Hunc pontes Tiberinu' duo inter captu' catillo.
Purpureo tersit tunc latas gausape mensas, etc.[315]
show the proportions already assumed by a form of sensuality, the beginnings of which may be traced in Plautus and in the publication of the Hedyphagetica of Ennius, but of which the final culmination is to be sought in the ideal of life realised under the Empire, by Apicius, Vitellius, and Elagabalus, and many men of less note.
The other extreme of unceasing activity in getting, and sordid meanness in hoarding money, and the discontent produced among all classes by the restless passion to grow rich, which fills so large a place in the Satires and Epistles of Horace, appears also frequently in the fragments of Lucilius; as, for instance, in the following:—
Milia dum centum frumenti tolli medimnum,
Vini mille cadum.—
Denique uti stulto nihil est satis, omnia cum sint.—
Rugosi passique senes eadem omnia quaerunt.—
Mordicus petere aurum e flamma expediat, e caeno cibum.—