novel, Latin
novel, LatinThe Latin novel is mainly represented for us by two extant texts, the Satyrica of Petronius Arbiter (1st cent. ad) and the Metamorphoses or Golden Ass of Apuleius (2nd cent. ad); no previous long fictions are known in Latin. An important influence on both was the lubricious Milesian Tales of Lucius Cornelius Sisenna in the 1st cent. bc (Ovid Tristia 2. 443–4), short stories translated from the Greek Milēsiaka of Aristides (2nd cent. bc; cf. Plutarch Crassus 32, [Lucian], Amores 1). The adaptations by Varro of the prosimetric Greek satires of Menippus of Gadara also contributed something to the prosimetric form and satirical content of Petronius, and were followed by the younger Seneca in his Apocolocyntosis; there is also recent evidence in the Iolaus-papyrus (Oxyrhynchus Papyri 42. 3010) that there...
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