‘He is a very distinguished person named Vitellius, chiefly distinguished, however, for eating and drinking. He is descended from a cobbler and a cook. He began his childhood with Tiberius at Capreæ. His father set up golden statues of the freedmen Narcissus and Pallas among his household gods, by which merit he won a statue on the rostra. Our friend then turned charioteer to please Gaius, gambler to please Claudius, and has now curried favour with Nero by urging him to sing. His domestic history is not amiable. He had by his first wife a son named Petronianus, to whom she left her wealth. Vitellius made him drink a cup of poison, which he says that the youth had prepared for him.’
‘I shall begin to believe,’ said Agrippa, ‘that the Greek sage was right when he said, “Most men are bad.” Why, Berytus would not show more dubious characters—nor even Jerusalem.’
‘But there are some honest men,’ said Gallio, ‘as well as virtuous women. Burrus is fairly honest; Fenius Rufus is indifferently honest; Pætus Thrasea is honest, though in these days even he has to dissemble; Helvidius Priscus, Barea Soranus, and Arulenus Rusticus, friends of Thrasea, are as honest as the day. So is that old man Lucius Saturninus, who, strange to say, in spite of his worth, has reached the age of ninety-three without being either killed or banished.’
‘I will only ask you one more name. Who is the man to whom Domitius Afer is talking?’
‘His name is Fabricius Veiento. At present he is only known as the editor of a book called “Codicilli,” which is immensely popular and is bringing him in a fortune. It is composed of the spiciest libels against every senator of note whom he ventures to attack. He has found that one secret of getting rich is to pander to the appetite for scandal, and half the people who are talking so fast around us are whispering stories which he has discovered or invented for them.’
At this moment their conversation was rudely interrupted.
CHAPTER XXVII
DEATH IN THE GOBLET
‘Fratrum, conjugum, parentum neces, alia solita parentibus ausi.’—Tac. Hist. v. 3.
A cry rang through the banquet-room!
It was the cry of Titus. Every guest started as if a thunderbolt had fallen. In that guilty time, when obscene wings flapped about so many gilded roofs, when the sword dangled by a hair over so many noble heads, when foes cut throats by a whisper, when any day might expose a man to denunciation for imaginary crimes by one of the slaves whom he regarded as his natural enemies, any sudden movement, any unexpected event, was enough to drive the blood from the blanching cheek. But when such a cry—so wild, so startling—rang over the tumultuous sounds of an imperial banquet, they knew not whether the very earth was not about to open beneath their feet.