The Satyricon — Volume 02: Dinner of Trimalchio

What you're holding is the earliest surviving novel in Western literature, and it still reads like something scandalous. Written in first-century Rome by a courtier to Nero, The Satyricon follows the wandering narrator Encolpius and his boy-lover Giton through a world of fleeced guests, conniving parasites, and one extraordinarily ridiculous dinner party. That feast, hosted by the freedman Trimalchio, is the most famous section: a grotesque display of wealth so ostentatious it includes a silver chamber pot, a menu written in poetry, a painted dog warning guests to beware, and an entire course served as fake eggs concealing birds. But Petronius isn't merely mocking nouveau riche bad taste. He's dissecting the entire performance of Roman identity, the desperate mimicry of class, the way wealth corrupts taste and language and love. The prose is deliberately slippery, dropping between educated Latin and street slang, between literary allusion and flatulence jokes. It's a novel that knows exactly how absurd civilization is, and refuses to let you forget it.