Lupus... extra fabulam. Il silenzio di Nicerote (Petron. 61, 2)

This article offers a close reading of Petron. 61, 2, focusing on the interplay be-tween Niceros’ silence and his encounter with the wolf/versipellis, as recounted in the meta-diegetic episode of chapters 61, 6 - 62. According to ancient folklore, this creature possesses the power to steal the voice of those who cross its path. The return of speech - marked by Niceros speaking again at the host’s exhortation - may be symbolically linked to the figure of Hermes: god of commerce, psychopomp, and master of communication and logos, with whom Trimalchio is consistently associated in the Satyricon. Following this interpretive thread, one may discern in the sequence a coded design through which the “Hidden Author” subtly reconfigures folkloric motifs of silence and its figures (the wolf/lycanthrope, the god Hermes) within the framework of narrative artifice. The “diegetic mirroring” of narrative material from one diegetic level to another - a phenomenon that recurs throughout the novels in varied forms - serves here to evoke a transversal dynamic central to supernatural literature: its tendency to circumvent the structural constraints of narration in order to enhance plausibility and, by extension, to heighten the unsettling effect on its multiple narratees, both internal and external to the text.