The Roman author of the Satyricon, Petronius, lived in the 1st century AD, during the years of Nero.

The concept of art in the Satyricon, as it is redefined, is something original (and difficult to grasp). The Satyricon is an original work not only because, as literary critics have said, Petronius merged prose with verse, but also because he advanced to another conjunction: he provided a work that is simultaneously the formulation of an aesthetic theory and the presentation of samples of a literature shaped based on this new aesthetic.

The Satyricon is both poetry and an essay on poetry. [Excerpt from the text on the back cover of the edition]