In the first few centuries of our age, the roman world was in decay. In one hand there was wealth and abundance, in the other people were loosing their religion, their values and purpose of living. Collosseum games were a great part of people's interest -- some data indicates that, at some point, there were 170 days of games a year; that's 170 without work for citizens. Those who had power, had more interest in their orgies of eating and vomiting and their sexual perversities than in governing the people. Such is the image presented to us by roman poets of this period such as Juvenal.<br /><br />Today, we'd rather see a good violent film than to watch, say a film of Ingmar Bergman -- which would perhaps give us more insight about life and about our condition as emotional beings -- and football is taking over our lives. Back then, people's interests were about romantic novels about triangular love affairs. This is the plot of Fellini-Satyricon. The screen play is based upon a roman novel, Satyricon, which mocked about those romantic novels and turned them upside down, by presenting the triangular love affair between two men and a little boy. I don't remember the name of the roman author of this novel but I know part of the text was lost.<br /><br />It is not an action movie, nor narrative, it is purely pictorical. Fellini-Satyricon is the most striking depiction of roman decadence. It's not about historical facts, it's an image of what decadence can be. The relevance of this image is such that we even find an explicit parody of it in "Asterix in Helvetia".