PETRONIUS

:''This article is about the Roman author Petronius. For other uses of the name, see Petronius (disambiguation).''
'Petronius' (ca. 27–66) was a Roman writer of the Neronian age; he was a noted satirist. He is identified with 'Gaius Petronius Arbiter', but the manuscript text of the ''Satyricon'' calls him 'Titus Petronius'.

Contents

Life and work

In fiction

In film

See also

References

External links

Life and work

The historian Tacitus describes a Petronius who was the ''arbiter elegantiae'', "judge of elegance" in the court of the emperor Nero. This Petronius is generally thought to be the same Petronius who is named in manuscripts as author of the ''Satyricon'', a fragmentary novel in Latin describing the adventures of a homosexual pair, Encolpius and Giton. The work itself reveals nothing directly of Petronius' fortunes, position, or even century, so the identification of the author with Nero's courtier must remain speculative. Some lines of Sidonius Apollinaris, from his ''Carmen XXIII'', refer to him and are often taken to imply that he lived and wrote at Massilia. If, however, one accepts the identification of this author with the ''Petronius'' of Tacitus, Nero's courtier, it follows either that he was born in Massilia, or that Sidonius refers to the novel itself and that its scene was partly laid at Massilia.
The chief personages of the story are evidently strangers in the towns of Southern Italy. Their Greek-sounding names (Encolpius, Ascyltos, Giton, etc.) and literary training accord with the characteristics of the old Greek colony in the 1st century. The high position among Latin writers ascribed by Sidonius to Petronius, and the mention of him by Macrobius beside Menander among the humorists, when compared with the absolute silence of Quintilian, Juvenal and Martial, seem adverse to the opinion that the ''Satyricon'' was a work of the age of Nero. But Quintilian was concerned with writers who could be turned to use in the education of an orator.

In fiction

There are many references to and elaborations on Petronius' ''Satyricon'', which can be found there. Petronius himself appears as a character in:

★ the novel ''Quo Vadis'' and its versions, where C. Petronius is the preferred courtier of Nero, using his wit to adulate and mock him at the same time. He is horrified at Nero's burning of Rome.

★ in Robert A. Heinlein's novel ''The Door into Summer'', where the protagonist's cat is named "Petronius the Arbiter".

★ in Jesse Browner's novel ''The Uncertain Hour'', which recounts Petronius' final banquet and suicide (as told by Tacitus, ''Annals'' 16).

★ in Anthony Burgess's novel " The Kingdom of the Wicked", Gaius Petronius appears as a major character, an advisor to Nero.

★ in the Waldorf play, Road to Damascus, where Petronius is Nero's advisor.

In film

★ Fellini Satyricon (1969) is a stylized adaptation of Petronius' novel.

★ In the 1951 film of Quo Vadis, Petronius is portrayed by Leo Genn, for which he was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor.

★ Petronius and his work the Satyricon are mentioned in an episode of the 1950's TV western "Have Gun, Will Travel".

See also

★ Satyricon

★ Supplements to the Satyricon

★ Asteroid 3244 Petronius named after the satirist

References

★

External links

★

★ Latin text of the ''Satyricon'' from The Latin Library