Trimalchio

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Trimalchio is a character in the Roman "novel" The Satyricon by Petronius. Trimalchio is a freed man who through hard work and perseverance has attained power and wealth. He is gaudy and fat. He is known for throwing lavish dinner parties, where his numerous servants bring course after course of exotic delicacies, such as live birds sewn up inside a pig and a dish to represent every sign of the zodiac. The Satyricon has a lengthy description of Trimalchio's proposed tomb, which is incredibly ostentatious and lavish.

The original title of F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby was "Trimalchio in West Egg." One of Fitzgerald's complete earlier drafts of the book was published under the name Trimalchio: An Early Version of The Great Gatsby.

Fitzgerald makes a reference to Trimalchio in the introduction to Chapter 7 of The Great Gatsby:

It was when curiosity about Gatsby was at its highest that the lights in his house failed to go on one Saturday night-and, as obscurely as it had begun, his career as Trimalchio was over.

Trimalchio is also referred to in the novel Pompeii by Robert Harris, where the character Numerius Popidius Ampliatus, also a freed slave who has become wealthy, throws a great dinner party where there is too much for everyone to eat. A guest secretly compares him to Trimalchio, to the great amusement of another.

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