Marius the Epicurean (Barnes & Noble Digital Library)

This philosophical novel, published in 1885, uses the backdrop of Antonine Rome to elaborate Pater's ideas about Aestheticism.  His hero, Marius, is a young Italian employed as private secretary to the emperor Marcus Aurelius. Pater developed a style in this novel, and elaborated on it in his later Imaginary Portraits, which later influenced such writers as Oscar Wilde and James Joyce.