PETRONIUS ARBITER, GAIUS

died AD 66 original name Titus Petronius Niger reputed author of the Satyricon, a literary portrait of Roman society of the 1st century AD. Additional reading Discussion of the problems of identification and authorship, with bibliographies of the older literature, is in J.P. Sullivan, The Satyricon of Petronius: A Literary Study (1968); and P.G. Walsh, The Roman Novel (1970). A biographical reconstruction is G. Bagnani's Arbiter of Elegance: A Study of the Life and Works of C. Petronius (1954). Major Works: The Satyricon (1st century AD; The Satyricon of Titus Petronius Arbiter, "Loeb Series," 1913; "Penguin Classics Series," 1965, the former with both Latin text and English translation, and the latter in English translation), containing the episode of the "Cena Trimalchionis" (Dinner at Trimalchio's, 1925 and 1950) and the anecdote known as the Widow of Ephesus. The Martin S. Smith edition, Cena Trimalchionis (i.e., Satyricon, 1976), includes a bibliography of scholarship from 1909.