If you are not yet ashamed of your course of life,[204] and your feeling is still the same, that you consider living at another man's table to be the chief good; if you can put up with such things as not even Sarmentus or Galba, contemptible as he was, would have submitted to even at the unequal[205] board of Cæsar himself; I should be afraid to believe your evidence though you were on oath. I know nothing more easily satisfied than the cravings of nature. Yet even suppose this little that is needed to be wanting, is there no quay vacant? is there no where a bridge, and a piece of mat, somewhat less than half, to beg upon? Is the loss of a supper so great a matter? is your craving so fierce? when, in faith, it were much more reputable[206] to shiver there, and munch mouldy fragments of dog-biscuit. In the first place, bear in mind, that when invited to dinner, you receive payment in full of your long-standing account of service. The sole result of your friendship with the great man is—a meal! This your patron sets down to your account, and, rare though it be, still takes it into the calculation. Therefore, if after the lapse of two months he deigns to send for his long-neglected client, only that the third place may not be unoccupied in one couch of his triclinium[207]—"Let us sup together," he says; the very summit of your wishes! What more can you desire? Trebius has that for which he ought to break his rest, and hurry away with latchet all untied, in his alarm lest the whole crowd at his patron's levee shall have already gone their round of compliments, when the stars are fading, or at the hour when the chill wain of sluggish Bootes wheels slowly round.[208]
But what sort of a supper is it after all? Wine, such as wool just shorn would not imbibe.[209] You will see the guests become frantic as the priests of Cybele. Wranglings are the prelude of the fray: but soon you begin to hurl cups as well in retaliation; and wipe your wounds with your napkin stained with blood; as often as a pitched battle, begun with pitchers of Saguntine ware, rages between you and the regiment of freedmen. The great man himself drinks wine racked from the wood under some consul with long hair,[210] and sips[211] the juice of the grape pressed in the Social war; never likely, however, to send even a small glass to a friend, though sick at heart. To-morrow, he will drink the produce of the mountains of Alba or Setia,[212] whose country and date age has obliterated by the accumulated mould on the ancient amphora; such wine as, with chaplets on their heads, Thrasea and Helvidius used to drink on the birthdays of the Bruti and Cassius. Virro himself holds capacious cups formed of the tears of the Heliades[213] and phialæ incrusted with beryl. You are not trusted with gold: or even if it is ever handed to you, a servant is set as a guard over you at the same time, to count the gems and watch your sharp nails. Forgive the precaution: the jasper so much admired there is indeed a noble one: for, like many others, Virro transfers to his cups the gems from off his fingers, which the youth, preferred to the jealous Hiarbas,[214] used to set on the front of his scabbard. You will drain a cup with four noses, that bears the name of the cobbler of Beneventum,[215] already cracked, and fit to be exchanged, as broken glass, for brimstone.[216]
If your patron's stomach is overheated with wine and food, he calls for water cooled by being boiled and then iced in Scythian snow.[217] Did I complain just now that the wine set before you was not the same as Virro's? Why, the very water you drink is different. Your cups will be handed you by a running footman from Gætulia, or the bony hand of some Moor, so black that you would rather not meet him at midnight, while riding through the tombs on the steep Latin way. Before Virro himself stands the flower of Asia, purchased at a greater sum than formed the whole revenue of the warlike Tullus, or Ancus—and, not to detain you, the whole fortunes[218] of all the kings of Rome. And so, when you are thirsty, look behind you for your black Ganymede that comes from Africa. A boy that costs so many thousands deigns not to mix wine for the poor. Nay, his very beauty and bloom of youth justify his sneer. When does he come near you? When would he come, even if you called him, to serve you with hot or cold water? He scorns, forsooth, the idea of obeying an old client, and that you should call for any thing from his hand; and that you should recline at table, while he has to stand. Every great house is proportionably full of saucy menials.
See, too, with what grumbling another of these rascals hands you bread that can scarce be broken; the mouldy fragments of impenetrable crust, which would make your jaws ache, and give you no chance of a bite. But delicate bread, as white as snow, made of the finest flower, is reserved for the great man. Mind you keep your hands off! Maintain the respect due to the cutter of the bread![219] Imagine, however, that you have been rather too forward; there stands over you one ready to make you put it down. "Be so good, audacious guest, as to help yourself from the bread-basket you have been used to, and know the color of your own particular bread." "So then![220] it was for this, forsooth, that I so often quitted my wife, and hurried up the steep ascent of the bleak Esquiline, when the vernal sky rattled with the pelting of the pitiless hail, and my great coat dripped whole showers of rain!"
See! with how vast a body the lobster which is served to your patron fills the dish, and with what fine asparagus it is garnished all round; with what a tail he seems to look down in scorn on the assembled guests, when he comes in raised on high by the hands of the tall slave. But to you is served a common crab, scantily hedged in[221] with half an egg sliced, a meal fit only for the dead,[222] and in a dish too small to hold it. Virro himself drowns his fish in oil from Venafrum; but the pale cabbage set before you, poor wretch, will stink of the lamp. For in the sauceboats you are allowed, there is served oil such as the canoe of the Micipsæ has imported in its sharp prow; for which reason no one at Rome would bathe in the same bath with Bocchor; which makes the blackamoors safe even from the attacks of serpents.
Your patron will have a barbel furnished by Corsica, or the rocks of Tauromenium, when all our own waters have been ransacked and failed; while gluttony is raging, and the market is plying its unwearied nets in the neighboring seas, and we do not allow the Tyrrhene fish to reach their full growth. The provinces, therefore, have to supply our kitchen; and thence we are furnished with what Lenas the legacy-hunter may buy, and Aurelia sell again.[223] Virro is presented with a lamprey of the largest size from the Sicilian whirlpool. For while Auster keeps himself close, while he seats himself and dries his wet pinions in prison, the nets,[224] grown venturesome, despise the dangers even of the middle of Charybdis. An eel awaits you—first-cousin to the long snake—or a coarse pike[225] from the Tiber, spotted from the winter's ice, a native of the bank-side, fattened on the filth of the rushing sewer, and used to penetrate the drain even of the middle of Suburra.
"I should like to have a word with Virro, if he would lend an attentive ear. No one now expects from you such presents as used to be sent by Seneca to his friends of humble station, or the munificent gifts which the bountiful Piso or Cotta used to dispense; for in days of old the glory of giving was esteemed a higher honor than fasces or inscriptions. All we ask is that you would treat us at supper like fellow-citizens. Do this, and then, if you please, be, as many now-a-days are, luxurious when alone, parsimonious to your guests."
Before Virro himself is the liver of a huge goose; a fat capon, as big as a goose; and a wild boar, worthy of the spear of the yellow-haired Meleager, smokes. Then will be served up truffles, if it happen to be spring, and the thunder, devoutly wished for by the epicure, shall augment the supper. "Keep your corn, O Libya," says Alledius, "unyoke your oxen; provided only you send us truffles!" Meanwhile, that no single source of vexation may be wanting, you will see the carver[226] capering and gesticulating with nimble knife, till he has gone through all the directions of his instructor in the art. Nor is it in truth a matter of trifling import with what an air a leveret or a hen is carved. You would be dragged by the heels, like Cacus[227] when conquered by Hercules, and turned out of doors, if you were ever to attempt to open your mouth, as though you had three names.[228] When does Virro pass the cup to you, or take one that your lips have contaminated? Which of you would be so rash, so lost to all sense of shame, as to say, "Drink, sir!" to your patron lord? There are very many things which men with coats worn threadbare dare not say. If any god, or godlike hero, kinder to you than the fates have been, were to give you a knight's estate, what a great man would you, small mortal, become all at once from nothing at all! What a dear friend of Virro's! "Give this to Trebius![229] Set this before Trebius! My dear brother, will you take some of this sweet-bread?"
O money! it is to thee he pays this honor! it is thou and he are the brothers! But if you wish to be my lord, and my lord's lord, let no little Æneas sport in your hall,[230] or a daughter more endearing than he. It is the barrenness of the wife that makes a friend really agreeable and beloved. But even suppose your Mycale should be confined, though she should even present you three boys at a birth, he will be the very one to be delighted with the twittering nest; will order his green stomacher[231] to be brought, and the filberts,[232] and the begged-for penny, whenever the infant parasite shall come to dine with him.
Before his friends whom he holds so vile will be set some very questionable toadstools—before the great man himself, a mushroom[233]—but such an one as Claudius ate, before that furnished by his wife, after which he ate nothing more. Virro will order to be served to himself and his brother Virros such noble apples, on whose fragrance alone you are allowed to revel; such as the eternal autumn of the Phæacians produced; or such as you might fancy purloined from the African sisters. You feast upon some shriveled windfall, such as is munched at the ramparts by him that is armed with buckler and helmet: and, in dread of the lash, learns to hurl his javelin from the shaggy goat's[234] back.