The Roman ‘Amicitia’ between Invention and Normalization: A Study in Historical Anthropology

Abstract

This paper explores a series of representations of amicitia, the roman category that expressed partially what is modernly understood as friendship. For this purpose, the Satyricon of Petronius, a fictional and satirical text written in the first century Common Era, is used as document. This paper seeks to demonstrate that the category amicitia was used in the document in an ambiguous way: on the one hand, as a device that enables the invention of a particular way of homosocial life; on the other hand, as a device that expresses equally a process of normalization. The amicitia, therefore, can be understood as simultaneously inventive and normalizing.