PETRONIUS

PETRONIUS. In the surviving manuscript, the authorship of the Latin picaresque novel Satyrica is credited to "Petronius Arbiter." Most scholars believe (although conclusive evidence is lacking) that this is Gaius (or Titus) Petronius, who served the Roman emperor Nero as Arbiter Elegantiae (judge of elegance, or director of entertainment). He fell from the emperor's favor and was ordered to commit suicide in A.D. 66. The historian Tacitus describes the courtier's death in his Annals (book 18, sections 18–19).

The Satyrica is a novel of low life in Roman Italy, centering on the narrator Encolpius and his boyfriend Giton. The author may seem to celebrate—he certainly does not condemn—his characters' amoral lifestyle: they are usually penniless and often involved in disreputable sexual adventures.

In medieval Europe the Satyrica was a secret classic. No complete copy survived to modern times; we have only fragments. The longest surviving episode (sections 26–78), important for food history, is known as Cena Trimalchionis, or 'Trimalchio's dinner'. This immensely rich former slave regales his guests (including Encolpius) with food and conversation intended to display urbanity but more truly betraying empty pretentiousness. The main course is a roast pig, served as if still whole. In fact it had been gutted normally, and afterward stuffed with cooked sausages, which look like (and are made from) intestines: a clever, but tasteless, presentational trick. The wine is labeled "opimian, one hundred years old," but at the date of the fictional dinner any surviving Italian wines of the famous opimian vintage were 180 years old and almost undrinkable: such contradictions are meant to reveal the host's ignorance of gastronomy. Almost every item in the menu has some satirical undertone. Cleverly balancing between naive astonishment and cynical disdain, the narrator tells us a lot about gastronomy and dining customs under the early empire. Featured among the hors d'oeuvres at Trimalchio's dinner, dormice (roasted, dipped in honey and rolled in poppy seeds) will forever remain typical of Roman cuisine.

See also Rome and the Roman Empire .

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Courtney, Edward. A Companion to Petronius. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001.

Petronius. The Satyricon. Translated by William Arrowsmith. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1959.

Petronius. Satyrica. Translated by R. Bracht Branham and Daniel Kinney. London: Dent, 1996; Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997.

Tacitus. The Annals of Imperial Rome. Translated by Michael Grant. Harmondsworth and Baltimore: Penguin, 1956.

Andrew Dalby

Petronius , d. c.AD 66, Roman satirist, known as Petronius Arbiter because of his now generally accepted identity with Gaius Petronius, to whom Tacitus refers as arbiter elegantiae in the court of Nero. According to Tacitus, Petronius served first as proconsul, then as consul of Bithynia. He is remembered chiefly, however, as an indolent and profligate lover of luxury. When Tigellinus, a rival for the favor of Nero, caused the arrest of Petronius, the latter ended his own life, at Cumae, by slashing his veins. He made dying a leisurely procedure, attended by festivity among his associates. To him is accredited the authorship of a satirical work, Petronii arbitri satyricon, a romance with skillful delineation of characters, written in prose interspersed with verse. Parts of the 15th and 16th books have been preserved. Among the surviving fragments the most complete and valuable section is the Cena Trimalchionis ( Trimalchio's Dinner ), presenting a humorous episode of vulgar display on the part of a man whose great wealth is newly acquired. These satires furnish a vivid study of the life and manners of the time in a sustained, connected example of the colloquial language. The Latin style of Petronius is among the best of its period.

Bibliography: See translations by J. P. Sullivan (1986) and W. Arrowsmith (1987); study by N. Slater (1990).

Petronius, traditionally identified with the Gaius Petronius Arbiter who, having been one of Nero's favourites, was forced to commit suicide ad 65. He was the author of the Satyricon, a realistic novel of low life, sexually explicit but written in a pure and elegant Latin interspersed with verses and containing much parody; only excerpts have survived, the most striking of which are the description of a dinner given by a rich freedman (Cena Trimalchionis), a poem on the Civil War, and a story, The Matron of Ephesus.

Petronius (d. c.ad 66) Roman writer, assumed writer of the Satyricon, a humorous tale giving vivid glimpses of contemporary society. He committed suicide when accused of plotting against Emperor Nero.

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