The Satyricon, racy adventures of the ill-starred Encolpius, is regarded sometimes as satire, sometimes as a picaresque odyssey, and even as the first realistic novel of European literature. The work, of which only a small part survives, was almost certainly composed in the mid 1st century AD by one of Nero's favourites. In form it is extremely loose, and witty anecdotes, poetry and discourse of literature and art constantly interrupt the entertaining chain of sexual and prandial orgies....

Although Seneca authored the immensely enthusiastic funeral laudation after the murder of Claudius, there is little doubt that he was also responsible for The Apocolocyntosis. A maliciously amusing skit on the deification of the dead emperor, it served to ingratiate him with Nero and the new regime...