The Satyrica, traditionally attributed to the Neronian courtier Petronius, is a comic-picaresque fiction recalling the narrator's adventures in the early imperial demimonde, including Trimalchio's banquet. Apocolocyntosis (Pumpkinification) is a satirical pamphlet lampooning the death and deification of the emperor Claudius.

DigiCat Publishing presents to you this special edition of "The Satyricon — Complete" by Petronius Arbiter. DigiCat Publishing considers every written word to be a legacy of humankind. Every DigiCat book has been carefully reproduced for republishing in a new modern format. The books are available in print, as well as ebooks. DigiCat hopes you will treat this work with the acknowledgment and passion it deserves as a classic of world literature.

Lucius Annaeus Seneca, also known as Seneca, or Seneca the Younger, was a Roman Stoic philosopher, statesman and dramatist, who also acted as a tutor and adviser to emperor Nero. Attributed to Seneca is this political satire on the Roman emperor Claudius, Apocolocyntosis or The Pumpkinification of Claudius. The title, meaning "Pumpkinification" or "Gourdification" is a play upon "apotheosis", the process of recognizing a dead Roman emperor as a god.

Christopher Star uncovers significant points of contact between Seneca and Petronius, two important Roman writers long thought to be antagonists. In The Empire of the Self, Christopher Star studies the question of how political reality affects the concepts of body, soul, and self. Star argues that during the early Roman Empire the establishment of autocracy and the development of a universal ideal of individual autonomy were mutually enhancing phenomena. The Stoic ideal of individual empire or complete self-command is a major theme of Seneca’s philosophical works. The problematic consequences of this ideal are explored in Seneca’s dramatic and satirical works, as well as in the novel of his contemporary Petronius. Star examines the rhetorical links between these diverse texts. He also demonstrates a significant point of contact between two writers generally thought to be antagonists—the idea that imperial speech structures reveal the self.

In Isidore of Seville and the “Liber Iudiciorum,” the author re-interprets the meaning and “function” of the seventh-century Visigothic law-code, the Liber Iudiciorum within the context of the cooperative competition of history-writing between nodes of power in Seville and Toledo.