Petronius

Petronius Arbiter

Jan 1913 · W. Heinemann

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PETRONIUS (C. or T. Petronius Arbiter), who is reasonably identified with the author of this famous satiric and satiric novel, was a man of pleasure and of good literary taste who flourished in the times of Claudius (A.D. 41-54) and Nero (A.D. 54-68). As Tacitus describes him, he used to sleep by day, and attend to official duties or to his amusements by night. At one time he was a governor of the province Bithynia in Asia Minor and was also a consul, showing himself a man of vigour when this was required. Later he lapsed into indulgence (or assumed the mask of vice) and became a close friend of Nero, being looked on as a supreme judge or referee of refined taste. Accused by jealous Tigellinus of disloyalty and condemned, with self-opened veins bandaged he conversed lightly with his friends, dined, drowsed, sent to Nero a survey of Nero's sexual deeds, and so died, A.D. 66. The surviving parts of his romance Satyricon (title is not certain) is a medley of philosophy and real life, of prose and verse, held together in a fictitious story of the disreputable adventures of Encolpius and two companions Ascyltus and Giton. In the course of their wanderings they attend a showy and wildly extravagant dinner given by a rich freedman Trimalchio whose guests talk about themselves and life in general. Other incidents are a shipwreck and somewhat lurid proceedings in South Italy. The work is written partly in pure Latin of the 'Silver Age', but sometimes purposely in a more vulgar style; and parodies and otherwise attacks bad taste in literature, pedantry and hollow society.