Petronius, celebrity author of Satyricon and a crazy drinking-cup collector, owned a precious vessel that Nero coveted.

FORBES: The Oldest Investment

In 1998 contractors on Texaco's Petronius project accidentally dropped a 3, 600-tonne deck module into the Gulf of Mexico.

FORBES: Going deep

Collecting has come a long way since Petronius.

FORBES: The Oldest Investment

However, when a succession of his poems turn out to be adaptations or loose translations of Petronius, Sappho, Pliny the Elder and Boethius, you may find yourself hankering after an original voice even one as extravagant as Whitman's.

ECONOMIST: Audacity and elegy

The idea of hospitality provides a link, often quite tenuous, between a series of entertaining historical anecdotes, as Mr Browner ranges broadly from Petronius to Adolf Hitler via the court of Louis XIV, the log cabin of John James Audubon and the Paris salon of Gertrude Stein.

ECONOMIST: Hospitality