Continuing our comparison with Euctus we may add that Trimalcho also possesses a rare pitcher with a bas-relief representing Dædalus putting Niobe inside the wooden horse of Troy! When he has finished maiming history, and the guests have patiently listened to his fantastic tales, like a true parvenu, Trimalcho never fails to add, “Mind, it is all massive precious metal, it is all my very own as you see, and not to be sold at any price.”

Except for the wording, a trifling difference—the word “expensive” would play a conspicuous part with the Trimalcho of to-day, decorated, be it understood, with “precious,” “rare,” “unique” and all the rest of the arch-superlatives of modern idioms—such collectors have not been lost to our day.

But there are other types worth quoting. They will certainly help us to understand the part played by art imitations and forgery among the Romans, and how the existence of fraud was in some way justified, that in the end the one chiefly responsible for the existence of faking was the collector himself. This understanding will be greatly aided by a glimpse at the septæ, antiquity or simple bric-à-brac shops, that were grouped together in certain streets of ancient Rome like they are nowadays.

Like to-day, too, sales of art were effected by auctions or by private dealing, the latter in shops or through the usual go-between, the so-called courtier of our time.

Public auctions were announced by placards or a simple writing on the walls. An idea of what these announcements were like is given by the following one from Plautus’ Menœchme:

“Within seven days, in the morning, sale of Menœchme. There will be sold slaves, furniture, houses, farms. Every article bought must be paid for at the time of buying.”

As in our days, an exhibition of the goods preceded the auction. These shows were held in appropriate rooms adorned with porticos, called atria auctionaria. In speaking of such exhibitions and commenting upon some special one, Cicero remarks, Auctionis vero miserabilis adspectus (Phil., II, 29).

Curiously enough the auction sales of the Urbs were provided with an employé whose function seems to have survived in the public sales of Paris. The Latin præco is something like the French crieur whose office it is at public auctions to extol and praise the objects offered for sale. It must be said that the præco, however, was not only a simple crieur but at times a sort of director of the sale, thus combining the functions of commissaire priseur, expert and crieur, but it was certainly in the latter function that his ability best contributed to the success of the sale. Some of these employés must have enriched themselves like regular commissaires priseurs. Horace (I. Ep., 7) describes one of these crieurs as indulging in luxury, making money easily and scattering it like water, allowing himself every kind of pleasure and yielding tremendously to fashion. A curious description, suggesting that this Vulteius Menas of Horace must have had the lucky career of some of the Parisian auction employés and cannot have been indifferent to that form of gay self-indulgence that Parisians call: Faire la bombe.

Speaking of auctions and the way Romans disposed of their goods to the highest bidder, it is worth while to refer to what Suetonius tells us happened at the sale held by Caligula, who being short of money thought fit one day to put up to auction everything in the royal palace that was either useless or considered out of fashion, quidquid instrumenti veteris aulæ erat. According to Suetonius not only was the Emperor himself present at the auction, but he put prices on the various objects, bidding on them as well. An old prætor, Aponius Saturninus, became sleepy during the sale, and in dozing kept on nodding his head. Caligula noticed it, and told the auctioneer not to lose sight of that buyer and to put up the price each time Saturninus nodded. When the old man finally awoke he realized that without knowing it he had bought at the Imperial auction about £80,000 worth of goods (Cal., 39).

Pliny relates an amusing story, which shows that then, as now, the auctioneer was allowed to group objects.