The Satiricon is an extraordinary novel that has the potential to appeal to a diverse range of readers, particularly those with an interest in communism and sexual deviance. It masterfully combines a dizzying array of unnatural sexual acts with a meticulous analysis of the class structure in Rome during the time of Nero, all written by a contemporary.

This novel is simply hilarious. It chronicles the picaresque adventures of the sexually amphibious Encolpe as he navigates through Roman society. The reader is treated to a delightful cast of rogues, including long-winded poets, underhanded sodomites, rich vulgarians, lewd women, and pompous pedants, all culminating in a cannibalistic dinner. Overall, the Satiricon is more entertaining than the Rocky Horror Picture Show.

In the introduction to the edition of the Satiricon that I read, the great novelist and playwright Henri de Montherlant provides a brilliant description of the work. He states that "Le Satiricon est, par sa date, le père du roman latin, et le père du roman tout court. Il est aussi, et de beacoup, le plus réussi des romans grecs et latins; par sa drolerie, son invention toujours rebondissante, la peinture vivace des caractères et des moeurs et son style qui est croustillant sans etre grossier. Et cela flatte mon patriotism que Pétrone ait été natif de Marseille." In English, this means that "The Satiricon is the father of the Latin novel and in fact the father of the novel itself. It is by far the best novel of the classical era by its humour, rebounding inventiveness, and its vivacious portrait of characters and morals. It is risqué but never crude. I am proud as a Frenchman to note that Petronius was a native of Marseille."

The Satiricon is a remarkable work that offers a unique blend of entertainment and social commentary. Its vivid characters and outrageous情节 make it a must-read for anyone interested in exploring the world of ancient Rome and the evolution of the novel.

Tomorrow I will be questioned about this book. Please pray for me.

I am really nervous as the examination is approaching. I have been studying hard, but there are still some parts that I am not entirely confident about.

The questions might cover a wide range of topics, from the plot and characters to the themes and writing style of the book. I hope that I can remember all the important details and answer the questions accurately.

Your prayers will mean a lot to me. They will give me the strength and courage to face the challenge. Thank you in advance for your support.

I purchased this translation of the Satyricon for a Petronius translation class.

I was given the freedom to choose my translator, and after reading her translation of the Aeneid, I have always been partial to Sarah Ruden.

I believe I made a great choice. Having worked with Petronius in Latin, I find that Ruden does justice to him in English.

Her translation allows readers to experience the essence of the original language. You won't encounter the refined language typically expected from a Latin translation.

Ruden takes the conversational tone of Petronius's Silver Age Latin and transforms it into richly translated English, successfully capturing the feel of a text written 1900 years ago in another language.

Moreover, this book contains a footnote that says "Thunder as divine farting?" which I childishly laughed at for an embarrassingly long time.

Although this doesn't have much impact on the translation, it's like a cherry on top of an already excellent read.

I really enjoyed this work a great deal!

It didn't strike me as being overly cohesive. However, it's quite evident that this is most likely because of the lost fragments of Petronius rather than any inherent flaw within the work itself.

The fact that as much of it has survived as it has is truly a cause for celebration. It gives us a precious glimpse into the literary world of that era. Even with the missing pieces, the work still manages to captivate and engage the reader. It makes one wonder what the complete and fully cohesive version would have been like. Nevertheless, what we have is still a remarkable testament to Petronius' talent and creativity.

I look forward to further exploring and analyzing this work to uncover more of its hidden gems and meanings.

This Roman novel is truly quite readable (at least in translation) and is frequently very funny.

The story, however, is a little disjointed as we do not possess the whole work. In fact, we are not even certain about the length of the original.

We are thus plunged into the middle of the story of Encolpius, seemingly an ex-gladiator, and his slave, Giton.

The best segment of the narrative is Trimalchio's feast, a fully intact part of the story that is often hilarious and highly satirical.

Trimalchio is an uneducated yet astonishingly wealthy freedman who flamboyantly showcases his riches in a feast that is so long that he has to lock the guests in.

But Encolpius finally makes his misstep when the vigiles respond to a suspected fire.

All of this is great material. The gaps in the text are unfortunate, but there is still an abundance to relish in this story.

There is a very Roman philosophy of life on display here as well (which also makes it excellent from a historical perspective).

It offers a unique glimpse into the society and values of ancient Rome, despite the incomplete nature of the work.

If one, an enemy of all vices, decides to follow the straight path of life, he first incites hatred because of his different morality. For who is capable of giving his approval to one who behaves differently from himself? Moreover, those who are only concerned with accumulating wealth pretend that nothing in the world is considered better than what they themselves have. For this reason, they try to slander by all possible means those who love letters, to show that they too are slaves of money.

This is the most vulgar and irreverent Latin piece of all that I have read. A picaresque novel that follows the steps of Encolpio and his slave and lover Gitón, giving free rein to their lust, gluttony and greed as they get to know various characters from the lower depths of the Roman Empire in the time of Nero. An exceptional look at popular life and homosexual relationships in that era. It is a pity that it has reached us incomplete, but the fragments that are preserved are wonderful, especially the long and influential dinner of Trimalción.

I had to read this book for class. I truly loved the class, but unfortunately, I hated the book - and it seemed that everyone else in the class felt the same way. We despised reading the book to such an extent that we couldn't even give the movie a fair chance.

The book is extremely hard to read for multiple reasons. I can't really discuss the quality of the writing as it would rely on which translation one is reading. However, no matter who did the translation, some issues simply can't be resolved. Firstly, this novel consists only of the surviving parts of the original story. There was supposed to be more, but it has been lost to us, and all we have to read are just fragments. Understandably, this makes it very difficult to follow the story. But beyond that, for me, there was a much greater problem: the parts that were there were highly unpleasant. They were violent, disgusting, graphically sexual, and otherwise distasteful. I didn't want to find out what had happened in the missing bits because I didn't enjoy what was happening in the bits that were available.

Perhaps a different translation might be able to compensate for the unpleasantness of the story by having outstanding prose that would make me eager to keep reading... perhaps. I have both loved and hated The Iliad because of different translators, so I can't say that it's completely impossible. But I highly doubt it.

Out of curiosity, I always wanted to read this book which I learned about while reading "The Waste Land" by T. S. Eliot, which has an excerpt from the novel as an epigraph. Specifically, the part where the Sibyl wants to die since she is hanging like a bag in a bottle.

This interesting scene and the fact that the satyric is one of the first Roman novels led me to the adventure of reading it. I found it at an affordable and accessible price in Bratislava, which I visited last year, and I bought it.

I read it, but my curiosity didn't quite fade away. Due to its fragmented form, as it has survived until our days, I can't say that I have a complete picture of what I read and a complete opinion on how much I liked it. It was interesting, yes, but it didn't draw me in completely.

Please provide the article that needs to be rewritten and expanded so that I can help you.

Today, the Satyricon holds a unique position in literary history. It is renowned for two main aspects:

1. It is arguably the first novel, a pioneering work that set the stage for future literary developments.

2. It is also infamous for being a rather scandalous and dirty little book.

Regrettably, only 141 chapters of what was once a much longer work have endured. However, these remaining chapters are incredibly captivating. Composed during the reign of Nero in the 1st century, the Satyricon is truly one-of-a-kind. One might best envision this book as a sort of prose Odyssey, but with a twist. Instead of the heroic king of Ithaca, our protagonist is the ex-gladiator and current scoundrel Encolpius. And rather than longing to return home to a faithful wife after a decade of war, Encolpius is preoccupied with obtaining free meals, deceiving legacy hunters out of their money, and, most crucially, resolving his erectile dysfunction so he can resume his pederastic pursuits. So, in fact, it's not exactly like Homer's epic at all.

Despite its rather unseemly subject matter, the Satyricon is ultimately very humorous. I don't always have a penchant for ancient comedy. While Aristophanes can be amusing, Menander, Terence, Plautus, and others don't particularly appeal to me. But consider this passage:

Tryphaena’s cohorts, spurred on by the hysterical screaming of her maids, prepared to attack us with their bare hands. Only the pilot remained aloof, cursing the whole fracas as the lunatic work of a mob of perverts and threatening to abandon his post unless we stopped immediately. Even this dire threat, however, failed to quench our martial ardor...[s]uddenly, however, our gallant Giton turned the edge of his razor against his own manhood, threatening at one fell blow to lop away that root of all our troubles. Tryphaena, overcome with horror, cast all pretense aside and rushed forward to prevent the consummation of such a catastrophe.”

“The lunatic work of a mob of perverts” could indeed serve as a fitting subtitle for this book. Encolpius and Giton eventually fall in with a self-proclaimed poet named Eumolpus. Unfortunately for him, but fortunately for us, Eumolpus is an atrocious poet. Here is a typical reaction to one of his many poetic outbursts:

At this moment, several of the people who were strolling about the gallery greeted Eumolpus’ epic effusion with a volley of stones. Eumolpus, clearly no stranger to these tributes of his talent, wrapped his head in his robes and dashed from the temple. Fearing they might accuse me of being a poet too, I raced after him and caught him at the shore. “Look here,” I said, “can’t you rid yourself of this loathsome disease? I’ve been with you for less than two hours, but in all this time you’ve talked more like a Homer than a man. No wonder people pelt you with stones. In fact, I’m going to fill my pockets with stones right now, and every time you start spouting, I’ll bloody your head for you.”

The comedy is even more uproarious if you are familiar with Homer or Virgil. Part of what makes the story so absurd is when the characters compare their own petty and sordid problems to those of the epic heroes. There are several direct parallels with the Odyssey: Encolpius calls himself Polyaenos at one point, he likens his impotence to the trials Poseidon inflicted on Odysseus, and at one moment Giton has to cling to the underside of a bed just as Odysseus clung to the ram’s belly. The group of lowlife scoundrels at the center of the tale constantly imagine themselves and their ridiculous misadventures in heroic terms, which I found endlessly entertaining.

Beyond the comedy, the Satyricon is also fascinating as a brutally honest portrayal of the seedy underbelly of Roman life in the 1st century. Very few ancient books truly explore what life was like for the common people. The Satyricon offers a revealing, albeit comical, glimpse into what it must have been like to live in the early Roman Empire.

I read the Arrowsmith translation, which, at 53 years old, is almost a classic in its own right. However, it doesn't feel dated in the slightest and is justifiably considered the gold standard English translation. I initially thought about deducting a star or half a star because the remaining fragments of the book make the reading experience feel a bit incomplete. But what is there is so thoroughly enjoyable that I'm awarding it a full five stars. This is the best post-Augustan Roman work I've ever read and one of the very finest Roman writings, without a doubt. 5 stars, highly recommended!

Overflowing from start to finish with a kaleidoscope of homosexual and heterosexual escapades, wild parties, and eccentric erotic customs, the uncensored Satyricon remained clandestine in English until the swinging 1960s.

It was a time when Penguin Books triumphed in a legal showdown regarding the release of D.H. Lawrence's scandalous Lady Chatterley’s Lover.

The Satyricon, with its sprawling ensemble, rollicking escapades, seamless blend of prose and poetry, and decadent, surrealistic settings, is an indelible, uproarious portrayal of Nero's era.

It is brimming with extravagance and pandemonium.

The novel presents us with an ageless ribaldry that is still shockingly impudent. Our protagonist, Encolpius (whose moniker roughly equates to "groin" or "crotch"), endures a series of misfortunes while also being plagued by impotence, purportedly as punishment for some mysterious transgression against the god Priapus.

He is tormented by his affection, if it can be called that, for his enticing yet capricious slave-boy Giton, and vexed by his occasional companion Eumolpus, a poet so dreadful that audiences start pelting him with stones whenever he recites his compositions.

And at the heart of the narrative, we encounter the timeless Trimalchio, whose legendary banquet remains, and will always remain, the epitome of gauche extravagance. Do not attempt if you're "woke" or whatever they call you on the other side of the ignorant spectrum.

This remarkable book has truly been a revelation for me. It made me unearth my deep-seated liking for Roman literature, whether it be in the form of captivating fictions or engaging historical accounts.

The vivid descriptions and the masterful storytelling within its pages have left an indelible mark on my literary journey.

It has opened up a whole new world of Roman culture and history, allowing me to immerse myself in the lives and experiences of the people who lived during that era.

I find myself constantly drawn back to this book, longing to explore its contents once again.

Some time in the future, I know I will pick it up and embark on this literary adventure all over again, eager to discover new nuances and gain a deeper understanding of the rich tapestry of Roman literature.