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Case file s1521 · Greece and Rome · 66
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66
Petronius Arbiter: (Téléversé avec Commonist) Nouvelle version plus claire.
Petronius Arbiter. TouzaxA. CC BY-SA 3.0, Wikimedia Commons.
Died
AD 66
Place
Cumae, Campania, Italy
Field
consul, Nero's "arbiter" of taste
Legal tradition
Roman law of wills; forced suicide under the treason law · Roman law
Historical event
Nero's purges after the conspiracy of AD 65
Greece and RomeCrowns and successionAncient worldEuropeItalyJulio-Claudian dynasty

Petronius's will listed Nero's sex partners by name, and Pliny says he smashed a 300,000-sesterce basin to keep it from Nero

Petronius had governed Bithynia and served as consul. At Nero's court he became the emperor's "arbiter" of taste. Tacitus says the guard prefect Tigellinus was jealous of him. Tigellinus charged him with friendship with Scaevinus, one of the conspirators of AD 65, bribed a slave to inform, and had his servants imprisoned. Petronius was held at Cumae. He opened his veins, bound them up, and opened them again as he chose. He talked with friends, listened to light verse, and gave rewards to some slaves. Tacitus records that in the same year Annaeus Mela, father of the poet Lucan, opened his veins and left large sums to Tigellinus and Cossutianus Capito in a codicil. Petronius's will flattered neither Nero nor Tigellinus. Instead it set out Nero's debaucheries, named his partners, and was sent to Nero under seal. Petronius then broke his signet ring so it could not be used to forge documents against others. Nero exiled a senator's wife, Silia, suspecting she had talked. Pliny the Elder writes that Petronius, out of hatred for Nero, broke a murrhine basin that had cost 300,000 sesterces, to "disinherit the table" of the emperor. The Satyricon, which manuscripts attribute to a Petronius, survives in fragments.

What the law took from it

A will is a public document; Petronius used his to say what he could not say alive.

Sources
  1. Wikisource (primary text)Scholarship
  2. perseus.tufts.eduScholarship
  3. Wikipedia (English)Encyclopedia

Cite as: celebrity.estate, “Petronius's will listed Nero's sex partners by name, and Pliny says he smashed a 300,000-sesterce basin to keep it from Nero,” story s1521, https://www.celebrity.estate/petronius-66, updated 30 October 2026.

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Where this case sits

Greece and RomeCrowns and successionAncient worldEuropeRoman lawItalyJulio-Claudian dynasty