Andivius Hedulio: Adventures of a Roman Nobleman in the Days of the Empire

by Edward Lucas White

I did all I could to rouse Falco from his lethargy and succeeded to some extent. But, all through April and May, he went out little, accepted few invitations and gave few dinners. Much of his time he spent among his jewels, conning them, handling them, taking curios from their cases and, as it were, caressing them. The rooms which held them were on the left hand side of the peristyle on the upper floor, across the court from my apartment and not precisely opposite it. There were three rooms; the larger with a door on the gallery, and a smaller on either side of it, opening from it and lit by windows towards the gallery. Each room had a marble table in the middle, small and round in both side cabinets, rectangular and large in the main room. Each of the three rooms was walled with cases and shelves; on the shelves were displayed his larger curios, vases, cameos, intaglios, plaques, murrhine bowls and such like; in the cases were necklaces, bracelets, rings, seals and trays of unset gems of all sorts and sizes. Here Falco spent hours each day, gloating over his treasures.

"Phorbas," he said, "I am resolute never to buy another gem, equally resolute to auction all I have whenever conditions make a profitable sale probable. Yet, although I feel that I shall never live to see them auctioned, the very thought of parting with them cuts me to the quick. I am almost in tears to think of it. I love every piece I own. I hate to think I must either live to see them sold or die and leave them. I cannot be with them enough of my time. I could spend all my waking hours enjoying their loveliness and my luck in owning them."

I thought this condition of mind positively unhealthy and consulted Galen.

"You are right," he said, "and you are wrong too. Your master is badly shaken by the horrors of this appalling year, but he is not deranged nor, at this present time, in any more danger of derangement than most of the senators and nobles with whom he associates. Yet you are correct in being uneasy. Don't antagonize him, but do all you can, tactfully and unobtrusively, to keep him away from those jewels and to get him out to the Baths of Titus or to dinners. Do your utmost to induce him to entertain. A jolly dinner with a bevy of jovial guests will be the very medicine for him."

Had I been a Greek I could not have been, more wily or more successful. He spent less time with his gems, went out to the Baths oftener, accepted some dinner invitations and gave a few dinners. He even took some interest in preparing for these and in giving orders about them. He had five complete sets of silverware for his triclinium and had a fancy for using this or that set, according to the characters of his prospective guests.

Early in May he had invited a carefully selected company of concordant guests, three senators and the rest nobles like himself, and was anticipating a delightful evening. He had bidden me to see to the selection of the flowers for decorating the triclinium, for the garlands, and for sprinkling on the floor; to choose the wines I thought would be most appropriate and to have brought out and used his most prized set of silver, the work of Corinnos of Rhodes, embossed with scenes from Ovid's Metamorphoses and acclaimed one of the finest services in Rome. Besides the two tall mixing-bowls for tempering the wine before serving it, the set had four smaller ones, about the size of well-buckets, and much like them, for each was provided with two hinged handles, just like a water-pail. I saw to the polishing of every piece in this magnificent service, to their proper disposal, to the decoration of the triclinium with flowers, verified the wines I had chosen, inspected every detail of the preparations for the feast, and, just before the first guest might be expected to arrive, went out and back into the kitchen to make sure that every dish of each course was being properly prepared and that nothing would be lacking.

When I returned to the triclinium I found it swept clean of silver, except the two big wine mixers. The four two-handled pails were gone and with them the salt-cellars, the wine strainers, every soup-spoon, every oyster-spoon, in fact every small piece, to the last. The thieves must have been deft, agile and keen, for nothing was overset or disturbed and I had heard no noise.

I rushed to the house-door, found it ajar and, each sleeping in his cell, on the one side the snoring janitor, on the other our fat, pursy, overfed watchdog.

I omit my hasty measures for pursuing the thieves and attempting their capture or at least the recovery of their booty; and my urgent and important efforts to arrange that our guests should be properly received and the dinner should not be spoiled. Towards this last I did what could be done and with fair success, Falco playing up to my suggestions and dissimulating his chagrin.

More important to record was his amazing indifference to his loss. Not that he did not feel it acutely, but that he seemed to feel no proper indignation against those at fault.