“You certainly laughed most heartily,” replied Aurelius accepting some of the praised dish from a slave; "but I, for my part, cannot get up any taste for this kind of verse. Martial is full of wit and humor, but this perpetual mockery, this making a business of holding up all society to ridicule and contempt—no, my dear Norbanus, I cannot like it. More particularly does the way in which he speaks of women displease and vex me. If he is to be believed, there is not in all Rome one faithful wife, or one innocent girl."[157]
“Pah!” said Norbanus, with his mouth well filled: “There are some of course, but they are scarce, my dear Aurelius, remarkably scarce.”
“What is amusing you so much, Norbanus?” asked Quintus from his place opposite.
“The old theme—women! Aurelius thinks, that our laurel-wreathed poet has sinned basely against the ladies of Rome, by hinting in his epigrams his doubts of their virtue.”
“Who? What?” cried the poet himself, hastily looking round. “What Ravidus[158] is here, to take up the cudgels against my iambics?”
This quotation from Catullus, the favorite poet and model of the epigrammatist, did not fail of its point, for every one, with the single exception of the blushing Aurelius, was reminded by it that Ravidus was, in that passage, called a “crazed and witless wretch.”
“It was I,” said Aurelius coolly. “But it was not your verse that I criticised, but ... however, you heard. If a woman is no more to you than the beetle, the snake that wriggles in the dust, I can but pity your experience.”
“Yours then has been more fortunate?” laughed Martial.
“I should hope so, indeed!”
Lycoris, who, though at some distance, must have heard every word, was chatting vehemently with Stephanus, her neighbor on her left, who kept his gaze alert, though with an air of reserve and dignity. Two of her companions, pretty but by no means maidenly personages, stared contemptuously at Aurelius as if to say: “Well, what a booby!”