The Werewolf in the Ancient World

During the wild party at the center of Petronius’s Satyricon, the host, Trimalchio, invites his friend Niceros, a freed slave like himself, to tell the company what once happened to him. Like the best spooky storytellers, Niceros begins with humdrum circumstances: he’d fallen in love with a married woman and one day, when his master was conveniently absent, he set out to join her in the countryside. However, not wanting to travel alone, he persuades “a soldier, as brave as the devil…to accompany me as far as the fifth milestone.”