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  • Published: 30 November 2011
  • ISBN: 9780140448054
  • Imprint: Penguin Classics
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 240
  • RRP: $22.99

The Satyricon




An updated translation of this risqué and comic account of three travellers

The Satyricon is one of the most outrageous and strikingly modern works to have survived from the ancient world. Most likely written by an advisor of Nero, it recounts the adventures of Encolpius and his companions as they travel around Italy, encountering courtesans, priestesses, con men, brothel-keepers, pompous professors ­and, above all, Trimalchio, the nouveau riche millionaire whose debauched feasting and pretentious vulgarity make him one of the great comic characters in literature. Estimated to date from 63 - 65 AD, and only surviving in fragments, The Satyricon nevertheless offers an unmatched satirical portrait of the age of Nero, in all its excesses and chaos.

  • Published: 30 November 2011
  • ISBN: 9780140448054
  • Imprint: Penguin Classics
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 240
  • RRP: $22.99

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About the author

Petronius

Titus Petronius Arbiter is reputedly the author of the Satyricon. According to Tacitus, Petronius' chief talent lay in the pursuit of pleasures, in which he displayed such exquisite refinement that he earned the unofficial title of the emperor Nero's 'arbiter of elegance' (arbiter elegantiae). Court rivalry and jealousy contrived to cast on Petronius the suspicion that he was conspiring against the emperor, and he was ordered to commit suicide in A.D. 66. He gradually bled to death, opening his veins, binding and re- opening them, passing his last hours in social amusement and the composition of a catalogue of Nero's debaucheries.

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