceit that the novel is a metaphorical assortment of first fruits (lanx satura) for Priapus.