Petronius
c. 27-c. 66 CE
Gaius Petronius Arbiter was the author of the Satyricon, Rome’s great picaresque novel. A number of poems that do not appear in the Satyricon are also ascribed to him: they appear anonymously in a 9th century manuscript, but extracts from two of them are quoted elsewhere as being by Petronius in a work by Fulgentius, a mythographer of the sixth or late fifth century. Petronius was the Emperor Nero’s “arbiter of elegance” until he fell out of favour and died by an elaborate suicide in or around 66 CE.
