Encolpius is young, clever, and down on his luck. Chased, robbed, and hopelessly in love with a beautiful boy named Giton, he and his companions stumble through the pleasure cities of ancient Rome, lurching from one outrageous disaster to another — at the mercy of a lust-crazed priestess, a sea captain with a grudge, and a poet who cannot stop reciting. Then they meet Trimalchio: a fabulously wealthy freedman whose endless dinner party is a stupefying spectacle of greed, bad taste, and riotous excess. Written by Petronius, the emperor Nero's 'arbiter of elegance,' The Satyricon is often called the world's first picaresque novel — a wild, funny, and startlingly modern satire of an empire obsessed with money, novelty, and appetite. This faithful modern retelling brings its survivors, schemers, and magnificent fools into vivid life. Part of Timeless Classics.
