The work, the extant parts of which are from Books xv. and xvi., is in
form a Satira Menippea,[78] alternately prose and verse. The longer
episodes, as the supper of Trimalchio and the story of the matron of
Ephesus, are exclusively prose. In the _Cena Trimalchionis_, where
Encolpius and his company are entertained by a rich freedman,
Petronius has given us a correct account of provincial life in South
Italy. Mommsen (_Hermes_, xiii. 106) has shown that Cumae was the town
where Trimalchio lived. It is a 'Graeca urbs' (ch. 81), and a Roman
colony (ch. 44, etc.), so that it cannot be Naples. The chief
magistrates are called _praetores_ (ch. 65), which suits Cumae alone
of the towns of this district. The only objection to Cumae being the
place is the passage in ch. 48, where an event at Cumae is given as
something wonderful and unusual:

'Nam Sibyllam quidem Cumis ego ipse oculis meis vidi in ampulla
pendere, et cum illi pueri dicerent: +Sibylla, ti theleis?+
respondebat illa: +apothanein thelo+.'

This, however, may simply be given for comic effect. Friedlaender
thinks _Cumis_ is a wrong reading. The date of Encolpius' adventures
cannot be under Tiberius, for the emperor is called 'pater patriae'
(ch. 60), a title which Tiberius refused. Mommsen thinks the dramatic
date is under Augustus; Friedlaender,[79] towards the end of Claudius'
or the beginning of Nero's reign. The cognomen of Trimalchio,
Maecenatianus (ch. 71), means that he was a freedman of the well-known
Maecenas. Trimalchio, therefore, came to Rome as a boy (ch. 29; 75)
before Maecenas' death (B.C. 8), and was probably born about B.C. 18.
He is represented as 'senex' (ch. 27), _i.e._ at least sixty, but may
have been over seventy. A.D. 57 is probably the later limit of date.
Mommsen thinks that the words (ch. 57), 'puer capillatus in hanc
coloniam veni: adhuc basilica non erat facta,' mean that when
Trimalchio came to Cumae it was not a Roman colony. Now, Cumae became
a colony between 43 and 27 B.C., and, on this supposition, the supper
of Trimalchio would have to be placed between A.D. 7 and A.D. 23, as
it is about fifty years since Trimalchio came to Cumae. Friedlaender,
however, thinks that the basilica would not have been put up
immediately the town became a colony.

The language of the narrative is that of the educated classes of the
time, and is in close agreement with the style of Seneca the younger.
The diction of Trimalchio and his fellow-freedman