Trimalchio’s Feast (Penguin Little Black Classics, 21)

A bitingly comic portrait of the vulgar Trimalchio and his debauched, drunken Roman banquet, from the outrageous Latin masterpiece The Satyricon.

‘I blush to say what happened next.’
A satirical portrait of a drunken, orgiastic Roman banquet, hosted by the grossly ostentatious Trimalchio.

Introducing Little Black Classics: 80 books for Penguin’s 80th birthday. Little Black Classics celebrate the huge range and diversity of Penguin Classics, with books from around the world and across many centuries. They take us from a balloon ride over Victorian London to a garden of blossom in Japan, from Tierra del Fuego to 16th-century California and the Russian steppe. Here are stories lyrical and savage; poems epic and intimate; essays satirical and inspirational; and ideas that have shaped the lives of millions.

About the author

Petronius

Titus Petronius Arbiter is reputedly the author of the Satyricon. According to Tacitus, Petronius’ chief talent lay in the pursuit of pleasures, in which he displayed such exquisite refinement that he earned the unofficial title of the emperor Nero’s ‘arbiter of elegance’ (arbiter elegantiae). Court rivalry and jealousy contrived to cast on Petronius the suspicion that he was conspiring against the emperor, and he was ordered to commit suicide in A.D. 66. He gradually bled to death, opening his veins, binding and re- opening them, passing his last hours in social amusement and the composition of a catalogue of Nero’s debaucheries.