The Satyricon — Complete.

Down the byways of the Roman world stumble a pair of unruly companions, lurching from one scrape to the next through a society drunk on food, money, and pleasure, in one of antiquity's most scandalous and dazzling books.

What it's about

Attributed to Petronius, an arbiter of taste at the court of Nero, the Satyricon survives in fragments that follow the misadventures of disreputable young men roaming the cities of the early Roman Empire. Its most celebrated section is a lavish banquet thrown by the vulgar, newly rich freedman Trimalchio, a set piece of grotesque excess and social comedy. Around it wind episodes of low intrigue, rivalry, seduction, and farce, told in a supple mixture of prose and verse. The result is a picaresque, satirical panorama of Roman life seen from its underside, teeming with tricksters, gluttons, poets, and frauds.

Themes

The work is a merciless satire on greed, gluttony, pretension, and the corruptions of wealth. It mocks the vulgarity of the self-made rich and the pretensions of would-be sophisticates, while relishing every appetite it exposes. Beneath the comedy runs a sharp observation of a society given over to excess, and a delight in language, storytelling, and the sheer human spectacle of folly.

Why it still matters

The Satyricon is one of the earliest surviving works of prose fiction and a founding text of the picaresque and satirical traditions. Trimalchio's feast has echoed through literature ever since, an enduring image of nouveau-riche vulgarity. As a startlingly frank and funny window onto everyday Roman life, and as a masterpiece of comic realism, it remains vivid, subversive, and unlike almost anything else from the ancient world.

Who it's for

Readers curious about the classical world in its earthy, unbuttoned reality will relish it, as will lovers of satire and comic fiction. It suits those who enjoy bold, irreverent literature and who want to meet the ancestor of the picaresque novel at its wickedly entertaining source.