The earliest witness of the title of the work attributed to Petronius is the fourth-century grammarian Marius Victorinus, who calls it the Satyricon. A title in this form would be the Greek genitive plural with libri implied. In the manuscripts the title is spelled in various other ways. The form Satyrica is preferred by scholars who view it as analogous to the titles of Greek novels such as Aethiopica, Ephesiaca, Babyloniaca and so forth. Either way, punning word-play between satura, a gastronomic or literary mixture, and satyrica, things associated with lascivious Greek satyrs, was available to readers (see Rose [1971], 1–2; Walsh [1970], 72).

The poem on the Civil War which is performed by Eumolpus at Sat. 119–24 is known as the Bellum Civile, and Lucan's poem on the same subject is known by the same title or as the de bello civili. For the sake of a convenient and clear distinction between them I shall cite Lucan's poem under the title Pharsalia. The title Pharsalia, which does not appear in the manuscripts of Lucan, would appear to derive from the phrase Pharsalia nostra at Ph. 9.985 (cf. Statius Silv. 2.7.66).

The author is generally identified with Nero's elegantiae arbiter, described by Tacitus (Ann. 16.18–19). His praenomen is thought to be Titus, rather than Gaius as the manuscripts of Tacitus would indicate (see Pliny Nat. 37.20, with Rose [1971], 47–49). Ancient references to the work cite the author as Petronius or Petronius Arbiter. The identification of the author of the Satyricon with Tacitus' Petronius was noted around 1571 by Scaliger in his own copy of the Satyricon, proposed in print by Pithou in 1577, called into question by Marmorale in 1948, and has been most fully defended in the publication of Rose's monograph on the subject in 1971.