Petronius Arbiter

Petronius Arbiter is the name under which the Satyricon has come down to us, and is usually identified with Gaius Petronius, a Roman senator and courtier of the emperor Nero. According to Tacitus, he governed Bithynia and held the consulship with unexpected energy, then became Nero's arbiter of elegance, the judge of taste at a dissolute court, until a rival's jealousy led to his arrest in AD 66. Ordered to die, he opened his veins slowly at a dinner party, listening to light verse and dictating a catalogue of the emperor's vices. The Satyricon, surviving only in fragments, is the earliest Roman novel.