By an inspiration of genius, he saw that the framework of frivolous and licentious novels could be enlarged until it took in contemporary custom and environment.

It is that which assures for him an eminent place, not in Roman literature alone, but in the literature of the world.
a--INFLUENCE OF THE SATYRICON UPON LITERATURE.

The vagrant heroes of Petronius are the originals from whom directly, or indirectly, later authors drew that inspiration which resulted in the great mass of picaresque fiction; but, great as this is, it is not to this that the Satyricon owes its powerful influence upon the literature of the world.
It is to the author's recognition of the importance of environment, of the vital role of inanimate surroundings as a means for bringing out character and imbuing his episodes and the actions of his characters with an air of reality and with those impulses and actions which are common to human experience, that his influence is due.

By this, the Roman created a new style of writing and inaugurated a class of literature which was without parallel until the time of Apuleius and, in a lesser degree, of Lucian.

This class of literature, though modified essentially from age to age, in keeping with the dictates of moral purity or bigotry, innocent or otherwise, has come to be the very stuff of which literary success in fiction is made.