tangomenas

[Lucus Eques]

I was just reading an Ørberg supplement edition of the Cena Trimalchionis, a delightful narrative. At one point the Alexandrine Trimalchio exclaims, "Ergo diutius uiuit uinum quam homuncio. Quare tangomenas faciamus! Vinum uita est."

In the margin, Ørberg has this:

tangomenas [?]

And I can't help but laugh; we apparently don't know what this word means. Or do we? Doesn't this resemble a Greek participle in the accusative case? It looks like the Greek-speaking Trilmalchio has taken the Latin verb tangere and applied his wonderful Greek tense to it, like a slip of the tongue common of foreigners. But then, what, exactly does this phrase with "tangomenas" mean?

[Hu]

we apparently don't know what this word means.

A common enough occurance with ancient words, considering the fragmentary nature of the literature left to us. If this dialog were using words normally found in everyday speech, it might be more difficult to define.

Doesn't this resemble a Greek participle in the accusative case?

Feminine, yes. Is the -as marked long? The feminine accusative plural mediopassive participle, as a first declension noun, would have long alpha.

If it were this case, though, I assume he would have explained it in the margin.

[TADW_Elessar]

Interesting word, really. I also wrote an article about it in my Latinblog, more or less translating my post here.
I have two Latin-Italian dictionaries here: the first translates "tangomenas facere" as "bere come una spugna" ("to drink like a fish", in italian literally like a "sponge", but actually "mena, ae" seems to mean "small sea-fish"). The second is quite more vague with a "far baldoria" ("to have a good time").
Lewis and Short remain silent...
I can then conclude they don't really know what that means and they only tried to guess. And I decided to play the same game.


The word tangomenas appears only twice in the whole latin corpus. And it is always Petronius who says (Sat. 73):
Tum Trimalchio: "Amici, inquit, hodie servus meus barbatoriam fecit, homo praefiscini frugi et micarius. Itaque tangomenas faciamus et usque in lucem cenemus".
(It is quite evident that this Trimalchio speaks in a very weird manner, also see homuncio).

The "drink like a fish" meaning applies quite well to the first sentence: "So wine lives longer than a li'l man. Let's drink like sponges* then! Wine is life."
*Trimalchio uses a non-Latin idiom, I translate it with a non-English one.

On the other side, we have:
"Let's drink then and let's banquet till dawn."
But this time, one could argue that "cenare" doesn't actually exclude "drinking": Petronius could have said "tangomenas faciamus et in lucem edamus".
Or maybe it is used to strengthen the meaning, and to introduce the new word which, apparently, was unusual even for the latin native speaker...

[cantator]

...we apparently don't know what this word means...

Ave, Lucus:

Sedgwick's excellent Oxford student edition has some interesting notes regarding the word (brackets mine) :

"tangomenas: unknown word: perhaps=teggomenas [Gr] (a mime?); cf. tegge pneumonas (oinoi), Alcaeus, which some read here; 'wet our whistle' is the corresponding Eng. slang"

Trimalchio uses the word again at 73.6 :

"Itaque tangomenas faciamus et usque in lucem cenemus."

The context seems to support the connection to drinking. Btw, the on-line dictionary for the Satyricon simply defines the word as "binge drinking", without comment.

I had a ball reading the Cena, I hope you're enjoying it. And don't forget to watch Fellini's marvelous movie version of the Satyricon, he has some obvious fun with the Cena.

Vale !

[TADW_Elessar]

A friend of mine (and latin research worker) just left an enlightening comment on my weblog, with some more insolitissima verba Petronii.