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Petronius Arbiter

Petronius Arbiter

c. 27 CE–c. 66 CE · Rome

Petronius (commonly identified with Gaius Petronius, died 66 CE) was a Roman author usually credited with the Satyricon, a satirical prose-and-verse novel whose most famous surviving episode is the lavish 'Dinner of Trimalchio.' He is often identified with the courtier of the emperor Nero described by Tacitus as the 'arbiter of elegance,' who was forced to take his own life.

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RomeרומאItaly

We know they were here, but the specifics of what they did at this stop aren’t recorded yet in our corpus.

About Rome

Rome, on the Tiber in central Italy, grew from an Iron Age settlement into the capital of the Roman Republic and then of an empire that by the 1st century CE ruled the whole Mediterranean. Its Jewish community, attested from the 2nd century BCE, is among the oldest in Europe. Christian tradition holds that the apostles Peter and Paul died there, and the city became the seat of the popes. After the Western Empire ended in 476 it passed to Gothic kings, to Byzantium and then to papal rule as capital of the Papal States, until it became the capital of unified Italy in 1871. Vatican City, independent since 1929, lies within it.

In Rome at the same time

Seneca the Elder, Tiberius, Celsus, Valerius Maximus, Phaedrus, Seneca, Lucius Annaeus

Across the traditions, in Rome at the same time

See other sages who lived in Rome→

In the same place & time

Sages whose lives overlapped with Petronius Arbiter’s in the same cities, drawn from their recorded journeys.

Across the traditions

The world in their lifetime

Thinkers and teachers of other traditions whose lives overlapped with Petronius Arbiter’s — a glimpse of the wider world they lived in. Drawn purely from recorded birth and death years.

Works(1)