Petronius

3 Credits · Level: Undergraduate

A literary masterpiece, Petronius’ Satyricon is the story of a young man, Encolpius, and his friends and their encounters with a series of absurd characters in what seems to be a Greek city but can also be taken as a parody of emperor Nero’s Rome. A highlight of the novel is the Cena Trimalchionis, a first-person narration of a banquet at the house of an extravagant freedman, Trimalchio, a model for F. Scott Fitzgerald's Gatsby. The text of the Satyricon will be read in the original, with attention to its language and style as well its literary complexity and the diversity of viewpoints displayed.