Freedmen and Satire: Petronius

The Roman World

Nero’s subversive courtier, Petronius, is almost certainly the Petronius Arbiter who wrote the satirical work Satyricon, one of the most interesting and bizarre pieces of Roman literature which survives. This novel deals with the nefarious adventures and sexual exploits of three characters travelling through southern Italy, and unusually in Roman literature, primarily involves characters of low status. Freedmen are oftencentral, particularly in the ‘Dinner of Trimalchio’ episode, which satirises the extraordinarily rich but uneducated and vulgar freedman, Trimalchio, whose tyrannical behaviour and aspirations to greatness have led some to see him as a satirical version of Nero himself.

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