ABSTRACT
If it is by Lucan that the potential for catastrophic schism between ethical action and social perception is described in its most hyperbolic terms, it is left to Lucan’s older contemporary, Titus Petronius Niger, 1 to voice classical Rome’s most oblique and incisive critique of the aristocratic persona as a basis for ethics. The two Neronian courtiers have a great deal in common. As is the case with Lucan, the true force of Petronius’ moral critique is most clearly visible in his reinterpretation of conventional aristocratic motifs surrounding the practice of suicide. Like Lucan, Petronius’ innovations in this area were not confined to his literary efforts, and he, like the young epicist, died by his own hand at the order of the Emperor Nero in a fashion designed to win the attention and regard of his aristocratic colleagues. As with Lucan again, this cross-over between the literary depiction and the practice of suicide displays a heightened awareness of social form as form and of Roman mores as a set of mutable conventions governed by an aesthetic ungrounded in any ethical reality.
