C. the author of a kind of romance, the earliest with which we are acquainted, was born at Massilia, and is supposed to be the same of whom some account is given by Tacitus (Ann. xvi. 18). As proconsul, he administered the province of Bithynia with considerable ability, and on his return to Rome he became the favourite of Nero, and the director as well as participator of all his pleasures. His influence with the emperor excited the envy and jealousy of Tigellinus, and that minister soon found an opportunity of putting an end to his connection with Nero. Petronius chose his own mode of closing his life, A.D. 67, that he might escape a severer punishment. There is no certainty, however, that this individual, of whom Tacitus gives an account, is the same with the author of the work of which fragments have come down to us; but even if he be not, still there is no doubt that he must have flourished about this period, from the classical purity of his language, and the general arrangement of his subject. The work is entitled *Satyricon*; and of it we have only some fragments, which seem to have formed part of a selection from his work. It contains the adventures of a certain freedman, Encolpius, sometimes of a tragical, sometimes of a comical nature, which gives an opportunity to the author of narrating fully the follies and vices of his age. There has been preserved a beautiful episode, the Matron of Ephesus and the Supper of Trimalchio, which admits us to the domestic circles of the noble Romans, and makes us acquainted with their voluptuous mode of life. The characters are well drawn; the whole idea of the scene is got up with much spirit as well as art; and there are some beautiful descriptions, which make us regret that he should have wasted his talents on common and obscene subjects. The obscenity of much that is preserved is of the most gross and licentious nature; but the beauty of his style, and the purity of his expressions, remind us of the classical period of Roman literature. The best edition is that of Burmann (Traj. ad Rhen. 1709).