Roman Society from Nero to Marcus Aurelius Part 3

It is curious that it was left for Vitellius to break the reign of the freedmen by a.s.signing offices in the imperial bureaux to the knights, the policy which was said to have been recommended by Maecenas,(640) and which was destined to prevail in the second century. But the change was very incomplete, and the brief tragic reign of Vitellius was disgraced by the ascendency for a time of his minion Asiaticus, whom the Emperor raised to the highest honours, then sold into a troop of wandering gladiators, and finally received back again into freedom and favour.(641) The policy of the Flavian dynasty in the employment of freedmen is rather ambiguous.

Vespasian is charged with having elevated Hormus, a disreputable member of the cla.s.s, and with having appointed to places of trust the most rapacious agents.(642) But this is probably a calumny of the Neronian and Othonian circle who defamed their conqueror. Under Domitian, the freedmen, Entellus and Abascantus, held two of the great secretaryships. But it is distinctly recorded that Domitian distributed offices impartially between the freedmen and the knights.(643) On the accession of Trajan, Pliny, in his Panegyric, exults in the fall of the freedmen from the highest place.(644) Yet Hadrian is said to have procured his selection as emperor by carefully cultivating the favour of Trajan's freedmen. Hadrian, in reorganising the imperial administration, and founding the bureaucratic system, which was finally elaborated by Diocletian and Constantine, practically confined the tenure of the three great secretaryships to men of equestrian rank. Among his secretaries was the historian Suetonius.(645) Antoninus Pius severely repressed men of servile origin in the interest of pure administration;(646) but they regained some influence for a time under M.

Aurelius, and rose still higher under his infamous son.

The position of freedmen in the imperial administration was partly, as we have seen, a tradition of aristocratic households. The emperor employed his freedmen to write his despatches and administer the finances of the Empire, as he would have used them to write his private letters or to manage his private estates. But, in the long conflict between the prince and the Senate, the employment of trusted freedmen in imperial affairs was also a measure of policy. It was meant to teach the n.o.bles that the Empire could be administered without their aid.(647) Nor was the confidence of the Emperor in his humble subordinates unjustified. The eulogies of the great freedmen in Seneca and Statius, even if they be exaggerated, leave the impression that a Polybius, a Claudius Etruscus, or an Abascantus were, in many respects, worthy of their high place. The provinces were, on the whole, well governed and happy in the very years when the capital was seething with conspiracy, and racked with the horrors of confiscation and ma.s.sacre. This must have been chiefly due to the knowledge, tact, and ability of the great officials of the palace. Although of servile origin, they must have belonged to that considerable cla.s.s of educated slaves who, along with the versatility and tact of the h.e.l.lenic East, brought to their task also a knowledge and a literary and linguistic skill which were not common among Roman knights. The three imperial secretaryships, _a rationibus_, _a libellis_, and _ab epistulis_, covered a vast field of administration, and the duties of these great ministries could only have been performed by men of great industry, talent, and diplomatic adroitness.(648) The Polybius to whom Seneca, from his exile in Sardinia, wrote a consolatory letter on the death of his brother, was the successor of Callistus, as secretary of pet.i.tions, in the reign of Claudius, and also the emperor's adviser of studies. Seneca magnifies the dignity, and also the burden, of his great rank, which demands an abnegation of all the ordinary pleasures of life.(649) A man has no time to indulge a private grief who has to study and arrange for the Emperor's decision thousands of appeals coming from every quarter of the world. Yet this busy man could find time for literary work, and his translations from the Greek are lauded by the philosopher with an enthusiasm of which the cruelty of time does not allow us to estimate the value.(650) The panegyric on Claudius Etruscus, composed by Statius, records an even more remarkable career.(651) Claudius Etruscus died at the age of eighty, in the reign of Domitian, having served in various capacities under ten emperors,(652) six of whom had died by a violent death. It was a strangely romantic life, to which we could hardly find a parallel in the most democratic community in modern times. Claudius, a Smyrniote slave,(653) in the household of Tiberius, was emanc.i.p.ated and promoted by that Emperor. He followed the train of Caligula to Gaul,(654) rose to higher rank under Claudius, and, probably in Nero's reign, on the retirement of Pallas, was appointed to that financial office of which the world-wide cares are pompously described by the poet biographer.(655) The gold of Iberian mines, the harvests of Egypt, the fleeces of Tarentine flocks, pearls from the depths of Eastern seas, the ivory tribute of the Indies, all the wealth wafted to Rome by every wind, are committed to his keeping. He had also the task of disbursing a vast revenue for the support of the populace, for roads and bulwarks against the sea, for the splendour of temples and palaces.(656) Such cares left s.p.a.ce only for brief slumber and hasty meals; there was none for pleasure. Yet Claudius had the supreme satisfaction of wielding enormous power, and he occasionally shared in its splendour. The poor slave from the Hermus had a place in the "Idumaean triumph" of Vespasian, which his quiet labours had prepared, and he was raised by that emperor to the benches of the knights.(657) The only check in that prosperous course seems to have been a brief exile to the sh.o.r.es of Campania in the reign of Domitian.(658)

Abascantus,(659) the secretary _ab epistulis_ of Domitian's reign, has also been commemorated by Statius. That great office which controlled the imperial correspondence with all parts of the world, was generally held by freedmen in the first century. Narcissus, in the reign of Claudius, first made it a great ministry.(660) Down to the reign of Hadrian the despatches both in Greek and Latin were under a single superintendence. But in the reorganisation of the service in the second century, it was found necessary, from the growing complication of business, to create two departments of imperial correspondence.(661) Men of rank held the secretaryship from the end of the first century. t.i.tinius Capito, one of Pliny's circle, filled the office under Domitian; Suetonius was appointed by Hadrian.(662) And during the Antonine age, the secretaries were often men of literary distinction.(663) Abascantus, the freedman secretary in the Silvae, had upon his shoulders, according to the poet, the whole weight of the correspondence with both East and West.(664) He received the laurelled despatches from the Euphrates, the Danube, and the Rhine; he had to watch the distribution of military grades and commands. He must keep himself informed of a thousand things affecting the fortunes of the subject peoples. Yet this powerful minister retained his native modesty with his growing fortune. His household was distinguished by all the sobriety and frugality of an Apulian or Sabine home.(665) He could be lavish, however, at the call of love or loyalty. He gave his wife Priscilla an almost royal burial.(666) Embalmed with all the spices and fragrant odours of the East, and canopied with purple, her body was borne to her last stately home of marble on the Appian Way.(667)

Some of the great imperial freedmen were of less unexceptionable character than Claudius Etruscus and Abascantus, and had a more troubled career.

Callistus, Narcissus, and Pallas, were deeply involved in the intrigues and crimes connected with the history of Messalina and Agrippina.

Callistus had a part in the murder of Caligula, and prolonged his power in the following reign. Narcissus revealed the shameless marriage of Messalina with Silius, and, forestalling the vacillation of Claudius, had the imperial harlot ruthlessly struck down as she lay grovelling in the gardens of Lucullus.(668) But he incurred the enmity of a more formidable woman even than Messalina, and his long career of plunder was ended by suicide.(669) Pallas had an even longer and more successful, but a not less infamous and tragic career.(670) Of all the great freedmen, probably none approached him in magnificent insolence. When he was impeached along with Burrus, on a groundless charge of treason, and when some of his freedmen were called in evidence as his supposed accomplices, the old slave answered that he had never degraded his voice by speaking in such company.(671) Never, even in those days of self-abas.e.m.e.nt, did the Senate sink so low as in its grovelling homage to the servile minister. At a meeting of the august body in the year 52, the consul designate made a proposal, which was seconded by a Scipio, that the praetorian insignia, and a sum of HS.15,000,000, should be offered to Pallas, together with the thanks of the state that the descendant of the ancient kings of Arcadia had thought less of his ill.u.s.trious race than of the common weal, and had deigned to be enrolled in the service of the prince!(672) When Claudius reported that his minister was satisfied with the compliment, and prayed to be allowed to remain in his former poverty, a senatorial decree, engraved on bronze, was set up to commemorate the old-fashioned frugality of the owner of HS.300,000,000! His wealth was gained during a career of enormous power in the worst days of the Empire. He was one of the lovers of Agrippina,(673) and, when he made her empress on the death of Messalina, two kindred spirits for a time ruled the Roman world. He gratified his patroness by securing the adoption of Nero by Claudius, and he was probably an accomplice in that emperor's murder. But his fate was involved with that of Agrippina. When Nero resolved to shake off the tyranny of that awful woman, his first step was to remove the haughty freedman from his offices.(674) Pallas left the palace in the second year of Nero's reign. For seven years he lived on undisturbed. But at last his vast wealth, which had become a proverb, became too tempting to the spendthrift prince, and Pallas was quietly removed by poison.(675)

The wealth of freedmen became proverbial, and the fortunes of Pallas and Narcissus reached a figure hardly ever surpa.s.sed even by the most colossal senatorial estates.(676) The means by which this wealth was gained might easily be inferred by any one acquainted with the inner history of the times. The manner of it may be read in the life of Elagabalus, whose freedman Zoticus, the son of a cook at Smyrna, piled up vast riches by levying a payment, each time he quitted the presence, for his report of the emperor's threats or promises or intentions.(677) In the administration of great provinces, in the distribution of countless places of trust, in the chaos of years of delation, confiscation, and ma.s.sacre, there must have been endless opportunities for self-enrichment, without incurring the dangers of open malversation. Statius extols the simple tastes and frugality of his heroes Abascantus and Claudius Etruscus, and yet he describes them as lavishing money on baths and tombs and funeral pomp. The truth is that, as a mere matter of policy, these wealthy aliens, who were never loved by a jealous aristocracy, had to justify their huge fortunes by a sumptuous splendour. The elder Pliny has commemorated the vapour baths of Posides, a Claudian freedman, and the thirty pillars of priceless onyx which adorned the dining saloon of Callistus.(678) A bijou bath of the younger Claudius Etruscus seems to have been a miracle of costly beauty. The dome, through which a brilliant light streamed upon the floor, was covered with scenes in rich mosaic. The water gushed from pipes of silver into silver basins, and the quarries of Numidia and Synnada contributed the various colours of their marbles.(679) The gardens of Entellus, with their purple cl.u.s.ters which defied the rigours of winter, seemed to Martial to outrival the legendary gardens of Phaeacia.(680) In the suburbs, hard by the Tiburtine way, rose that defiant monument of Pallas, bearing the decree of the Senate, which aroused the angry scorn of the younger Pliny.(681)

The life of one of these imperial slave ministers was a strangely romantic career which has surely been seldom matched in the history of human fortunes. Exposed and sold in early youth in the slave markets of Smyrna, Delos, or Puteoli, after an interval of ignominious servitude, installed as groom of the chambers, thence promoted, according to his apt.i.tudes, to be keeper of the jewels, or tutor of the imperial heir, still further advanced to be director of the post, or to a place in the financial service, the freedman might end by receiving the honour of knighthood, the procuratorship of a province, or one of those great ministries which placed him in command of the Roman world. Yet we must not deceive ourselves as to his real position.(682) To the very end of the Empire, the fictions on which aristocratic power is largely based, retained their fascination. In the fifth century a Senate, whose ancestors were often originally of servile race, could pour their scorn on the eunuch ministers of the East.(683) And the decaying or _parvenu_ Senate of the Flavians had, when they were free to express it, nothing but loathing for the reign of the freedmen.(684) These powerful but low-born officials are a curious example of what has been often seen in later times, the point-blank refusal, or the grudging concession, of social status to men wielding vast and substantial power. The younger Pliny, in his Panegyric on Trajan, glories in the preference shown under the new regime for young men of birth, and in his letters he vents all the long-suppressed scorn of his order for the Claudian freedmen. Even the emperors who freely employed their services, were chary of raising them to high social rank. Freedmen ministers were hardly ever admitted to the ranks of the Senate(685); they were rarely present at its sittings, even at the very time when they were governing the world. Sacerdotal and military distinctions were seldom conferred upon any of them. They were sometimes invested with the insignia of praetorian or quaestorian rank.(686) A few were promoted to the dignity of knighthood, Icelus, Asiaticus, Hormus, and Claudius Etruscus(687); but many a pa.s.sage in Martial or Juvenal seems to show that ordinary equestrian rank was in those days a very doubtful distinction.(688) The emperors, as raised above all ranks, might not have been personally unwilling to elevate their creatures to the highest social grade.(689) But even the emperors, in matters of social prejudice, were not omnipotent.

Still, the men who could win the favours of an Agrippina and a Messalina, could not be extinguished by the most jealous social prejudice. The Roman Senate were ready, on occasion, to fawn on a Pallas or a Narcissus, to vote them money and insignia of rank, nor did they always refuse them their daughters in marriage. In the conflict which is so often seen between caste pride and the effective power of new wealth, the wealth and power not unfrequently prevail. The lex Julia prohibited the union of freedmen with daughters of a senatorial house.(690) Yet we know of several such marriages in the first century. The wife of the freedman Claudius Etruscus, was the sister of a consul who had held high command against the Dacians.(691) Priscilla, the wife of Abascantus, another minister of servile origin, belonged to the great consular family of the Antistii.

Felix, the brother of Pallas, had married in succession three ladies of royal blood, one of them the granddaughter of Cleopatra.(692)

The women of this cla.s.s, for generations, wielded, in their own way, a power which sometimes rivalled that of the men. These plebeian Aspasias are a puzzling cla.s.s. With no recognised social position, with the double taint of servile origin and more than doubtful morals, they were often endowed with many charms and accomplishments, possessing a special attraction for bohemian men of letters. Their morals were the result of an uncertain social position, combined with personal attractions and education. To be excluded from good society by ign.o.ble birth, yet to be more than its equal in culture, is a dangerous position, especially for women. Often of oriental extraction, these women were the most prominent votaries of the cults or superst.i.tions which poured into Rome from the prolific East. Loose character and religious fervour were easily combined in antiquity. And the _demi-monde_ of those days were ready to mourn pa.s.sionately for Adonis and keep all the feasts of Isis or Jehovah, without scrupling to make a temple a place of a.s.signation.(693) The history of the early Empire, it has been rather inaccurately said, shows no reign of mistresses. Yet some of the freedwomen have left their mark on that dark page of history. Claudius was the slave of women, and two of his mistresses lent their aid to Narcissus to compa.s.s the ruin of Messalina.(694) The one woman whom Nero really loved, and who loved him in return, was Acte, who had been bought in a slave market in Asia. She captured the heart of the Emperor in his early youth, and incurred the fierce jealousy of Agrippina, as she did, at a later date, that of the fair, ambitious Poppaea.(695) Acte was faithful to his memory even after the last awful scene in Phaon's gardens.(696) And, along with his two nurses, the despised freedwoman guarded his remains and laid the last of his line beside his ancestors. Caenis, the mistress who consoled Vespasian after his wife's death, without any attractions of youth or beauty, suited well the taste of the bourgeois Emperor. It was a rather sordid and prosaic union. And Caenis is said to have acc.u.mulated a fortune, and besmirched the honest Emperor's name, by a wholesale traffic in State secrets and appointments.(697) In the last years of our period a very different figure has been glorified by the art of Lucian. Panthea, the mistress of L. Verus, completely fascinated the imagination of Lucian when he saw her at Smyrna, during the visit of her lover to the East.(698) Lucian pictures her delicately chiselled beauty and grace of form by recalling the finest traits in the great masterpieces of Pheidias and Praxiteles and Calamis, of Euphranor and Polygnotus and Apelles; Panthea combines them all. She has a voice of a marvellous and mellow sweetness, which lingers in the ear with a haunting memory. And the soul was worthy of such a fair dwelling-place. In her love of music and poetry, combined with a masculine strength of intellect capable of handling the highest problems in politics or dialectic, she was a worthy successor of those elder daughters of Ionia whose charm and strength drew a Socrates or a Pericles to their feet.(699) Surrounded by luxury and the pomp of imperial rank, and linked to a very unworthy lover, Panthea never lost her natural modesty and simple sweetness.

The great freedmen, who held the highest offices in the imperial service till the time of Hadrian with almost undisputed sway, are interesting by reason of the strangely romantic career of some of them. But these are very exceptional cases. In the bureaux of finance, it has been discovered from the inscriptions that the officials were all of equestrian rank. On the other hand, a great number of the provincial procurators were freedmen. And the agents of the Emperor's private fisc seem to have been nearly always drawn from this cla.s.s. The lower grades of the civil service were full of them.(700) But to the student of society, the official freedmen are, as a cla.s.s, not so interesting as their brethren who in these same years were making themselves masters of the trade and commercial capital of the Roman world. And the interest is heightened by the vivid art with which Petronius has ushered us into the very heart of this rather vulgar society. The _Satiricon_ is to some extent a caricature. There were hosts of modest, estimable freedmen whose only record is in two or three lines on a funeral slab. Yet a caricature must have a foundation of truth, and a careful reader may discover the truth under the humorous exaggeration of Petronius.

The transition from the status of slave to that of freedman was perhaps not so abrupt and marked as we might at first sight suppose. It is probable that many a slave of the better and more intelligent cla.s.s found little practical change in the tenor of his life when he received the touch of the wand before the praetor. Some, like Melissus, the free-born slave of Maecenas, actually rejected the proffered boon.(701) There was, of course, much cruelty to slaves in many Roman households, and the absolute power of a master, unrestrained by principle or kindly feeling, was an unmitigated curse till it was limited by the humane legislation of the second century.(702) But there must have been many houses, like that of the younger Pliny, where the slaves were treated, in Seneca's phrase, as humble friends and real members of the family, where their marriages were feted with general gaiety,(703) where their sicknesses were tenderly watched, and where they were truly mourned in death. The inscriptions reveal to us a better side of slave life, which is not so prominent in our literary authorities. There is many an inscription recording the love and faithfulness of the slave husband and wife, although not under those honoured names. And it is significant that on many of these tablets the honourable t.i.tle of _conjunx_ is taking the place of the old servile _contubernalis_. The inscriptions which testify to the mutual love of master and servant are hardly less numerous. In one a master speaks of a slave-child of four years as being dear to him as a son.(704) Another contains the memorial of a learned lady erected by her slave librarian.(705) Another records the love of a young n.o.ble for his nurse,(706) while another is the pathetic tribute of the nurse to her young charge, who died at five years of age. The whole city household of another great family subscribe from their humble savings for an affectionate memorial of their young mistress.(707) Seneca, in his humanitarian tone about slavery, represents a great moral movement, which was destined to express itself in legislation under the Antonines. And the energy with which Seneca denounced harsh or contemptuous conduct to these humble dependents had evidently behind it the force of a steadily growing sentiment. The master who abused his power was already beginning to be a marked man.(708)

Frequent manumissions were swelling the freedman cla.s.s to enormous dimensions. The emanc.i.p.ation of slaves by dying bequest was not then, indeed, inspired by the same religious motive as in the Middle Ages. But it was often dictated by the natural, human wish to make some return to faithful servants, and to leave a memory of kindness behind. But without the voluntary generosity of the master, the slave could easily purchase his own freedom. The price of slaves varied enormously, according to their special apt.i.tude and grade of service. It might range from 1700, in rare cases, to 10, or even less, in our money.(709) But taking the average price of ordinary slaves, one careful and frugal might sometimes save the cost of his freedom in a few years. The slave, especially if he had any special gift, or if he occupied a prominent position in the household, had many chances of adding to his _peculium_. But the commonest drudge might spare something from the daily allowance of food.(710) Others, like the cooks in Apuleius, might sell their perquisites from the remains of a banquet.(711) The door-keepers, a cla.s.s notorious for their insolence in Martial's day,(712) often levied heavy tolls for admission to their master's presence. And good-natured visitors would not depart without leaving a gift to those who had done them service. It must also be remembered that the slave system of antiquity covered much of the ground of our modern industrial organisation. A great household, or a great estate, was a society almost complete in itself. And intelligent slaves were often entrusted with the entire management of certain departments.(713) The great rural properties had their quarries, brickworks, and mines; and manufactures of all kinds were carried on by servile industry, with slaves or freedmen as managers. The merchant, the banker, the contractor, the publisher, had to use, not only slave labour, but slave skill and superintendence.(714) The great household needed to be organised under chiefs. And on rural estates, down to the end of the Western Empire, the villicus or procurator was nearly always a man of servile origin.(715) In these various capacities, the trusted slave was often practically a partner, with a share of the profits, or he had a commission on the returns. Such a fortunate servant, by h.o.a.rding his _peculium_, might soon become a capitalist on his own account, and well able, if he chose, to purchase his freedom. His _peculium_, like that of the son _in manu patris_, was of course by law the property of his master.

But the security of the _peculium_ was the security for good service.(716) Thus a useful and favourite slave often easily became a freedman, sometimes by purchase, or, as often happened in the case of servants of the imperial house, by the free gift of the lord. There are even cases on record where a slave was left heir of his master's property. Trimalchio boasted that he had been made by his master joint heir with the Emperor.(717)

The tie between patron and freedman was very close. The emanc.i.p.ated slave had often been a trusted favourite, and even a friend of the family, and his lord was under an obligation to provide for his future. The freedman frequently remained in the household, with probably little real change in his position. His patron owed him at least support and shelter. But he often gave him, besides, the means of an independent life, a farm, a shop, or capital to start in some trade.(718) In the time of Ovid, a freedman of M. Aurelius Cotta had more than once received from his patron the fortune of a knight, besides ample provision for his children.(719) A similar act of generosity, which was recklessly abused, is recorded by Martial.(720) By ancient law, as well as by sentiment, senators were forbidden to soil themselves by trade or usury.(721) But so inconvenient a prohibition was sure to be evaded. And probably the most frequent means of evasion was by entrusting senatorial capital to freedmen or clients, or even to the higher cla.s.s of slaves.(722) When Trimalchio began to rise in the social scale, he gave up trade, and employed his capital in financing men of the freedman cla.s.s.(723) These people, generally of Levantine origin, had the apt.i.tude for commerce which has at all times been a characteristic of their race. And, in the time of the Empire, almost all trade and industry was in their hands. The tale of Petronius reveals the secret of their success. They value money beyond anything else; it is the one object of their lives. They frankly estimate a man's worth and character in terms of cash.(724) Keen, energetic, and unscrupulous, they will "pick a farthing out of a dung-heap with their teeth"; "lead turns to gold in their hands."(725) They are entirely of Vespasian's opinion that gold from any quarter, however unsavoury, "never smells." Taking the world as it was, in many respects they deserved to succeed. They were not, indeed, enc.u.mbered with dignity or self-respect. They had one goal, and they worked towards it with infinite industry and unfailing courage and self-confidence.

Nothing daunts or dismays them. If a fleet of merchantmen, worth a large fortune, is lost in a storm, the freedman speculator will at once sell his wife's clothes and jewels, and start cheerfully on a fresh venture.(726) When his great ambition has been achieved, he enjoys its fruits after his kind in all ages. Excluded from the great world of hereditary culture, these people caricature its tastes, and imitate all its vices, without catching even a reflection of its charm and refinement. The selfish egotism of the dissipated n.o.ble might be bad enough, but it was sometimes veiled by a careless grace, or an occasional deference to lofty tradition.

The selfishness and grossness of the upstart is naked and not ashamed, or we might almost say, it glories in its shame. Its luxury is a tasteless attempt to vie with the splendour of aristocratic banquets. The carver and the waiter perform their tasks to the beat of a deafening music. Art and literature are prost.i.tuted to the service of this vulgar parade of new wealth, and the divine Homer is profaned by a man who thinks that Hannibal fought in the Trojan War.(727) The conversation is of the true bourgeois tone, with all its emphasis on the obvious, its unctuous moralising, its plat.i.tudes consecrated by their antiquity.

It is this society which is drawn for us with such a sure, masterly hand, and with such graceful ease, by Petronius. The _Satiricon_ is well known to be one of the great puzzles and mysteries in Roman literature. Scholars have held the most widely different opinions as to its date, its author, and its purpose. The scene has been laid in the reign of Augustus or of Tiberius, and, on the strength of a misinterpreted inscription, even as late as the reign of Alexander Severus.(728) Those who have attributed it to the friend and victim of Nero have been confronted with the silence of Quintilian, Juvenal, and Martial, with the silence of Tacitus as to any literary work by Petronius, whose character and end he has described with a curious sympathy and care.(729) It is only late critics of the lower empire, such as Macrobius,(730) and a dilettante aristocrat like Sidonius Apollinaris,(731) who pay any attention to this remarkable work of genius.

And Sidonius seems to make its author a citizen of Ma.r.s.eilles.(732) Yet silence in such cases may be very deceptive. Martial and Statius never mention one another, and both might seem unknown to Tacitus. And Tacitus, after the fashion of the Roman aristocrat, in painting the character of Petronius, may not have thought it relevant or important to notice a light work such as the _Satiricon_, even if he had ever seen it. He does not think it worth while to mention the histories of the Emperor Claudius, the tragedies of Seneca, or the _Punica_ of Silius Italicus.(733) Tacitus, like Thucydides, is too much absorbed in the social tragedy of his time to have any thought to spare for its artistic efforts. The rather shallow, easy-going Pliny has told us far more of social life in the reigns of Domitian and Trajan, its rural pleasures and its futile literary ambitions, than the great, gloomy historian who was absorbed in the vicissitudes of the deadly duel between the Senate and the Emperors. One thing is certain about the author of this famous piece-he was not a plebeian man about town, although it may be doubted whether M. Boissier is safe in maintaining that such a writer would not have chosen his own environment of the Suburra as the field for his imagination.(734) It is safer to seek for light on the social status of the author in the tone of his work. The _Satiricon_ is emphatically the production of a cultivated aristocrat, who looks down with serene and amused scorn on the vulgar bourgeois world which he is painting. He is interested in it, but it is the interest of the detached, artistic observer, whose own world is very far off. Encolpius and Trimalchio and his coa.r.s.e freedman friends are people with whom the author would never have dined, but whom, at a safe social distance, he found infinitely amusing as well as disgusting. He saw that a great social revolution was going on before his eyes, that the old slave minion, with estates in three continents, was becoming the rival of the great n.o.ble in wealth, that the new-sprung cla.s.s were presenting to the world a vulgar caricature of the luxury in the palaces on the Esquiline. Probably he thought it all bad,(735) but the bad became worse when it was coa.r.s.e and vulgar. The ignorant a.s.sumption of literary and artistic taste in Trimalchio must have been contrasted in the author's mind with many an evening at the palace, when Nero, in his better moods, would recite his far from contemptible verses, or his favourite pa.s.sages from Euripides, and when the new style of Lucan would be balanced against that of the great old masters.(736) And the man who had been charmed with the sprightly grace of the stately and charming Poppaea may be forgiven for showing his hard contempt for Fortunata, who, in the middle of dinner, runs off to count the silver and deal out the slaves' share of the leavings, and returns to get drunk and fight with one of her guests.(737)

The motive of the work has been much debated. It has been thought a satire on the Neronian circle, and again an effort to gratify it, by a revelation of the corruptions of the plebeian world, the same impulse which drove Messalina to the brothel, and Nero to range the taverns at midnight.(738) It has been thought a satire on the insolence and grossness of Pallas and the freedmen of the Claudian regime which Nero detested, to amuse him with all their vulgar absurdities. Is it not possible that the writer was merely pleasing himself-that he was simply following the impulse of genius? Since the seventh century the work has only existed in fragments.(739) Who can tell how much the lost portions, if we possessed them, might affect our judgment of the object of the work? One thing is certain, its author was a very complex character, and would probably have smiled at some of the lumbering efforts to read his secret. Even though he may have had no lofty purpose, a weary man of pleasure may have wished to display, in its grossest, vulgarest form, the life of which he had tasted the pleasures, and which he had seen turning into Dead Sea fruit. He was probably a bad man in his conduct, worse perhaps in his imagination; and yet, by a strange contradiction, which is not unexampled in the history of character, he may have had dreams of a refined purity and temperance which tortured and embittered him by their contrast with actual life.

Out of the smoke of controversy, the conclusion seems to have emerged that the _Satiricon_ is a work of Nero's reign, and that its author was in all probability that Caius Petronius who was Nero's close companion, and who fell a victim to the jealousy of Tigellinus. Not the least cogent proof of this is the literary criticism of the work. It is well known that Lucan, belonging to the Spanish family of the Senecas, had thrown off many of the conventions of Roman literature, and discarded the machinery of epic mythology in his _Pharsalia_. He had also incurred the literary jealousy of Nero. The attack in the _Satiricon_ on Lucan's literary aberrations can hardly be mistaken. The old poet Eumolpus is introduced to defend the traditions of the past. And he gives a not very successful demonstration, in 285 verses, of the manner in which the subject should have been treated, with all the scenery and machinery of orthodox epic.(740) This specimen of conservative taste is the least happy part of the work.

Such evidence is reinforced by the harmony of the whole tone of the _Satiricon_ with the clear-cut character of Petronius in Tacitus. There was evidently a singular fascination about this man, which, in spite of his wasted, self-indulgent life, was keenly felt by the severe historian.

Petronius was capable of great things, but in an age of wild licence he deliberately devoted his brilliant talent to making sensuality a fine art.

Like Otho, who belonged to the same circle, he showed, as consul and in the government of Bithynia, that a man of pleasure could be equal to great affairs.(741) After this single digression from the scheme of the voluptuary, he returned to his pleasures, and became an arbiter in all questions of sensual taste, from whose decision there was no appeal. His ascendency over the Emperor drew upon him the fatal enmity of Tigellinus.

Petronius was doomed. It was a time when not even the form of justice was used to veil the caprices of tyranny, and Petronius determined not to endure a long suspense when the issue was certain. He had gone as far as c.u.mae to attend the Emperor. There he was stopped. He retired to his chamber and had his veins alternately opened and rebound, meanwhile conversing with his friends or listening to light verses, not, as the fashion then was, seeking consolation from a Stoic director on the issues of life and death. He rewarded some of his slaves; others he had flogged before his eyes. After a banquet he fell calmly into his last sleep In his will there was none of the craven adulation by which the victim often strove to save his heirs from imperial rapacity. He broke his most precious myrrhine vase, to prevent its being added to Nero's treasures.(742) His only bequest to the Emperor was a stinging catalogue of his secret and nameless sins.(743)

The _Satiricon_, as we have it, is only a fragment, containing parts of two books, out of a total of sixteen. It is full of humorous exaggeration and wild Aristophanic fun, along with, here and there, very subtle and refined delineation of character. But, except in the famous dinner of Trimalchio, there are few signs of regular construction or closeness of texture in plot and incident. Even if we had the whole, it might have been difficult to decipher its motive or to unlock the secret of the author's character. We can only be sure that he was a man of genius, and that he was interested in the intellectual pursuits and tendencies of his time, as well as in its vices and follies. We may perhaps surmise that he was at once perverted and disillusioned, alternately fascinated and disgusted by the worship of the flesh and its l.u.s.ts in that evil time. He is not, as has been sometimes said, utterly devoid of a moral sense. Occasionally he shows a gleam of n.o.bler feeling, a sense of the _lacrimae rerum_, as in that pa.s.sage where the corpse of the shipwrecked Lichas is washed ash.o.r.e.

"Somewhere a wife is quietly awaiting him, or a father or a son, with no thought of storm; some one whom he kissed on leaving.... He had examined the accounts of his estates, he had pictured to himself the day of his return to his home. And now he lies, O ye G.o.ds, how far from the goal of his hopes. But the sea is not the only mocker of the hopes of men. If you reckon well, there is shipwreck everywhere."(744) There is also a curious note of contempt for his own age in a pa.s.sage on the decay of the fine arts. The tone is, for the moment, almost that of Ruskin. The glories of the golden age of art were the result of simple virtue. An age like the Neronian, an age abandoned to wine and harlotry, which dreams only of making money by any sordid means, cannot even appreciate what the great masters have left behind, much less itself produce anything worthy. Even the G.o.ds of the Capitol are now honoured by an offering of crude bullion, not by the masterpieces of a Pheidias or an Apelles. And the race which created them are now for us, forsooth, silly Greeklings!(745)

Yet side by side with a pa.s.sage like this, there are descriptions of abnormal depravity so coa.r.s.ely realistic that it has often been a.s.sumed, and not unnaturally, that the writer rioted in mere filth. It should be remembered, however, that there was a tradition of immorality about the ancient romance,(746) and Petronius, had he cared to do so, might have made the same apology as Martial, that he provided what his readers demanded.(747) That Petronius was deeply tainted is only too probable from his a.s.sociations, although Tacitus implies that he was rather a fastidious voluptuary than a gross debauchee. Yet a sensualist of the intellectual range of Petronius may have occasionally visions of a better world than that to which he has sunk. Is it not possible that the gay elegant trifler may sometimes have scorned himself as he scorned his time? Is it not possible that, along with other illusions, he had parted with the illusions of vice, and that in the "noctes Neronis" he had seen the adder among the roses? He has written one of the keenest satires ever penned on the vulgarity of mere wealth, its absurd affectations, its vanity, its grossness. May he not also have wished, without moralising in a fashion which so cultivated a trifler would have scorned, to reveal the abyss towards which a society lost to all the finer pa.s.sions of the spirit was hurrying? In the half comic, half ghastly scene in which Trimalchio, in a fit of maudlin sentiment, has himself laid out for dead, while the horns blare out his funeral lament, we seem to hear the knell of a society which was the slave of gold and gross pleasure, and seemed to be rotting before its death.

But it need hardly be said that the prevailing note of the _Satiricon_ is anything but melancholy. The author is intensely amused with his subject, and the piece is full of the most riotous fun and humour. It belongs formally to the medley of prose and verse which Varro introduced into Roman literature on the model of Menippus of Gadara.(748) It contains disquisitions on literary tendencies of the day in poetry and oratory, anecdotes and desultory talk. But Petronius has given a new character to the old "Satura," more in the manner of the Greek romance. There probably was no regular plot in the complete work, no central motive, such as the wrath of Priapus,(749) to bind it together. Yet there is a certain bond of union in the narrative of lively, and often questionable, adventures through which Petronius carries his very disreputable characters. In this life and movement, this human interest, the _Satiricon_ is the distant ancestor of _Gil Blas_, _Roderick Random_, and _Tom Jones_.

The scene of the earlier part, long since lost, may have been laid at Ma.s.silia.(750) In the two books partially preserved to us, it lies in southern Italy, at c.u.mae or Croton, in those Greek towns which had plenty of Greek vice, without much Greek refinement.(751) The three strangers, whose adventures are related, Encolpius, Ascyltus, and Giton, if we may judge by their names, are also Greek, with the literary culture of their time, and deeply tainted with its worst vices. At the opening of our fragment, Encolpius, a beggarly, wandering sophist, is declaiming in a portico on the decay of oratory.(752) He is expressing what was probably Petronius's own judgment, as it was that of Tacitus,(753) as to the evil effects of school declamation on musty or frivolous subjects. He is met by a rival lecturer, Agamemnon, who urges, on behalf of the unfortunate teachers of this conventional rhetoric, that the fault lies not with them, but with the parents and the public, the same excuse, in fact, which Plato had long before made for the maligned sophist of the fifth century B.C.(754) But Encolpius and his companions, in spite of these literary interests, are the most disreputable adventurers, educated yet hopelessly depraved. They are even more at home in the reeking slums than in the lecture hall. Encolpius has been guilty of murder, theft, seduction. The party are alternately plunderers and plundered. They riot for the moment in foul excesses, and are tortured by jealousy and the miseries of squalid vice. Only those who have a taste for p.o.r.nography will care to follow them in these dark paths. Reduced to the last pinch of poverty, they are invited to dine at the all-welcoming table of Trimalchio, and this is for us the most interesting pa.s.sage in their adventures. But, on leaving the rich freedman's halls they once more pa.s.s into scenes where a modern pen cannot venture to follow them. Yet soon afterwards, Encolpius is found in a picture gallery discussing the fate of literature and art with Eumolpus,(755) an inveterate poet, as vicious as himself. Presently the party are on shipboard off the south Italian coast. They are shipwrecked and cast ash.o.r.e in a storm near the town of Croton.(756) A friendly peasant informs them that, if they are honest merchants, that is no place for their craft. But if they belong to the more distinguished world of intrigue, they may make their fortune. It is a society which has no care for letters or virtue, which thinks only of unearned gain. There are only two cla.s.ses, the deceivers and their victims. Children are an expensive luxury, for only the childless ever receive an invitation or any social attention. It is like a city ravaged by the plague; there are only left the corpses and the vultures.(757) The adventurers resolve to seize the rare opportunity; they will turn the tables on the social birds of prey.

The pauper poet is easily translated into a millionaire with enormous estates in Africa.(758) A portion of his wealth has been engulfed in the storm, but a solid HS.300,000,000, with much besides, still remains. He has a cough, moreover, with other signs of debility. There is no more idiotic person, as our Stock Exchange records show, than a man eager for an unearned fortune. The poor fools flocked around Eumolpus, drinking in every fresh rumour about his will. He was loaded with gifts;(759) great ladies made an easy offer of their virtue and even that of their children.(760) Meanwhile he, or Petronius, plays with their follies or tortures their avidity. In one of his many wills, the heirs of the pretended Croesus are required not to touch their booty till they have devoured his remains before the people!(761) The tales of barbarian tribes in Herodotus, the memories of the siege of Saguntum and Numantia, are invoked in brutal irony to justify the reasonableness of the demand.

"Close your eyes," the cynic enjoins, "and fancy that instead of devouring human flesh, you are swallowing a million of money." Petronius could be very brutal as well as very refined in his raillery. The combined stupidity and greed of the fortune-hunter of all ages are perhaps best met by such brutality of contempt.

The really interesting part of their adventure is the dinner at the house of Trimalchio, a rich freedman, to which these rascals were invited.

Trimalchio is probably in many traits drawn from life, but the picture of himself, of his wife and his a.s.sociates, is a work of genius worthy of Fielding or Smollett or Le Sage. Petronius, it is clear, enjoyed his work, and, in spite of his contempt for the vulgar ambition and the coa.r.s.eness and commonness of Trimalchio's cla.s.s, he has a liking for a certain simplicity and honest good nature in Trimalchio. The freedman tells the story of his own career(762) without reserve, and with a certain pride in the virtue and frugality, according to his standards, which have made him what he is. He also exults in his shrewdness and business capacity. His motto has always been, "You are worth just what you have." "Buy cheap and sell dear." Coming as a little slave boy from Asia, probably in the reign of Augustus,(763) he became the favourite of his master, and more than the favourite of his mistress. He found himself in the end the real master of the household, and, on his patron's death, he was left joint-heir to his property with the emperor. But he had ambitions beyond even such a fortune. He became a ship-owner on a great scale. He lost a quarter of a million in a single storm, and at once proceeded to build more and larger ships. Money poured in; all his ventures prospered. He bought estates in Italy, Sicily, and Africa. Some of his purchases he had never seen.(764) He built himself a stately house, with marble porticoes, four great banqueting-halls, and twenty sleeping-rooms.(765) Everything to satisfy human wants was produced upon his lands. He was a man of infinite enterprise. He had improved the breed of his flocks by importing rams from Tarentum. He had bees from Hymettus in his hives. He sent to India for mushroom sp.a.w.n.(766) A gazette was regularly brought out, full of statistics, and all the daily incidents on his estates;(767) the number of slave births and deaths; a slave crucified for blaspheming the genius of the master; a fire in the bailiff's house; the divorce of a watchman's wife, who had been caught in adultery with the bathman; a sum of HS.100,000 paid into the chest, and waiting for investment-these are some of the items of news. Trimalchio, who bears now, after the fashion of his cla.s.s, the good Roman name of Caius Pompeius, has risen to the dignity of Sevir Augustalis in his munic.i.p.ality;(768) he is one of the foremost persons in it, with an overwhelming sense of the dignity of wealth, and with a ridiculous affectation of artistic and literary culture, which he parades with a delightful unconsciousness of his blunders.

When the wandering adventurers arrive for dinner,(769) they find a bald old man in a red tunic playing at ball, with eunuchs in attendance. While he is afterwards being rubbed down with unguents in the bath, his servants refresh themselves with old Falernian. Then, with four richly dressed runners preceding him, and wrapped in a scarlet mantle, he is borne to the house in his sedan along with his ugly minion. On the wall of the vestibule, as you entered, there were frescoes, one of which represented the young Trimalchio, under the leadership of Minerva, making his entry into Rome, with other striking incidents of his ill.u.s.trious career, while Fortune empties her flowing horn, and the Fates spin the golden thread of his destiny.(770) The banquet begins; Alexandrian boys bring iced water and delicately attend to the guests' feet, singing all the while.(771) Indeed, the whole service is accompanied by singing, and the blare of instruments. To a great, deafening burst of music, the host is at last borne in buried in cushions, his bare shaven head protruding from a scarlet cloak, with a stole around his neck, and lappets falling on each side; his hands and arms loaded with rings.(772) Not being just then quite ready for dinner, he, with a kindly apology, has a game of draughts, until he feels inclined to eat, the pieces on the terebinthine board being, appropriately to such a player, gold and silver coins.(773) The dinner is a long series of surprises, on the artistic ingenuity of which Trimalchio plumes himself vastly. One course represents the twelve signs of the Zodiac, of which the host expounds at length the fateful significance.(774) Another dish was a large boar, with baskets of sweetmeats hanging from its tusks. A huge bearded hunter pierced its sides with a hunting knife, and forthwith from the wound there issued a flight of thrushes which were dexterously captured in nets as they flew about the room.(775) Towards the end of the meal the guests were startled by strange sounds in the ceiling, and a quaking of the whole apartment. As they raised their eyes, the ceiling suddenly opened, and a great circular tray descended, with a figure of Priapus, bearing all sorts of fruit and bon-bons.(776) It may be readily a.s.sumed that in such a scene the wine was not stinted. Huge flagons, coated with gypsum, were brought in shoulder high, each with a label attesting that it was the great Falernian vintage of Opimius, one hundred years old.(777) As the wine appeared, the genial host remarked with admirable frankness, "I did not give as good wine yesterday, although I had a more distinguished company!"

The amus.e.m.e.nts of the banquet were as various, and some of them as coa.r.s.e or fantastic, as the dishes. They are gross and tasteless exaggerations of the prevailing fashion. In a literary age, a man of Trimalchio's position must affect some knowledge of letters and art. He is a ludicrous example of the dogmatism of pretentious ignorance in all ages. He has a Greek and Latin library,(778) and pretends to have once read Homer, although his recollections are rather confused. He makes, for instance, Daedalus shut Niobe into the Trojan horse; Iphigenia becomes the wife of Achilles; Helen is the sister of Diomede and Ganymede.(779) One of the more refined entertainments which are provided is the performance of scenes from the Homeric poems, which Trimalchio accompanied by reading in a sonorous voice from a Latin version.(780) He is himself an author, and has his poems recited by a boy personating the Bacchic G.o.d.(781) As a connoisseur of plate he will yield to no one,(782) although he slyly confesses that his "real Corinthian" got their name from the dealer Corinthus. The metal came from the fused bronze and gold and silver which Hannibal flung into the flames of captured Troy. But Trimalchio's most genuine taste, as he navely confesses, is for acrobatic feats and loud horn-blowing. And so, a company of rope-dancers bore the guests with their monotonous performances.(783) Blood-curdling tales of the wer-wolf, and corpses carried off by witches, are provided for another kind of taste.(784) A base product of Alexandria imitates the notes of the nightingale, and another, apparently of Jewish race, equally base, in torturing dissonant tones spouted pa.s.sages from the _Aeneid_, profaned to scholarly ears by a mixture of Atellan verses.(785) Trimalchio, who was anxious that his wife should display her old powers of dancing a _cancan_, is also going to give an exhibition of his own gifts in the pantomimic line,(786) when the shrewd lady in a whisper warned him to maintain his dignity. How far she preserved her own we shall see presently.

The company at this strange party were worthy of their host. And Petronius has outdone himself in the description of these brother freedmen, looking up to Trimalchio as the glory of their order, and giving vent to their ill-humour, their optimism, or their inane moralities, in conversation with the sly observer who reports their talk. They are all old slaves like their host, men who have "made their pile," or lost it. They rate themselves and their neighbours simply in terms of cash.(787) The only ability they can understand is that which can "pick money out of the dung-heap," and "turn lead to gold."(788) These gross and infinitely stupid fellows have not even the few saving traits in the character of Trimalchio. He has, after all, an honourable, though futile, ambition to be a wit, a connoisseur, a patron of learning. His luxury is coa.r.s.e enough, but he wishes, however vainly, to redeem it by some ingenuity, by interspersing the mere animal feeding with some broken gleams, or, as we may think, faint and distorted reflections, of that great world of which he had heard, but the portals of which he could never enter. But his company are of mere clay. Trimalchio is gross enough at times, but, compared with his guests, he seems almost tolerable. And their dull baseness is the more torturing to a modern reader because it is an enduring type. The neighbour of the Greek observer warns him not to despise his company;(789) they are "warm" men. That one at the end of the couch, who began as a porter, has his HS.800,000. Another, an undertaker, has had his glorious days, when the wine flowed in rivers;(790) but he has been compelled to compound with his creditors, and he has played them a clever trick. A certain Seleucus, whose name reveals his origin, explains his objections to the bath, especially on this particular morning, when he has been at a funeral.(791) The fate of the departed friend unfortunately leads him to moralise on the weakness of mortal men, mere insects, or bubbles on the stream. As for medical aid, it is an imaginary comfort; it oftener kills than cures.(792) The great consolation was that the funeral was respectably done, although the wife was not effusive in her grief.(793) Another guest will have none of this affected mourning for one who lived the life of his choice and left his solid hundred thousand.(794) He was after all a harsh quarrelsome person, very different from his brother, a stout, kindly fellow with an open hand, and a sumptuous table.

He had his reverses at first, but he was set up again by a good vintage and a lucky bequest, which he knew, by a sly stroke, how to increase; a true son of fortune, who lived his seventy years and more, as black as a crow, a man who l.u.s.tily enjoyed all the delights of the flesh to the very end.(795)

But the most interesting person for the modern student is the grumbler about the management of town affairs, and here a page or two of the _Satiricon_ is worth a dissertation. The price of bread has gone up, and the bakers must be in league with the aediles. In the good old times, when the critic first came from Asia, things were very different.(796) "There were giants in those days. Think of Safinius, who lived by the old arch, a man with a sharp, biting tongue, but a true friend, a man who, in the town council, went straight to his point, whose voice in the forum rang out like a trumpet. Yet he was just like one of us, knew everybody's name, and returned every salute. Why, in those days corn was as cheap as dirt. You could buy for an as a loaf big enough for two. But the town has since gone sadly back.(797) Our aediles now think only how to pocket in a day what would be to some of us a fortune. I know how a certain person made his thousand gold pieces. If this goes on, I shall have to sell my cottages.

Neither men nor the G.o.ds have any mercy. It all comes from our neglect of religion. No one now keeps a fast, no one cares a fig for Jove. In old days when there was a drought, the long-robed matrons with bare feet, dishevelled hair, and pure hearts, would ascend the hill to entreat Jupiter for rain, and then it would pour down in buckets."(798) At this point the maundering, pious pessimist is interrupted by a rag dealer(799) of a more cheerful temper. "Now this, now that, as the rustic said, when he lost his speckled pig. What we have not to-day will come to-morrow; so life rubs along. Why, we are to have a three days' show of gladiators on the next holiday, not of the common sort, but many freedmen among them.

And our t.i.tus has a high spirit; he will not do things by halves. He will give us cold steel without any shirking, a good bit of butchery in full view of the amphitheatre. And he can well afford it. His father died and left him HS.30,000,000. What is a paltry HS.400,000 to such a fortune?(800) and it will give him a name for ever. He has some t.i.t-bits, too, in reserve, the lady chariot-driver, and the steward of Glyco, who was caught with his master's wife; poor wretch, he was only obeying orders. And the worthless Glyco has given him to the beasts; the lady deserved to suffer. And I have an inkling that Mammaea is going to give us a feast, where we shall get two denarii apiece. If she does the part expected of her, Norba.n.u.s will be nowhere. His gladiators were a wretched, weedy, twopenny-halfpenny lot, who would go down at a mere breath. They were all cut to pieces, as the cowards deserved, at the call of the crowd, 'give it them.' A pretty show indeed! When I applauded, I gave far more than I got. But friend Agamemnon, you are thinking 'what is all this long-winded chatter.'(801) Well, you, who dote on eloquence, why won't you talk yourself, instead of laughing at us feeble folk. Some day I may persuade you to look in at my farm; I daresay, though the times are bad, we shall find a pullet to eat. And I have a young scholar ripening for your trade. He has good wits and never raises his head from his task. He paints with a will. He has begun Greek, and has a real taste for Latin.

But one of his tutors is conceited and idle. The other is very painstaking, but, in his excess of zeal, he teaches more than he knows. So I have bought the boy some red-letter volumes, that he may get a tincture of law for domestic purposes. That is what gives bread and b.u.t.ter. He has now had enough of literature. If he gives it up, I think I shall teach him a trade, the barber's or auctioneer's or pleader's,(802) something that only death can take from him. Every day I din into his ears, Primigenius, my boy, what you learn you learn for profit. Look at the lawyer Philero.

If he had not learnt his business, he could not keep the wolf from the door. Why, only a little ago, he was a hawker with a bundle on his back, and now he can hold his own with Norba.n.u.s. Learning is a treasure, and a trade can never be lost."

To all this stimulating talk there are lively interludes. A guest thinks one of the strangers, in a superior way, is making game of the company, and a.s.sails him with a shower of the choicest abuse, in malodorous Latin of the slums, interlarded with proud references to his own rise from the slave ranks.(803) Trimalchio orders the house-dog, Scylax, to be brought in, but the brute falls foul of a pet spaniel, and, in the uproar, a lamp is overthrown, the vases on the table are all smashed, and some of the guests are scalded with the hot oil.(804) In the middle of this lively scene, a lictor announces the approach of Habinnas, a stone-cutter, who is also a great dignitary of the town. He arrives rather elevated from another feast of which he has pleasant recollections. He courteously asks for Fortunata,(805) who happens to be just then looking after the plate and dividing the remains of the feast among the slaves. That lady, after many calls, appears in a cherry coloured tunic with a yellow girdle, wiping her hands with her neckerchief. She has splendid rings on her arms, legs, and fingers, which she pulls off to show them to the stone-cutter's lady. Trimalchio is proud of their weight, and orders a balance to be brought in to confirm his a.s.sertions. It is melancholy to relate that, in the end, the two ladies get hopelessly drunk, and fall to embracing one another in a rather hysterical fashion. Fortunata even attempts to dance.(806) In the growing confusion the slaves take their places at table, and the cook begins to give imitations of a favourite actor,(807) and lays a wager with his master on the chances of the green at the next races. Trimalchio, who by this time was becoming very mellow and sentimental, determines to make his will, and to manumit all his slaves, with a farm to one, a house to another. He even gives his friend the stone-cutter full directions about the monument which is to record so brilliant a career. There is to be ample provision for its due keeping, in the fashion so well known from the inscriptions, with a fair s.p.a.ce of prescribed measurements, planted with vines and other fruit trees.

Trimalchio wishes to be comfortable in his last home.(808) On the face of the monument ships under full sail are to figure the sources of his wealth.(809) He himself is to be sculptured, seated on a tribunal, clothed with the _praetexta_ of the Augustalis, with five rings on his fingers, ladling money from a bag, as in the great banquet with which he had once regaled the people.(810) On his right hand there is to be the figure of his wife holding a dove and a spaniel on a leash. A boy is to be graved weeping over a broken urn. And, finally, in the centre of the scene, there is to be a horologe, that the pa.s.ser-by, as he looks for the hour, may have his eyes always drawn to the epitaph which recited the dignities and virtues of the ill.u.s.trious freedman. It told posterity that "C. Pompeius Trimalchio Maecenatia.n.u.s was pious, stout, and trusty, that he rose from nothing, left HS.30,000,000, and never heard a philosopher." The whole company, along with Trimalchio himself, of course wept copiously at the mere thought of the close of so ill.u.s.trious a career. After renewing their gastric energy in the bath, the company fell to another banquet. Presently a c.o.c.k crows, and Trimalchio, in a fit of superst.i.tion, spills his wine under the table,(811) pa.s.ses his rings to the right hand, and offers a reward to any one who will bring the ominous bird. The disturber was soon caught and handed over to the cook for execution. Then Trimalchio excites his wife's natural anger by a piece of amatory grossness, and, in retaliation for her very vigorous abuse, flings a cup at her head. In the scene which follows he gives, with the foulest references to his wife's early history, a sketch of his own career and the eulogy of the virtues that have made him what he is.(812) Growing more and more sentimental, he at last has himself laid out for dead;(813) the horn-blowers sound his last lament, one of them, the undertaker's man, with such a good will, that the town watch arrived in breathless haste with water and axes to extinguish a fire. The strangers seized the opportunity to escape from the nauseous scene. T