Petronio e la "poetica dei nomi": una nota sul nome del retore Agamennone

This note investigates the possible reasons for the choice of the name of the rhetor Agamemnon, and also of his assistant (antescholanus) Menelaus, in Petronius’ Satyricon. On the one hand, Petronius seems to play with the rhetorical tradition whereby, of the two Atreid brothers, it was Menelaus, not Agamemnon, who had been singled out as a model orator; on the other, the choice can be affected by the fact that Agamemnon was also a declamatory character, the protagonist of a suasoria known from Seneca the Elder’s collection.