Delphi Complete Works of Petronius

by Petronius

  [LII] “I’m quite a connoisseur in plate. I’ve got cups as big as waterpots, a hundred of them more or less, representing how Cassandra slew her sons, and there lie the lads dead, as natural as life! I’ve got a thousand bowls Mummius bequeathed to my patron, on which Daedalus is shown shutting Niobe up in the Trojan horse. Why! I’ve got the fights of Hermeros and Petraites on a series of cups all of massive metal. I wouldn’t sell my savvy in these things for any money.”

  In the middle of these remarks a slave dropped a cup. Trimalchio looked at him and said, “Go at once and kill yourself; you are a careless fellow.” The slave immediately dropped his lip and began to beg for mercy. “Why worry me,” cried Trimalchio, “as if I were being harsh upon you. I merely urge you to secure yourself from being so heedless again.” At length, on our entreaty, he pardoned the man. The latter, to celebrate the event, began running round and round the table, crying, “Out water, in wine!” We were all ready to take the merry rascal’s kind suggestion, and particularly Agamemnon, who knew very well how to earn another invitation. But Trimalchio under the stimulus of our flattery drank away more gayly than ever, and being close on the verge of intoxication, “Won’t any of you,” he cried, “ask my wife Fortunata to dance? Believe me, there’s no one foots the cancan better.” Then putting up his two hands himself above his brow, he began imitating Syrus the comedian, the whole household singing out, “Bravo! Oh, bravissimo!” in chorus; and he would have made a public exhibition of himself, had not Fortunata whispered in his ear and told him, I suppose, that suchlike buffooneries were beneath his dignity. But nothing could well be more uncertain than his humor; one moment he would listen respectfully to Fortunata, the next hark back to his natural propensities.

  [LIII] However his dancing fit was cut short by the entrance of the historiographer, who read out solemnly, as if he were reciting the public records:

  “Seventh of Kalends of July (June 25th): On the manor of Cumae, Trimalchio’s property, were born this day thirty boys, forty girls; were carried from threshing-floor to granary 500,000 bushels of wheat; were put to the yoke 500 oxen.

  “Same day: Mithridates, a slave, was crucified for blaspheming our master Gaius’ tutelary genius.

  “Same day: returned to treasury ten million sesterces, no investment being forthcoming for the sum.

  “Same day: a fire occurred in Pompey’s garden, originating at the house of Nasta, the Bailiff.”

  “Eh?” interrupted Trimalchio, “when were Pompey’s gardens bought for me?”

  “Last year,” answer the historiographer; “therefore they have not been brought into account yet.”

  Trimalchio blazed up at this and shouted, “Any estates bought in my name, if I hear nothing of them within six months, I forbid their being carried to my account at all.”

  Next were read his Ediles’ edicts and Foresters’ wills, in which Trimalchio was excluded from inheritance, but mentioned with the highest encomiums. Then the names of his Bailiffs were recited; how the Chief Inspector had repudiated his mistress, a freedwoman, having detected her in an intrigue with the Bath-Super-intendent; how the Chamberlain had been removed to Baiae: the Steward convicted of peculation; and a dispute between the Grooms of the Chamber adjudicated upon.

  But now the acrobats entered at last. A most tiresome, dull fellow stood supporting a ladder, up the rungs of which he ordered a lad to climb and dance and sing on the top, and then leap down through blazing hoops holding a wine-jar in his teeth. Trimalchio was the only person present who admired this performance, saying it was a hard life truly. There were but two things, he went on, in all the world he really enjoyed seeing — acrobats and horn-blowers; all other shows were mere trash. “Yes! I bought a company of comedians too,” he said, “but I insisted on their playing Atellanes, and I ordered my conductor to play Latin airs and Latin airs only.”

  [LIV] In the middle of these fine remarks of the great Gaius, the boy suddenly tumbled down on top of our host. The domestics all raised a shriek, and the guests as well, not for any love they bore the disgusting creature, whose neck they would have gladly seen broken, but for fear of a bad end to the feast and the necessity of lamenting the man’s death. Trimalchio himself gave a deep groan and bent over one arm, as if it were injured. His physicians flocked round him, and amongst the foremost Fortunata with streaming hair and a cup in her hand, asseverating she was a most miserable, unhappy woman. For his part, the boy who had fallen was already creeping round at our knees, beseeching us to intercede for him.

  I was tormented with the idea that these prayers were only intended to lead up by some ridiculous turn to another theatrical denouement. For the cook who had forgotten to bowel the hog still stuck in my memory. So I began to carry my eyes all about the room, to see if the wall would not open to admit some stage-machine or other, especially after observing how a slave was thrashed, who had bandaged his master’s bruised arm with white instead of purple wool. Nor was I far out in my suspicions, for in lieu of punishment being inflicted, Trimalchio now ruled that the lad must be made free, that none might be able to say so noble a gentleman had been injured by a slave. [LV] We acclaim the generous act, and indulge in a string of platitudes on the precariousness of human affairs. “Well, then!” interposed Trimalchio, “an accident like this must not be allowed to pass without an impromptu,” and instantly calling for his tablets, and without much racking of brains, he read out the following lines:

  “When least we think, things go astray,

  Dame Fortune o’er our life holds sway;

  Then drink, make merry, whilst ye may!”

  This epigram led the way to a discussion of poets and poetry, and for some time the palm of song was awarded to Mopsus the Thracian, until Trimalchio remarked to Agamemnon, “Pray, master, what do you consider the difference to be between Cicero and Publilius? For my own part, I consider the former the more eloquent author, the latter the more genteel. What for instance can be better put than this:

  “’Tis arrant luxury undoes the State;

  To please your palate pampered peacocks die,

  That flaunt their plumed Assyrian gold abroad

  For you Numidian fowl and capon fat.

  Even the kindly stork is sacrificed,

  Our graceful, noisy, long-legged friend,

  Fearful of winter’s cold and harbinger of Spring,

  And finds the cruel cooking-pot its nest.

  Why are the Indian pearls so dear to you, —

  If not to deck with sea-sought gems the wife

  That lifts a wanton leg adulterously?

  Why love you so the emerald’s greeny gleam,

  And flashing fires of Punic carbuncles?

  Honor and virtue are the truest gems.

  Is’t right the bride should wear the woven wind,

  And stand exposed in garments thin as air?

  [LVI] “Now what do you hold to be the most difficult calling,” he went on, “after Literature? I think the doctor’s and the money-changer’s; the doctor, because he’s got to know what chaps have in their insides, and when the fever’s coming, — though truly I hate ’em like fury, for they’re for ever ordering me duck-broth; the money-changer, who detects the bronze underneath the surface plating of silver.

  “Of beasts the most hard-working are oxen and sheep; to the former we owe the bread we eat, while ’tis the latter make us so fine with their wool. What a brutal shame it is when a man eats mutton and wears a woolen coat! Now bees, — I do think they are God’s own creatures, for they vomit honey, though some say they bring it down from Jupiter. And that’s why they sting, for you’ll never find sweet without sour.”

  He was still cutting out the philosophers in this fashion, when lottery tickets were passed round in a cup, and a slave, whose special duty this was, read out the presents to be distributed in the tombola:

  “Humbug Silver; a gammon of bacon was shown, with cruets of that metal standing on it.

  A Neck-Pillow; and a neck of mutton w
as produced.

  Forbidden Fruits and Contumely; pommeloes were brought in, and a punt-pole with an apple.

  Leeks and Peaches; the drawer received a whip and a knife.

  Dress Clothes and Morning Coat; a piece of meat and a memorandum book.

  Canal and Foot Measure; a hare and a slipper.

  Lamprey and Letter; a mouse and a frog tied together, and a bundle of beetroot.”

  We laughed loud and long; and there were a hundred and fifty other conceits of the same sort that have escaped my memory.

  CHAPTER NINE

  [LVII] But Ascyltos, lost to all self-control, threw his arms up in the air, and turning the whole proceedings into ridicule, laughed till the tears ran down his cheeks. At this once of the freedmen among the guests, the same who occupied the place next above me, lost his temper and shouted:

  “What are you laughing at, muttonhead? Isn’t my master’s elegant hospitality to your taste? You’re a mighty fine gentleman, I suppose, and used to better entertainment. So help me the guardian spirits of this house, but I would have made him baa to some purpose, had I been next him. A pretty sprig indeed, to laugh at other people! a vagabond from who knows where, a night-raker, that’s not worth his own piddle! Just let me piss round him, and he would not know how to save his life! By the powers, I’m not as a rule quick to take offense, but there! worms are bred in soft flesh. He’s laughing; what’s he got to laugh at? Did his father buy the brat for money? You’re a Roman knight: and I’m a king’s son. ‘Why did you serve as a slave then?’ Why! because I chose to, and thought it better to be a Roman citizen than a tributary king. And henceforth I hope to live a life beyond the reach of any one’s ridicule. I am a man now among men; I can walk about with my nose in the air. I owe nobody a brass farthing; I’ve never made composition; no one ever stopped me in the forum with a ‘Pay me that thou owest!’ I’ve bought some bits of land, put by a trifle of tin; I keep twenty folks in victuals, to say nothing of the dog; I’ve purchased my bedfellow’s freedom, that no man should wipe his hands on her bosom; I paid a thousand denars to redeem her; I was made a sevir, free gratis for nothing; I trust I may die and have no cause to blush in my grave.

  “But you, are you so busy you can’t so much as look behind you? You can spy a louse on a neighbor’s back, and never see the great tick on your own. You’re the only man to find us ridiculous; there’s your master and your elder, he likes us well enough, I warrant. You! with your mammy’s milk scarce dry on your lips, you can’t say boo! to a goose; you crock, you limp scrap of soaked leather, you may be supple, but you’re no good. Are you richer than other folk? then dine twice over, and sup twice! For myself I value my credit far above millions. Did any man ever dun me twice? I served forty years, but nobody knows whether I was slave or free. I was a long-haired lad when first I came to this town; the basilica was not built yet. But I took pains to please my master, a great, grand gentleman and a dignified, whose nail-parings were worth more than your whole body. And I had enemies in the house, let me tell you, quite ready to trip me up on occasion; but — thanks to his kind nature — I swam the rapids. That’s the real struggle; for to be born a gentleman is as easy as ‘Come here.’ Whatever are you gaping at now, like a buck-goat in a field of bitter vetch?”

  [LVIII] At this harangue Giton, who was standing at my feet, could no longer contain himself, but burst into a most indecorous peal of merriment. When Ascyltos’ adversary noticed the fact, he turned his abuse upon the lad, screaming, “You’re laughing too, are you, you curled onion? Ho! for the Saturnalia, is it December, pray? When did you stump up your twentieth? What’s he at now, the crow’s meat gallows-bird? I’ll take care God’s anger falls on you, you and your master who does not keep you in better order. As I hope to live by bread. I only keep my hands off you out of respect for my fellow freedmen; else would I have paid you off this instant minute. We’re right enough, but your folks are good for nothing, who don’t keep you to heel. Verily, like master like man. I can scarce hold myself, and I’m not a hot-headed man naturally; but if I once begin, I don’t care twopence for my own mother. All right, I shall come across you yet in the open street, you rat, you mushroom, you! I’ll never stir up nor down, if I don’t drive your master into a wretched hole, and show you what’s what, though you call upon Olympian Jove himself to help you! I’ll be the ruin of your rubbishy ringlets and your twopenny master into the bargain. All right, see if I don’t get my teeth into you; either I don’t know myself, or you shall laugh on the wrong side of your face, even if you have a beard of gold. I’ll see that Minerva’s down on you, and the man that first trained you to be what you are.

  “I never learned Geometry and Criticism and such like nonsensical screeds, but I do understand the lapidaries’ marks, and I can subdivide to the hundredth part when it comes to questions of mass, and weight and mintage. Well and good! if you have a mind, we’ll have a little wager, you and I; come now, here I clap down the tin. You’ll soon see your father wasted his money on you, though you do know Rhetoric. Now:

  ‘Which of us? — I come long, I come wide:

  now guess me.’

  “I’ll tell you which of us runs, yet never stirs from the spot; which of us grows, and gets less all the while. How you skip and fidget and fuss, like a mouse in a chamber-pot! So either hold your tongue altogether, or don’t attack a better man than yourself, who hardly knows of your existence, — unless perhaps you think I’m troubled by your yellow ringlets, that you stole from your doxy. God helps the man that helps himself! Let’s away to the forum to borrow money; you’ll soon see this bit of iron commands some credit. Aha! a fine sight, a fox in a sweat! As I hope to thrive and make such a good end the people will all be swearing at my death, hang me if I don’t chivy you up hill and down dale till you drop! A fine sight too, the fellow that taught you so, — a muff I call him, not a master! We learned something else in my time; the master used to say, ‘Are your things safe? go straight home; don’t stop staring about, and don’t be impertinent to your elders.’ Now it’s all trash; they turn out nobody worth twopence. That I am what I am, I owe to my own wits, and I thank God for it!”

  [LIX] Ascyltos was just beginning to answer his abuse; but Trimalchio, charmed with his fellow-freedman’s eloquence, stopped him, saying, “Come, come! leave your bickerings on one side. Better be good-natured; and do you Hermeros, spare the young man. His blood is up; so be reasonable. To yield is always to win in these matters. You were a young cockerel yourself once, and then coco coco you went, and never a grain of sense in you! So take my advice, let’s start afresh and be jolly, while we enjoy the Homerists.”

  Immediately there filed in an armed band, and clashed spears on shields. Trimalchio himself sat in state on his cushion, and when the Homerists began a dialogue in Greek verse, as is their unmannerly manner, read out a Latin text in a clear, loud voice. Presently in an interval of silence, “You know,” says he, “what the tale is they are giving us? Diomed and Ganymede were two brothers. Their sister was Helen of Troy. Agamemnon carried her off and palmed a doe on Diana in her stead. So Homer relates how the Trojans and Parentines fought each other. He got the best of it, it seems, and gave his daughter Iphigenia in marriage to Achilles. This drove Ajax mad, who will presently make it all plain to you.” No sooner had Trimalchio finished speaking than the Homerists raised a shout, and with the servants bustling in all directions, a boiled calf was borne in on a silver dish weighing two hundred pounds, and actually wearing a helmet. Then came Ajax, and rushing at it like a madman slashed it to bits with his naked sword, and making passes now up and down, collected the pieces on his point and so distributed the flesh among the astonished guests.

  [LX] We had little time however to admire these elegant surprises; for all of a sudden the ceiling began to rattle and the whole room trembled. I sprang up in consternation, fearing some tumbler was going to fall through the roof. The other guests were no less astounded, and gazed aloft, wondering what new prodigy they were to
expect now from the skies. Then lo and behold! the ceiling opened and a huge hoop, evidently stripped from an enormous cask, was let down, all round which hung suspended golden wreaths and caskets containing precious ungents. These we were invited to take home with us as mementos.

  Then looking again at the table, I saw that a tray of cakes had been placed on it, with a figure of Priapus, the handiwork of the pastry-cook, standing in the middle, represented in the conventional way as carrying in his capacious bosom grapes and all sorts of fruits. Eagerly we reached out after these dainties, when instantly a new trick set us laughing afresh. For each cake and each fruit was full of saffron, which spurted out into our faces at the slightest touch, giving us an unpleasant drenching. So conceiving there must be something specially holy about this dish, scented as it was in this ceremonial fashion, we rose to our feet, crying, “All hail, Augustus, Father of his Country!” But seeing the others still helping themselves to the dessert, even after this act of piety, we also filled our napkins, — myself among the foremost, as I thought no gift good enough to pour into my beloved Giton’s bosom. Meantime three slaves entered wearing short white jackets. Two of them set on the table images of the Lares with amulets round their necks, while the third carried round a goblet of wine, crying, “The gods be favorable! the gods be favorable!” Trimalchio told us they were named respectively Cerdo, Felicio and Lucrio. Then came a faithful likeness of Trimalchio in marble, and as everybody else kissed it, we were ashamed not to do likewise.

  [LXI] Then after we had all wished one another good health of mind and body, Trimalchio turned to Niceros and said, “You used to be better company; what makes you so dull and silent today? I beg you, if you wish to oblige me, tell us that adventure of yours.” Niceros, delighted at his friend’s affability, replied, “May I never make profit more, if I’m not ready to burst with satisfaction to see you so well disposed, Trimalchio. So ho! for a pleasant hour, — though I very much fear these learned chaps will laugh at me. Well! let ‘em. I’ll say my say for all that! What does it hurt me, if a man does grin? Better they should laugh with me than at me.” “These words the hero spake,” and so began the following strange story: