The Satyrica (Satyricon liber), a comic-picaresque fiction in prose and verse traditionally attributed to the Neronian Petronius (d. AD 66) but possibly of Flavian or Trajanic date, survives only as fragments of a much larger whole. It takes the form of a first-person narrative by the endearing ne’er-do-well Encolpius, a brilliant storyteller, parodist, and mimic who recalls episodes from his past life as a wandering bohemian, living by his wits on the margins of society in Greek southern Italy and encountering a vividly realized array of characters from the early imperial demimonde, including the wealthy freedman Trimalchio, one of the most unforgettable characters in all of Latin literature. Paired with the Satyrica, and likewise in prose and verse, is the Apocolocyntosis (Pumpkinification), a short satirical pamphlet lampooning the death, apotheosis, and attempt to enter heaven of the emperor Claudius (reigned 41–54). If the work of Lucius Annaeus Seneca (4 BC–AD 65), better known for his austere Stoic moralism, its sarcastic wit and rollicking humor were no doubt inspired by bitterness over his exile at Claudius’ hands in 41–49. For this Loeb edition the Latin texts have been freshly edited and translated, with ample introductions and explanatory notes.

The Satyrica is a thrilling piece of literature and rare example of the Roman novel, credited to Titus Petronius. It is as modern today as in the time when it was written under the Roman emperor Nero. This is the first comprehensive commentary on the whole of Petronius' Satyrica, and an attempt to unify and comprehend, as much as possible, the fragmentary text by looking carefully at the bits and pieces which have survived. The Satyrica's unique nature as a historical document from the ancient world has meant that it has been studied vigorously by social historians; it provides rare insights into the lives of ordinary Roman people, such as the narrative about Trimalchio the Roman businessman, as well as documenting the evolution of Latin into the various Romance languages as we know them today. Petronius puts into the mouth of each of his characters a distinctive and socially defining level of Latin, so that the world of the Satyrica is populated not by characters who speak a kind of Latin which made Latin a dead language, but by flesh and blood people who have made Latin live until today. Schmeling's commentary offers readers a comprehensive analysis of this historically important text through philological, linguistic, historical, and narratological discussions, while highlighting past doubts on Petronius' authorship of the Satyrica.

The present volume comprises the papers delivered at RICAN 6, which was held in Rethymnon, Crete, on May 30-31, 2011. The focus is placed on male and female characters in the ancient novel and related texts, both pagan and Christian; these characters are presented either as holy or as charlatans but in several cases the two categories cannot be easily distinguished from each other. The papers offer a wide and rich range of perspectives: authority in narratives and authority figures from Teiresias to Apollonius of Tyana as comparands for Kalasiris in Heliodorus (Dowden); the astrologer Serapa as a holy man in Petronius and Trimalchio's exploitation of Serapa's pronouncement and his prediction (Schmeling); the old hag Oenothea as a figure of religious authority and medical expertise in the Satyrica and Encolpius' failure to recognize her as a charlatan (Panayotakis); Cleitophon's claims to knowledge in Achilles Tatius and his apparent lack of understanding of his own narrative (Repath); religious authority in Daphnis and Chloe and the role of the exegetes ('expounder') in Longus' preface (Bowie); the Syrian priests and other religious charlatans in Apuleius' Metamorphoses and their appeal to the reader (Egelhaaf-Gaisser); the contrast in the representation of holy men and charlatans in Lucian's Peregrinus and the Christian Acts of Mar Mari (Ramelli); the controversial figure of Kalasiris in Heliodorus, a priest who behaves like a charlatan (Billault); Apollonius of Tyana as Proteus and Philostratus' contest with Homer in the Life of Apollonius (Paschalis); the similarities in the narrative structure of the biographies of Aesop and Jesus (Andreassi); narrative qualities and intertextuality in the Narrations attributed to Neilos of Ankyra; its interpretation as a conversion-narrative (Morgan).

Despite the fact that postmodern aesthetics deny the existence or validity of genres, the tendency nowadays is to assume that there was in Antiquity a homogeneous group of works of narrative prose fiction that, despite their differences, displayed a series of recurrent, iterative, thematic, and formal characteristics, which allows us to label them novels. The papers assembled in this volume include extended prose narratives of all kind and thereby widen and enrich the scope of the canon. The essays explore a wide variety of texts, crossed genres, and hybrid forms, which transgress the boundaries of the so-called ancient novel, providing an excellent insight into different kinds of narrative prose in antiquity.