The musicians would appear to have lived as pleasantly as the parasites. Simo remarks to Tranio, in the “Mostellaria,” that he lives on the best the cooks and vintners can procure for him,—a real fiddler’s destiny:—
“Musice hercle agitis ætatem: ita ut vos decet.
Vino et victu, piscatu probe electili,
Vitam colitis.”
Stalino complains in the “Casina,” that, clever as cooks are, they cannot put a little essence of love into all their dishes,—a sauce, he says, that would please everybody. Their reputation in Rome for stealing was much the same as that enjoyed by their Grecian brethren. The scene of the “Casina,” indeed, is in Athens; but Olympio utters a Roman sentiment when he says, that cooks use their hands as much for larceny as cookery, and that wherever they are they bring double ruin, through extravagance and robbery, upon their masters: “Ubi sunt, duplici damno dominos multant.” This is further proved by the speech of Epidicus, in the comedy so called, where that slave-cook speaks of his master’s purse as if it were game, to disembowel which, he says, he will use his professional knife:—
“Acutum cultrum habeo, senis qui exenterem
Marsupium.”
We learn something of the pay of a cook from a speech of one of the craft, in the “Pseudolus.” Ballio, seeing a single practitioner remaining in the square to be hired, asks how it is that he has not been engaged. “Eloquar,” says the cook, “here is the reason:—
“He who, now-a-days, comes here to hire cooks,
No longer seeks the best, that is, the dearest,