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Historical person

Petronius

c. 27–66

Petronius was a Roman writer traditionally identified with a courtier of Nero. The surviving Satyricon offers a fragmented comic narrative of travel, fraud, sexuality and social ambition, including the famous dinner of the freedman Trimalchio.

Petronius also held the offices or ranks of Roman senator, Suffect consul, Roman governor, and consul suffectus. Petronius was born in Massilia, Roman Empire and died in Cumae, Roman Empire.

Margaret George’s Emperor Nero covers the Pisonian conspiracy and the enforced deaths of figures including Seneca, Lucan and Petronius, followed by Poppaea’s death, Nero’s artistic tour of Greece and the final revolts against his government. In Henryk Sienkiewicz’s Quo Vadis, with the help of his cultivated uncle Petronius and the informer Chilo, Vinicius searches for her, but contact with the Christians gradually turns possession into love and forces him to question the violence accepted by Nero’s court. Further fictional perspectives on Petronius can be found in Petronius and Seneca’s The Satyricon and the Apocolocyntosis and Petronius’ The Satyricon.

Periods

Periods linked to Petronius

Roman Satire and Imperial Society50 BCE–150 CE

Series

Historical novels and book series featuring Petronius (2 series)

Penguin Classics: Ancient World in Order

by various authors 32 books 4.6(13,212)

Penguin Classics: Ancient World brings together foundational works of literature, history, philosophy, drama and poetry from the earliest civilisations through classical Greece and Rome. The wider Penguin Classics series began in 1946 with E. V. Rieu’s translation of Homer’s Odyssey, reflecting its original aim of making important texts…

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Nero Series in Order

by Margaret George 2 books 4.0(5,563)

Margaret George’s Nero duology reconstructs the life of Rome’s last Julio-Claudian emperor, beginning with a childhood in which imperial blood makes Nero a target and ending with the collapse of his reign. Told largely through Nero’s own perspective, the series follows his passage through the courts of Caligula…

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Standalone books

Standalone books featuring Petronius (1 book)