By Katherine Page

Mundus vult decipi, ergo decipiatur.

A camera pans to a blond-haired man standing in a Roman bath, gazing upon a graffiti-covered wall. He is wrapped in a dirt colored chiton. He is talking to himself. Encolpius. He is talking about his lost lover, Giton. Another man enters. Ascyltus. He is hiding in the shadows, drenched in sweat, rolling around in the dirt, and recalling the tale of how he stole Giton out from under Encolpius. The two encounter each other upon a large stone staircase. They immediately exchange blows.

When imagining Rome, there is a specific image that has likely been forced into the mind: white polished stone, marble columns, statues with expressive, vivid faces, men huddled together in a Senate room, clad in togas. In the center, one man speaks with booming, senatorial authority. An idea of Western exceptionalism. A learned society. A romanticized version, to appease the lovers of the “past”.

In reality, the zeitgeist of Rome could best be described with the scene of Encolpius and Giton. Two men. Encolpius and Ascyltus. Sweaty. Angry. They scream and yell, exchanging blows amidst a bathroom of naked men. The sound of slapping skin reverberates in the room. Ascyltus locks his opponent's neck in the crook of his elbow. Encolpius breaks free. They grapple with each other, shove each other, landing on the floor in a wrathful, raving heap: all over their shared “lover”, Giton, a young boy who can best be described as a sex slave.

This scene, and the context of it, feels suffocating. It is suffocating physically. The sequence is too close, too loud, and too sensual. The lack of distance and the focus on skin make the audience feel dirty. It replaces the clean, intellectual idea of Rome. This is further reinforced with the emphasis on the ownership of Giton. The men dirty themselves over the honor of owning a boy. It reflects their position as citizens. In starting his movie this way, Fellini pushes against the idea of order and pristine marble representing Rome. He exposes its friction through the friction of the struggle.

Giton is introduced to the audience only a couple of minutes after the fight. Encolpius finds out he was sold to an actor, and then discovers his “lover” performing in the Emperor’s Miracle— a play. An uneasy fanfare drowns the scene as this actor, Vernacchio, appears.

His backdrop is an eerie stone slab, with cracks engulfing it. Vernacchio is clad in a swinish, pink costume. He is a pig—uncomfortably pink. He has on pink blush, a pink mask, a swishing tale. He places a fly on his tongue and eats it. Another curtain is drawn, a mime appears, and a prostitute enters the room, offering herself to the crowd. The men in the crowd bark at her. They are dogs. The camera immediately cuts back to the stage, abandoning the story of the lupa. A slave enters the stage, Vernacchio chops his hand off with an axe, and replaces it with a fake golden one.

Finally, finally, Giton enters. Fake clouds part a reveal the young boy. He is dressed as Eros— Cupid — with a gold wreath, gold bow, and a clean, pristine white toga.

What is startling about this scene, beyond the purposeful shock value, is that the director of Satyricon, Fellini, completely fabricated it. The original version of Satyricon was written in the 1st century AD by Gaius Petronius, a courtier in the Roman court. In his version, there is no such thing as the Emperor’s Miracle. There is no Vernacchio. There is no dismemberment. Giton is not costumed as Eros. In fact, in the original, Giton is not even suggested to be a slave or even to lack autonomy. Despite being a boy and his lover a man, the inherent power structures between them are hardly acknowledged in the original version. Yet Fellini is obsessed with it.

Fellini lived in Rome for all of his adult life, from the 1930s to his death in the 1990s. In all likelihood, he visited Roman ruins, and if not deliberately, he encountered them in his day-to-day. An old Italian man, cigarette in hand, looking at the broken-down stone through Western society's picturesque lens. The way that we are all taught to think of the city of Rome.

Fellini can hear the wind as it whips through the columns. The forum in the afternoon is equally quiet and loud. Tourists meander about thoughtlessly, talking and laughing in hushed tones as if the ruins were a museum. The plastic plaques make it seem like one, standing out against the limestone and tufa. The chain-linked boundaries— the ones that separate you from the more fragile areas— are juxtaposed against the gravel and dust. Fellini notices this contrast. He sees the space’s fragmentary nature. The ruins inundate a false sense of understanding. They fill the visitor’s heads with half-baked, incomplete stories of the past. They only show the best of the best — the parts of Roman society that were deliberate enough to be preserved.

Fellini, then, is forced to fill the gaps of history. He can piece together a narrative from Petronius—his version is fragmented too—but so much has been lost. And thus, the cracks in Rome we fill with pristine white marble. In the director’s chair, he fabricates a new scene of Rome: a labyrinth.

Encolpius is back on screen. He has lost Giton again. He enters the Labryinth, aiming to play the hero. He will slay the gladiator, meant to represent the Minotaur, and appease the gods. The scene is composed of beige walls that extend endlessly down a forboding path. The place feels suffocated and obscured as Encolpius kicks up dust during his trek. Narrow halls engulf the man. He moves cautiously through the space, gripping onto his source of light.

Eventually, Encolpius does meet the gladiator who is clad in a large, horned helmet. He will not win this fight. He is scrawn and pathetic. As Encolpius begs for his life, the gladiator is moved by his eloquence in speech, deciding to spare his life. “This is the speech of an educated young man,” he says. “I won’t kill him.” Swiftly, the crowd erupts into laughter— satiated— and gifts Encolpius a young woman to lie with. He does.

The Labryinth scene feels almost comforting. Or, at least, it does when juxtaposed with the fly-eating pig man. The narrative is more “correct” and better fits our contemporary understanding of Rome. Encolpius is a hero through learnedness, despite being unable to fight. His actions are rewarded with a beautiful woman. He is the paradigm of the Western ideal. Power through education. Power through status.

Fellini asks the viewer to lean into the heroic myth. But be also asks us to lean into the chaos. The oscillation is intentional. A chaotic feeling that takes advantage of idealization. This is how Fellini wants Rome to exist. This is likely how it actually existed. Satyricon forces its viewer to face theatrical reality, to be a witness to this intervention, and understand Rome as we imagine it as an invention. We imagine senators where there were bodies. Philosophy where there was hunger. Order where there was noise, panem, et circenses. ■