‘Is there no honest and virtuous woman here?’ asked the young king.
Gallio pointed a little mockingly to the king’s sister, the beautiful Berenice, who had come with him to Rome. She was now twenty-six, but had lost none of her voluptuous loveliness. In her ears were earrings, each formed of three orient pearls, and the famous diamond on her finger—a gem of priceless value, her brother’s gift—blazed conspicuously at every movement of her hand.
Agrippa blushed and bit his lips; and Gallio always courteous, added with seriousness, ‘There are some, but not many. My brother, Seneca, is not complimentary to the ladies. He speaks of them as “animal impudens, ferum, cupiditatum incontinens,”[61] which is, to say the least, ungrateful of him, for our mother, Helvia, was perfect; and our aunt, Marcia, gained him his earliest honours; and his own wife, Paulina—she sits there—is one of the Roman matrons who almost deserve the obsolete epitaph, “She stayed at home; she spun wool.”I think, however, that Seneca exaggerates the number of the ladies, who, he says, count the years not by the consuls, but by the number of their divorced husbands.’[62]
‘Point me to another such lady as Paulina,’ said Agrippa.
‘There is one,’ answered Gallio, bending his head towards the Empress Octavia; ‘and there is another.’ He pointed to a lady dressed simply in a white stola beneath a light-blue palla, who wore no jewels except the cameos which fastened the loops of her sleeve.It was Antistia, the wife of Antistius Verus, the daughter of Rubellius Plautus. ‘Antistia,’ said Gallio,[T7] ‘is as pure and devoted a lady as you could find anywhere. There, too, sits Servilia, daughter of Barea Soranus; and yonder is Arria, wife of Pætus Thrasea. Pomponia Græcina, wife of Aulus Plautius, is the sweetest and noblest matron in Rome; but she avoids Court society, and she is not here. Nor is Claudia, the fairest of maidens, the daughter of King Caractacus.’
‘And who is that handsome and venerable old man at the second table?’
‘The handsome and venerable old man—his name is Domitius Afer—is, I am sorry to say, a handsome and venerable old scoundrel. He is, or rather was, the greatest orator of his day—as the Emperor Tiberius said, a born orator, suo jure disertus. But he has been neither more nor less than an informer, and one of bad character. He would have lost his head under Caligula, but he pretended to be so thunderstruck and overwhelmed by the mad Emperor’s eloquence that he not only saved his life but rose into high favour. But it is time for him to leave off making speeches. Whenever he attempts a great oration now, half his hearers laugh and the other half blush.’
‘And the young man near him?’
‘King,’ said Gallio, ‘I shall begin to think that you are a physiognomist, and are picking out some of the worst persons present. That is another informer; his name is M. Aquillius Regulus. He is a fortune-hunter as well as an informer. He has earned by infamy a fortune of sixty million sesterces. I had better tell you at once that there are several of them nearly as bad. That brazen-faced man is Suilius Nerulinus, who helped Messalina to ruin Valerius Asiaticus. He was convicted of taking bribes as a judge even in the reign of Tiberius. And, worst of the whole company, there is Eprius Marcellus, a splendid orator, but a man, as you see, of savage countenance, whose eyes flash their fiercest flame, and whose voice rolls its loudest thunder, when he is denouncing any person of special virtue.’
‘Well,’ said Agrippa, ‘unless I am tiring your courtesy I will turn to another table. Who is that extremely stout personage with a red face, bushy eyebrows, and apoplectic neck, who is devouring his dainties with such brutal voracity?’