UNlV^R-MTf OP CALIFORNIA SAN DIEGO f/i TRIMALCHIO'S DINNER A Roman Revel. TRIMALCHIO'S DINNER BY PETRONIUS ARBITER TRANSLATED FROM THE ORIGINAL LATIN WITH AN INTRODUCTION AND BIBLIOGRAPHICAL APPENDIX BY . HARRY THURSTON PECK Illustrated NEW YORK DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY 1898 Copyright, 1898, By Dodd, Mead and Company. Sanibersttg Press: John Wilson and Son, Cambridge, U.S.A. C-PETRONII-ARBITRI CENA-TRIMALCHIONIS ANGLICE • REDDIDIT • ET • PROCEMIO • CUM • APPENDICE BIBLIOGRAPHICA • INSTRUXIT HENRICVS • THURSTON • PECK NOVI- EBORACI SUMPTIBUS- ET- TYPIS DODD • MEAD ET- SOC MDCCCXCVIII Cantabrigtae FORMIS DESCRIPSERVNT WiLSONES Preface IT is obvious that the ordinary canons of the translator's art cannot be appHed to one who undertakes to render into Eng- lish a production so absolutely unique as the Cena Trimalchionis. This curious frag- ment, containing as it does the most perfect specimens that we have of the so-called ple- beian Latinity, — the idiom of the Roman rabble as distinct from the literary language of cultivated men, — is so filled with words and phrases that find no parallel elsewhere in existing Latin literature, and the conver- sation of the characters introduced in it is so coloured with argot and with slang, as to make anything like a literal translation quite impossible. I have endeavoured, therefore, to give in the English version a rendering vi Preface that shall faithfully reproduce the spirit of the original, while adhering as closely to its actual form of expression as its peculiarities allow. This is often easier than one might at first imagine ; for the coincidences existing between the slang of ancient Rome and the slang of modern England and America are at times extremely striking, — a fact which at some future time I hope to make the subject of a special monograph. But where there exists in the vernacular of to-day no exact equivalent of the Roman idiom, I have endeavoured to find a modern phrase that shall be at any rate a cognate one ; and this has in almost every instance been entirely feasible. Yet the task as a whole has been not unlike the task of one who should endeavour to turn the Chimmie Fadden stories into Spanish or Italian. Again, apart from the colloquialisms so abundant in the Latin, there are many allusions to matters and things which are not only peculiar to the time at which the Preface vii Cena was written, but which are very local and ephemeral in their nature ; and with these I have had to deal as best I might. One short passage (§ ^6) has been entirely omitted because of the utter impossibility of representing in an English form the string of puns which it contains and which if not satisfactorily imitated in the English would leave the translation wholly void of mean- ing. Here and there I have modified a few sentences so as to soften the unnecessary coarseness of the original. The translation is based principally upon the Latin text as edited by Biicheler {editio minor ^ Berlin, 1895); ^^^^ ^ have had before me also the text of Friedlander (Leipzig, 1 891) as well as all the early variorum edi- tions. The French version by De Guerle and the English version by Kelley have likewise been compared, though with very little profit. The book is given to the public in the hope that it will prove of interest both for viii Preface the first-hand picture which it contains of some curious phases of Roman private life under the Empire, and for the value which it possesses in representing one stage in the evolution of realistic fiction. HARRY THURSTON PECK. New York: August i, 1898. Table of Contents Page Preface V Introduction — I. Prose Fiction in Greece and Rome . I 11. The Novel of Petronius . . . . 45 III. The Cena Trimalchionis . . . . 62 Trimalchio's Dinner 73 Bibliographical Appendix 189 Index to the Introduction . . . . 197 Illustrations Page A Roman Revel Frontispiece " Beware of the Dog " (Pompeian Mosaic) 76 Interior of Roman House 92 Roman Cookshop 100 Roman Barber-shop 106 Gladiatorial Contest no Roman Youth 114 Interior of Roman House 128 Peristyle in Roman House 136 Roman Actors 140 Restoration of Interior of Pompeian House 148 Toilet of a Roman Lady 158 Roman Chariot Race 166 Cistern in Roman House 172 Introduction I PROSE FICTION IN GREECE AND ROME AMONG the ancient Greeks, prose fic- tion never attained to the importance which it possesses in the literature of modern times. The reasons which explain this fact are not difficult to discover. In the first place, the genius of the Greeks in the sphere of the imagination found its most natural expression in those forms of literature that are poetical. The true fiction of that re- markable people is to be discovered, there- fore, in their heroic verse, in the Homeric epics, in the national myths of the Cyclic writers, and in the great masterpieces of the tragic poets ; for the Greek fancy was too 2 Introduction lively, too vivid, and too unrestrained, to confine itself to the limits of even the finest prose. In the second place, the emotional life of the Hellenes lacked one important element that has vivified and given beauty and significance to the fiction that is written for the modern world. The one unfailing theme around which our modern novelists build their imaginative work is romantic love, — that feeling for woman, blended of reverence and tenderness and affection, which is not a casual impulse or an incidental man- ifestation of temperament, but which is ex- tremely fundamental, in that it lies so close to our whole conception of domestic life and social stability as to be interwoven to a cer- tain extent with the very fabric of our society. But among the Greeks, to all in- tents and purposes, it had no existence whatsoever. The Greek, on that side, was essentially an Oriental. In his home life, woman was an inferior being, the manager of his household, the mother of his children, Introduction 3 a domestic necessity, but nothing more. He kept her secluded from the world at large, and she never influenced his thought nor shared his serious preoccupations. The women who were to some extent his com- panions and confidantes were the hetara^ and with these he enjoyed something of the intel- lectual companionship and sympathy which all men crave, and which in its perfec- tion can come to them only from congenial association with the other sex. Yet the hetdcra^ whatever may have been their clever- ness, their knowledge of the world, and their personal charm, were still women whom, from the very circumstances of their lives, their male companions could not reverence and respect ; and therefore, here again, the love that forms the staple of all modern fiction had no real place. Finally, the use of prose as a medium for imagina- tive work of this description was not seriously attempted until Greek genius had entered upon the period of its decline. 4 Introduction and until not only taste and morals, but creative imagination, had equally fallen into the beginnings, at least, of an accelerated decadence. Therefore we find in most of the prose fiction that has come down to us from antiquity three characteristic traits, — a lack of variety in its themes, a lack of interest in its treatment, and a lack of originality in its form. There are exceptions to this general statement, and these will be exhibited here- after ; but their existence serves only to accentuate and bring into a stronger and more pronounced relief the truth that has been here enunciated. The origin of prose fiction is to be sought in the history of the Fable, and the Fable grows out of a desire to explain the phenomena of nature and to give to the ex- planation a concrete form. It represents also a childish love of the picturesque that endows rocks and stones and trees with life, and gives the power of speech to animals ; Introduction 5 and it also mirrors forth a fondness for alle- gory and apologue whereby some truth, some fact, is photographed upon the memory through the fascinating medium of a story. Pure fiction, therefore, as distinct from religious and semi-religious myth, first took on a definite shape in the Beast Fable, which is the one form of story to be found in every quarter of the earth, at every period of history, and in the lore of every race, from Egypt to the South Pacific, and from the savage Indian of our Western plains to the still more savage African of the Bantu tribes. It is probable that it is from Asia that the Greeks and Romans first derived their models for this form of literature, and that it was the Hindus who first evolved the very famous stories which bear the name of Bibpai, and which in after times ^sop, Babrius, and Phaedrus made so popular in Europe. It is not alone, however, the Beast Fable 6 Introduction that arose out of humanity's ignorance in the days of its childhood. A swarm of superstitions that are as universal as human life itself all found their utterance in the folk-lore of Greece and Rome. Man in the world's first centuries, before he was gathered into tribes and clans, and before he had begun to feel the social instinct strong upon him, lived in an infinite solitude amid the unbroken forest and illimitable desert, with only two or three companions at the most, his mate some savage woman whom he had seized and carried off and made his captive, and about him his fierce young brood, who threaded with him the lairs of beasts in the dark jungles of the forest. In this profound loneliness, his unfettered imagination — the imagination of a child — peopled the desert with a myriad living creatures. In the whisper of the wind among the leaves at dead of night, he heard the sibilant voices of beings who dwelt in the heart of the forest trees. In the half- seen shadows moving to and fro in the Introduction 7 dimly lighted glades, he saw strange creatures who evaded him at his approach. His dreams at night were as real to him as what he saw by day, for he had not learned as yet to distinguish between subjective and objective happenings. In sleep there came to him the forms of those companions who had died ; and these visions convinced him that death is but another form of sleep, and does not really put an end to all. When the fever of the jungle laid its hot hand upon him, and he tossed about upon his bed of leaves in the delirium of disease, and strange shapes and monstrous images flitted before his sight and brooded over him, he remembered them as real, and on recovering told his vision to his unquestioning fellows. Thus arose the primitive belief in wood nymphs and fountain goddesses, in fauns and satyrs, in ghosts and fairies, in demons and vampires. It is a subject for infinite regret that the classic literatures, as we possess them now, are almost wholly silent here, and give us only the most 8 Introduction tantalising half glimpses and vanishing sug- gestions of the curious and fascinating nature- myths of the common people, and of the stories in which these myths were handed down. The writers whose works we now possess, the makers of literature in its con- ventional meaning, despised these legends of the ignorant, these old wives' tales and peasant lore ; so that it is only here and there that we detect a trace of what has been irrevocably lost. Such are the stories of the Nymphs, as for instance that which tells of the love of Echo for Narcissus, and the legend of Hylas and the Naiads. Such again is the exquisite narrative of Cupid and Psyche which, as preserved in Apuleius, still begins with the good old formula, " Once upon a time in a certain city there lived a king and queen." But these, as we have them now, are very far from being fairy-stories of the primitive sort. They are too artistic, too highly coloured, and too artificial ; and they serve only to give us a clue to the existence Introduction 9 of the wonder- tale in remote antiquity. Our modern conception of a fairy seems to contain a blending of two ancient ideas that are quite distinct, — that of the Nymphs, and that of the Fates, to which fact the word " fairy " (or more correctly " fay") bears wit- ness in its derivation, through the French fee, from the Low Latin y"^//^z and the classical fatum. The household fairy of the Romans was the Lar, who watched over the home as did the English Robin Goodfellow, but more especially the exterior of the home, as the Penates guarded the interior. The belief in the Lares has a close connection with ancestor-worship, since the Lares were the souls of the ancestors of the family hovering about the family abode with friendly pur- pose. The converse of the Lar is the Larva, the ancient prototype of our modern nursery bugaboo, — a malignant spirit who prowled about in some hideous form, such as that of a skeleton, to strike with madness all living lo Introduction persons who gazed upon him. Identified with the Larvas were the Lemures, whom in May of each year the head of every house- hold propitiated by going forth at midnight to wash his hands three times in fresh spring water, after which, taking three black beans into his mouth, he pronounced a formula and cast the beans upon the ground for the Lemures to gather up. The ceremony was ended by beating together brazen vessels, and crying out nine times an exorcism to the spectres, the whole bearing a striking resem- blance to the rites now practised by the Chinese at the burial of their dead. Still another form of elf or fairy was the Incubo, an inhabitant of the depths of the earth, where it lived among the veins of gold and silver in the heart of great mountains, its abode being supported by columns of jasper and glittering with the precious metals. The Incubo is the mythological ancestor of the Scandinavian Black Fairy, of the German Kobold, and of the Irish Leprechaun. Introduction 1 1 Little allusion is made to it in ancient liter- ature, but from a passage in Petronius there seems to have been a story that if one could steal the hat of an Incubo, the treasure over which he watched could easily be found ; and this myth finds a modern parallel in the German story of John Dietrich which Miss Mulock has made familiar to the children of America and England. Belonging to the purely horrible are the legends of Lamia, the traditional bugbear of the nursery, who was invoked to terrify dis- obedient children. Some remnants of these tales survive, and are preserved by Diodorus Siculus, Suidas, Plutarch, Strabo, and the scholiast on Aristophanes. The popular account makes her to have been a Libyan princess whose beauty was so great as to attract the love of Zeus himself, whereupon Here destroyed her children. Frenzied by this loss, she became transformed into a cruel demon who prowled about at night to rob mothers of their children, whose blood she 1 2 Introduction sucked. She ceased to be a living woman, and became a spectre of hideously distorted face, and having also the power of taking out her eyes and then replacing them. This tale or series of tales finds a gradual develop- ment in a second stage of myth in which the Lamias are spoken of in the plural, and are depicted as phantoms in the shape of women of extraordinary beauty who lure young men into their abodes in order to drink their blood and consume their flesh. These Lami^ are evidently the prototypes of the vampires of Slavonic and German folk-lore ; and they appear also in Greek legends under other names, such as Empusa, the spectre with one brazen leg and the hoof of an ass, and as Mormolyce, another nursery bugbear. The Ghost Story, as might be expected, is one that has left its traces more perceptibly upon written literature. Ghosts flit through both Greek and Rome prose and verse, appearing as early as Homer and Herodotus. In fact the eleventh book of the Odyssey is Introduction 13 filled with spectral forms, so that the Alex- andrian commentators gave to it the title Nekyia or " Invocation of Ghosts." The Greek dramatists allude continually to the appearance of departed spirits, and Latin literature is no less permeated by the same general belief. Attius, in a striking passage, represents a ghost as rising from the shades whence, as he says, " Spectres appear amid dense gloom, with unreal blood, mere shadows of those who have died." One of the best of the plays of Piautus gets its name {Mostellarid) from the ghost of a murdered man that is described in it as haunting a house. In the sixth book of the Mneid many spirits pass in review before ^Eneas. Roman history also has its legends of the dead returning, such as that of the apparition which appeared at midnight to Brutus in his tent and warned him of his approaching death at Philippi, — a story which possibly suggested to Sir Walter Scott the impressive episode of the Bodach Glas in Waverley. In Latin 14 Introduction prose, however, the best specimen of the Ghost Story quite simple and unadorned is that which is given by the Younger PHny in one of his letters to a friend, which contains all the features of the most modern ghost tale, and has a hundred parallels in modern litera- ture, the closest perhaps being found in Wash- ington Irving's story o^ Dolph Heyliger. All these legends, tales, myths, and records of superstition, however, are the precursors and accompaniments of prose fiction rather than a department of it. They are, in their primitive form, not conscious fiction at all, being told in good faith by those who implicitly believed them ; nor did they appear as episodes in pure fiction until man had become sophisticated by experi- ence. But this sophistication is found only after fiction in its literary sense has become definitely recognised as a department of letters. We must, therefore, look elsewhere than to the fireside tale of the peasant and the strange imaginings of the forester for Introduction 15 the true source of prose fiction in ancient literature. Among tlie Greeks, the oldest form of literary production that we have remaining is the epic, and the epic is in poetry the representative of the historical romance in prose. But of course the Iliad and the Odyssey^ so far from giving us a primitive type of poetry, in reality represent the epic in its last perfection, — the edition definitive of the rhapsode's art, elaborated by centuries of experiment and written in an artificial language evolved from all the dialects of Greece, and wrought into a marvel of elastic- ity, expressiveness, and sonorous power. The Homeric epic, as we have it, is in reality a calUda iunctura^ a clever dovetailing of brilliant episodes. There are the episodes of Achilles and Briseis, of Ares and Aphro- dite, of Circe and Odysseus, and a hundred others. It is, in fact, in all these episodes, rather than in the epic as a whole, that we are to see a suggestion at least of the earliest 1 6 Introduction efforts of conscious fiction, which began where it seems likely to end, in the Short Story. A still closer approach to the archetype can be found in Herodotus, with whom the history of Greek prose begins, and who, himself a born story-teller, sprinkles his pages with the anecdotes that he gathered in his travels. The story of Candaules, who showed his wife naked to the guardsman Gyges, of Arion and the Dolphin, of Rhampsinitus and the Robber, of Poly- crates and the Ring, and of Pheron's remark- able recovery of his sight, — these are all instances of the Short Story in its early form, extremely brief, simply told, with a naivete like that of Mandeville or Defoe, and each embodying a single incident. One cannot doubt that it was from Syria and Persia that the Greeks received their earliest models of literary fiction. It is one more debt to be recorded in favour of the East, the mysterious East which, if not the Introduction 17 cradle of the human race, was, at any rate, the birthplace of philosophy, of history, of poetry, and of art. All these the Greeks of Europe owed to Asia through their brethren of Asia Minor, whose close contact with the purely Oriental peoples proved at once a stimulus and an intellectual inspiration. The East has always been the home of story-telling, and there the art of fiction first became a distinct profession. That this is true — that the suggestion when it came to Greece came from without rather than from within — is reasonably to be inferred from the fact that the earliest writers of Greek romances were not Greeks of Greece, but of the Orient. Of the four Xenophons whose names belong to the history of ancient fiction, one was a native of Antioch, one of Ephesus, and one of Cyprus. Achilles Tatius and Severus were Alexandrians. Heliodorus wrote at Emesa in Syria, Chariton and Longus at Aphro- disias in Caria, Parthenius at Nicasa in 1 8 Introduction Bithynia, Dio Chrysostomus at Prusias in Bithynia, Lucian at Samosata in Syria, lamblichus at Babylon, Clearchus at Soli. Theodorus Prodromus was an Asiatic, and Eumathius an Egyptian. Hellas Proper, then, has scarcely anything in common with her romancers. She lends to them her language, but most of them belong to her neither in birth, nor in education, nor in manners. Even more striking is the internal evi- dence of the romances themselves. On every page, in every plot, in the whole spirit and sentiment of the stories, there are unmis- takable traces of Orientalism. The adven- tures of lovers in undefined and unknown countries, the surfeit of marvels, the strange and improbable happenings, the magical rites, the metamorphoses of men into beasts, — all these savour of the East, and claim kinship with the Thousand and One Nights rather than with the simpler and more con- gruous narratives of the literature that we Introduction 19 know to be truly Greek. The style is equally significant, being florid, highly wrought, and loaded with an excess of orna- ment, — in short, bearing all the marks of that diction which the Greeks and Romans both characterised as Asiatic, and distin- guished from the more reserved, more terse, and much more manly style of Athens and BoEotia. Asiatic, too, is the languorous movement and nervelessness of these curious novels. In reading them one breathes an atmosphere heavy with attar of roses and the scent of pastilles, an atmosphere in which sensuality thrives and virility expires. All are as unlike the rapid, vigorous, and bracing movement of what the Greeks of Greece wrote down, as the soft skies and perfumed air of Asia Minor are unlike the gray clouds and driving snows of Thrace, — as Miletus is unlike Marathon. To the Oriental example, therefore, must be ascribed the first known appearance of pure prose fiction in Greek literature in the 20 Introduction so-called Milesian Tales of Aristides and others, famous in antiquity and the fore- runner of a swarm of similar productions in mediaeval and modern times. The date at which they were written is uncertain, though it was unquestionably previous to the second century b. c. ; nor is their form now posi- tively known beyond the fact that they were in prose, and that they were brief, witty, and indecent. The choice of subjects in these early novelettes can be seen by examining the existing collection of Parthenius of Nicaea, who, though a Greek, lived at Rome in the first century b. c, where he taught his native language. Among his pupils was the poet Vergil, and the poem entitled More- turn, which is often ascribed to Vergil, is a translation into Latin of a Greek original by Parthenius, as may be also the pseudo- Vergilian poem entitled Ciris. Parthenius, in fact, was very popular among the educated Romans, so much so that in the following century the Emperor Tiberius set up his bust Introduction 21 in the imperial library, and himself con- descended to write imitations of his verse. From Parthenius there has come down to us a curious little book with the title Erotic Experiences, dedicated by the author to the Latin man of letters, Cornelius Gallus, well known as the friend of Vergil, who has handed down to us in his Tenth Eclogue the memory of an unfortunate love-affair of Gallus. The Erotic Experiences is a collec- tion in prose of thirty-six skeleton stories, or hints for stories, gathered by Parthenius from various sources, and offered to Gallus as suggestions for poetical treatment by him. They are extremely brief, mere sketches, often containing little more than a hint, and may be compared with the fragmentary suggestions and hastily gathered impressions which Southey and Dickens also, made with the purpose of developing them at some future time. The chief interest of the col- lection of Parthenius lies in the fact that the plots given by him are all derived from 2 2 Introduction earlier writers, whose names he, in nearly every instance, has prefixed to his synopsis ; and in the insight that we thus have given to us of the subjects usually chosen by the writers of the Milesian Tales. Many are taken from the mythologists, and a cer- tain number of them are studies in the abnormal manifestations of sexual love, reminding one in a way of the imaginings of Catulle Mendes. To show how bald and bare these outUne stories are, the literal translation of a single one is here given. It was drawn by Parthe- nius from Philetas, and is entitled Polymela. '' Odysseus, in his wanderings about Sicily and thf; Tyrrhenian and Sicilian Seas, came to the court of iEolus in the island of Meligunis. i^olus, out of respect to his guest's reputation for wisdom, made much of him, questioning him about the downfall of Troy and how, on the return of the Greeks from Troy, their ships had been scattered. In fact, in his hospitable spirit, he detained him for a long time, and Odysseus found his stay extremely pleasant ; since Polymela, a daughter of iEolus, hav- Introduction 23 ing fallen in love with him carried on with him a secret amour. When, however, Odysseus, having found a favourable breeze, sailed away, the girl was caught weeping bitterly over some Trojan keep- sakes, and thus exposed her secret. Then .^olus cursed the absent Odysseus, and cast about for some way to punish Polymela. As his brother Diores had fallen in love with her and asked for her in marriage, the father was persuaded to give Polymela to him as his bride." This is bare enough in all conscience, yet one can readily discern how effectively the hints here given could be worked up by a sympathetic imagination, and how readily the salient points are to be seen, — the subtle Odysseus coming with all the prestige of novelty to the simple island girl, a second Princess of Thule, and with all the romance of his Trojan exploits about him ; his easy conquest of the trustful ignorance of Polymela ; his careless departure ; the ex- posure of her secret in a burst of grief; the anger of the father ; the necessity for a hasty marriage after the fashion of Viviette in 24 Introduction Hardy's '■Two on a Tower ; the unsuspecting ardour of Diores ; the bride carrying her guilty secret to her new home, — it is all excellent material, and abounds in very strong situations. Parthenius gives us only the faintest clue to the nature of the subjects dealt with in the Milesian Tales. If we wish to get a good notion of the general manner of treatment employed by their writers, no better illus- tration can be found than the extremely famous " Story of the Ephesian Matron," which is told by one of the characters in the novel of Petronius. No anecdote of the kind has ever had so great a vogue as this, whose antiquity and universality are remarkable, and which has been handed down and imi- tated for century after century. Huet says that it exists in the oldest Chinese literature ; it was certainly very popular in classical times. After Petronius, Apuleius para- phrased it in his Golden Ass, though at the expense of the piquant crispness of the Introduction 25 Petronian version. It was the first part of Petronius to be made known in the Middle Ages, being translated into Old French by the priest Hebert about the year 1200. It forms the basis of one of the fabliaux entitled La Femme ^i se Fist Putain sur la Fosse de son Mart. It is cited by John of Salisbury. La Fontaine has expanded it into one of his most successful poems, eliminating the gruesome features of the original. Voltaire has made it the basis of his celebrated story Zadig. It is even quoted by so grave a divine as Jeremy Taylor in his Rule and Exercise of Holy Dyings where it forms, incon- gruously enough, a part of the fifth chapter on the proper way of treating the dead. As this story is not contained in the portion of Petronius translated in the present volume, it may be given here by way of illustration. " There lived at Ephesus a certain lady in such high repute for her chastity, that women, even those of the neighbouring countries, used to come to see her as a miracle. When her husband was 26 Introduction carried to the grave, she was not content to follow the corpse, after the usual custom, with dishevelled hair, and beating her bosom in presence of all beholders ; but accompanied the dear departed even to his last home ; and when his body had been laid in the sepulchre in the Greek manner, she made herself its guardian, and wept over it both night and day. While she was thus afflicting her- self, and threatening her own death by starvation, neither her parents nor her relations could dissuade her from her purpose ; even the magistrates failed in the same attempt ; and all Ephesus bewailed this exemplary and incomparable woman, who was now dragging through the fifth day without tasting food. " A faithful maid sat with the sorrowing woman, mingled her tears with those of her mistress, and, when occasion required, trimmed a lamp that was burning in the tomb. Nothing else was talked of throughout the city, and all men declared that never had there before been seen so shining an example of chastity and affection. " It happened just then, that the governor of the province had ordered certain robbers to be crucified near the dismal vault where the lady was weeping over her newly-buried husband. On the following night, the sentinel who watched the crosses lest Introduction 27 the bodies should be stolen for burial, seeing a light glimmering among the tombs, and hearing the moans of some one in sorrow, was led by the curiosity common to all mankind to discover who or what it might be. He descended, therefore, into the tomb, where seeing a very beautiful woman, he stood amazed at first as though he had beheld some unearthly apparition ; but presently observing the corpse, the lady's tears, and her face torn by her nails, he rightly concluded that she could not support the yearning sense of her recent loss. Upon this he went back, carried his humble meal into the tomb, and began to implore her to desist from superfluous sorrow and from rending her bosom with unavailing sobs ; telling her that death was a necessary end, that the grave was the home of all, and repeating all the arguments that are usually employed to soothe an anguished soul. But she, shocked by such unlooked-for attempts to console her, began to beat her breast with redoubled violence, to tear her hair, and to strew it over the dead body. " The soldier, however, did not desist, but with the same prayers endeavoured to prevail on her to take some nourishment, till at last the servant, seduced, no doubt, by the odour of the wine, con- fessed her defeat by holding out her hand to the 2 8 Introduction charitable consoler, and, after refreshing herself with food and drink, began herself to combat the obstinacy of her mistress. ' What possible good will it do you,' she said, ' to starve yourself in this way, to bury yourself alive, and to draw your last breath before the Fates demand it ? Do you think that such things give pleasure to the dead ? Will you not cast off this whim of our sex, and enjoy the good things of this world while you can ? The very corpse that lies before you ought to warn you to make the most of life.' " No one ever listens reluctantly when he is pressed to take food or to live. The lady, ex- hausted by an abstinence of several days, suffered her obstinacy to be overcome, and satisfied her hunger with no less eagerness than the maid who had been the first to yield. We all know to what temptations mortal flesh is exposed after a hearty meal. The very same arguments which the soldier had used to combat her despair he now employed against her chastity. The young man, thought this virtuous lady, is neither ill-looking nor lacking in address ; and the maid also spoke in his behalf. " In a word, the lady observed the same absti- nence in this respect as in the other, and the gallant soldier was a second time successful in his Introduction 29 persuasions. They passed not only that first evening together, but the next night also and the next night after that, the doors of the tomb being of course carefully closed, so that if any one, friend or stranger, should come thither, he would conclude that this most virtuous of wives had died over the body of her husband. Meanwhile the soldier, delighted with the beauty of his mistress and with the mystery of the intrigue, bought for her all the good things his means could procure, and, as soon as night came, carried them into the tomb. " In the mean time, the relatives of one of the malefactors, observing the carelessness of the guard, carried off the body during the night and buried it. On the next day, when the circumvented soldier saw one of the crosses without a body, he was dis- mayed at the consequences to himself; telling her that he would not await the sentence of the judge, but that his own sword should punish his negli- gence, would she only afford him sepulture, and join the lover to the husband in that fatal place. " ' Nay,' replied the no less compassionate than chaste matron, ' the gods forbid that I should have before my eyes at the same time the dead bodies of the two men who were most dear to me ! I will rather hang up the dead than be the death of the living.' And in accordance with these senti- 30 Introduction ments, she ordered the corpse of her husband to be taken out of its coffin and affixed to the vacant cross. The soldier availed himself of the expe- dient suggested by the ingenious lady ; and the next day every one wondered how^ it was that the dead man had found his way to the cross ! " In emulation of Aristides and his school, there sprang up a host of story-writers who gave to their collections the titles Ephesian, Babylonian, Cyprian, Egyptian, Sybaritic, Naxian, Pallenian, Lydian, Trojan, and Bithynian Tales, many of the writers of which are among those quoted by Parthe- nius. These stories do not seem to have differed, except in name, from those of Miletus ; and they find their descendants and literary parallels in such products of pornographic ingenuity as the Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles of Louis XI. of France and the Contes Drolatiques of Honore de Balzac. The same themes were repeated again and again with an infinity of variations in detail which did not, however, preserve them from Introduction 31 becoming monotonous when read consecu- tively ; and if one continues his study of them it is rather because of their socio- logical interest, as giving a realistic picture of the morals and manners of the Asiatic Greeks, than for their literary value. Their subjects had a very limited range. There appeared over and over again the mistress who exploits her lover, the lover who cheats his mistress, husbands who sell the favours of their wives, fathers who abandon their children, — slaves, parasites, jockeys, actors, — a kaleidoscopic whirl of sensual life and sordid cynicism, indicative of the decay of the sterner virtues of the older Greeks, who, though they worshipped beauty, coupled it always in their thoughts with strength and vigour. Yet it need not be supposed that the pictures given in the Milesian Tales were so sweepingly indicative of wholesale corruption as might at first appear to be the case. The Greeks, even to the last, kept their home life as a thing apart, — a thing not 3 2 Introduction only secluded from the world at large, but also, to a great extent, from the pages of literature. Behind the veiled doors of the gynaceum the painter of contemporary char- acter did not venture to intrude ; and pub- lic sentiment would not have tolerated these scandalous stories if told about the homes and households of the free Greeks. Hence it is that the bedraggled heroes and heroines of the Milesian Tales were either mythical personages of legend and story, or else for- eigners, slave girls and courtesans, freedmen and freedwomen, or individuals of still humbler station. The public for whom the tales were written was also a very special public, — a public such as that for which Maupassant and Mendes have written in our own time, — a public of libertines and kept-women, whose jaded senses found a stimulus only in the most subtle refinements of depravity. In the third and fourth centuries b. c. Greece came into definite and permanent Introduction 33 contact with a larger world than it had re- cognised before. The wars with Persia led men to shake off something of the old Hel- lenic exclusiveness' which had made them so self-centred and so indifferent to ex- traneous influence. The brilliant victories at Marathon and Salamis and Plataea, and, later, the conquering march of Alexander the Great stirred all imaginations. Like Rome in the time of the Punic Wars, and like England in the days of Elizabeth, Greece tasted of the inspiration that comes from battle and foreign conquest ; and this new spirit in Greece, as in Rome and in England, finds a distinct reflection in its later litera- ture. There was something in the air that stirred men's minds, a growing fondness for adventure, for exploration, for discovery, and hence we find the development at this time of a new tendency in the history of prose fiction, which now begins to witness the evolution of the historical romance and the novel of adventure. Instances of the former 3 34 Introduction are to be seen in the Atlantis of Plato and the Cyropadia of Xenophon which served as models in modern times for the Utopia of Sir Thomas More and the New Atlantis of Francis Bacon. In the Cyropadia we find the first romantic love-story that can be dis- covered in the existing remains of Greek literature ; yet these works of Plato and of Xenophon are chiefly political in their in- terest and have little place in any purely literary category. The romance of adventure finds an illus- tration in the novel written by one Antonius Diogenes and entitled The Marvels beyond Thule. It tells of the adventures of a young Arcadian, Dinias, whose love for a Tyrian girl, Dercyllis, furnishes a slender plot upon which are strung together a series of short stories or episodes which have little connec- tion with each other, but which afford the author an opportunity to display his lively imagination and his mastery of the im- probable; for the book is filled with the Introduction 35 most extravagant incidents, one of which, a journey to the moon, recalls the somewhat similar fancy embodied in the popular story written by Jules Verne. More homoge- neous and less wildly improbable are the later romances by Lucius of Patrae, of un- certain date, called Metamorphoses ; by lam- blichus, a Syrian who wrote the story called Babylonicdj which has to do with the adven- tures of a married couple, Sinonis and Rho- danes, and contains a double plot; and by Xenophon of Ephesus, whose novel Ephes- iaca is the ultimate source of Romeo and Juliet. Most famous, however, of all the novels of this class is the Mthiopica written by Heliodorus, the Christian bishop of Emesa in the fourth century a. d. This is usually considered the very best novel of adventure produced by the ancient Greeks. It is in ten books, and relates the adventures of two lovers, Theagenes and Chariclea. It has some merit because of its regular con- struction, and several of its episodes are, 36 Introduction when read apart from the context, of con- siderable interest ; while at the very outset of the book there is one rather curious passage which has to do with the influence of pre-natal conditions upon the unborn child. This novel was very popular in its own time, and on the revival of classical learning at the end of the Middle Ages it came once more into vogue, so that it is said to have been the favourite reading of the French dramatist, Racine. All these stories, however, taken as a whole, are greatly lack- ing in intrinsic worth. They show abso- lutely no conception of character-drawing, the personages introduced are mere dummies, and the incidents themselves are of a baldly conventional type, giving us an endless round of captures and escapes, of adventures with robbers and pirates, and of battles and single combats, until one wearies of the poverty of invention which the writers manifest. More purely romantic are the story by Introduction 37 Achilles Tatius of Alexandria, entitled 'The Loves of Leucippe and Clitophon, the Choreas and Callirrhoe, by Chariton of Aphrodisias, and the novelette called Apollonius Tyrius, of which the author is unknown and the Greek original lost. It survives, however, in a Latin version which was much read during the Middle Ages and suggested a portion of Gower's Confessio Amantis and perhaps the Shakespearian play Pericles^ Prince of "Tyre. Some of the incidents recorded in it give us curious pictures of low life, and thus possess a genuine sociological interest. Much later in date and distinctly inferior in every way are two Greek novels, one by Theodorus Prodromus of Constantinople, and the other an imitation of this by Nicetas Eugenianus, both of them written in doggerel verse. Last of all, is the story which relates the adventures of Hysmine and Hysminias, which some have regarded as being the origi- nal source of the story of Don Juan. The novel of character, or perhaps one 38 Introduction might better say the subjective novel, has few representatives in the history of Greek fiction. It is found, however, in the work of Alciphron, a Greek sophist who flourished in the second century a. d. From him we have left one hundred and eighteen imaginary epistles, which give us most val- uable pictures of Bohemian life at Athens. They are among the very best things that can be found in the history of later Greek literature, being extremely vivacious and entertaining, and showing a very real mas- tery and understanding of character. The glimpses which they afford of both middle- class life and of the artistic world are so good as to make it remarkable that they have never yet been translated into English. To the same class of writings belong two books of erotic letters by Aristasnetus, composed in a cynical spirit that suggests some of the touches to be found in the Lettres de Femmes of Marcel Prevost. By Theophilus of Simocatta, who flourished in the seventh Introduction 39 century a. d., are eighty-five epistles that have some epigrammatic merit, but are of little value as literature. The novel of pastoral life is represented in Greek by the very famous romance called Daphnis and Chloe which is one of the most original and interesting stories In ancient literature. It is usually ascribed to one Longus, though this is probably not the author's name, and its theme Is the uncon- scious growth of the sexual Instinct In a boy and a girl who have been brought up together from their earliest Infancy In a state of perfect innocence. The working out of this motive gives to the book a very unique and unusual character, and It has also a certain mastery of description as applied to natural scenery, that Is sometimes both beau- tiful and striking, In that the author seems to recognise a sort of subtle relation between the external environment of man and the incidents of his life ; and this Is occasionally developed in a manner that suggests one of 40 Introduction the theories everywhere to be found illus- trated in the novels of Emile Zola. The book has been frequently translated into most of the modern languages, and has been obvi- ously imitated in Bernardin de St. Pierre's Paul ei VirginiCy by Allan Ramsay in his Gentle Shepherd^ and by many other less known modern writers. Roman fiction, like nearly all of Roman literature, sprang directly from an imitation of the Greek, and came into existence during the first century b. c, when a number of the literary men at Rome began writing short stories after the fashion of the Milesian Tales. The best known of these imitators was Sisenna, whose writings, however, have not been preserved, nor have we any other specimens of the Short Story as composed in Latin at this period. There are, indeed, still surviving only two examples of gen- uine prose fiction written in the Latin lan- guage, which can be ascribed to the classical and semi-classical periods. These are the Introduction 41 Satira of Petronius Arbiter, and the Meta- morphoses (sometimes called the l^he Golden Ass) of Apuleius. They are, however, far superior to anything of the kind preserved to us in Greek. The Satira, though incom- plete, is in its way one of the greatest novels of all time, and is remarkable for its modern tone, its unsparing realism, its subtle touches of character, its wit, and its vivid pictures of life in the Roman provincial towns, no less than for the point and elegance of its style. The novel of Apuleius, which is in eleven books, was drawn by its author from the Metamorphoses of Lucius of Patrse already mentioned, and perhaps from a similar story narrated by Lucian, who was a contemporary of Apuleius. The Metamorphoses is a rather remarkable book. It tells the story of one Lucius who accidentally swallowed a magic potion which turned him into an ass, in which shape he passed through a series of curious and amusing adventures until he finally regained his natural form. The 42 Introduction author of this book was an African ; his imagination was deeply coloured by Oriental influences ; and it is probably from Oriental sources that he has drawn the charming story of Cupid and Psyche, which forms an episode of the Third Book, and which has inspired, both in ancient and in modern times, innumerable works of art. Other episodes of this novel are interesting in a different way, the most striking of all being perhaps the tale introduced in the first part of the novel as told by a com- mercial traveller, and blending in a remark- able fashion the elements of the horrible, the grotesque, and the supernatural. The novel, indeed, is marked throughout by great ingenuity and conspicuous cleverness, though some of its incidents are gross and shameful beyond belief. After the fall of Rome and during the Dark Ages, when all accurate knowledge of ancient literature and history, as well as the entire classical tradition, were lost to West- Introduction 43 ern Europe, there still existed in men's minds some faint and shadowy recollection of them. These, in the course of time, became blended with the popular tales of the Teutonic peoples, until at last they took on a definite form in the celebrated collection of stories known as the Gesta Romanorum^ — a perfect mirage of odds and ends drawn partly from the classic past, and partly from Northern traditions, so that they jumble together the characters of antiquity in the most extraordinary fashion, without any sense whatever of chronological and historical accuracy, making Vergil, Homer, Alexander the Great, the Roman Caesars, Romulus, Remus, and the personages of ancient mythology appear and reappear side by side with the knights and wizards and dragons of mediaeval legend. These tales were immensely popular, and circulated all over Europe, being used by the clergy to illustrate and give point to their sermons ; and in this way they have a certain value in general literary history, since they form a 44 Introduction connecting link between the fiction of Greece and Rome and the fiction of modern times, which, for a century or two after its inception, drew very largely on these monkish stories for its themes. II THE NOVEL OF PETRONIUS THE author of the Satira is usually identified with the Gaius Petronius who is mentioned by Tacitus in his Annals re- lating to the year dG a. d. In this passage, after mentioning the death of one Petronius, Tacitus goes on to say that he was a man of pleasure who turned night into day and who became as famous for his indolence as other men for their activity. Yet he was not a vulgar debauchee, but a man of culture and refined luxury, the very absence of restraint in his language and life adding to his popu- larity by giving him a character for frank- ness. Though naturally indolent, he was at the same time a man of capacity, since when proconsul of Bithynia, and afterward when consul, he proved himself to be a person of much administrative ability ; yet when 46 Introduction released from those duties he went back to his life of dissipation among the most inti- mate circle of Nero's friends, and became to the emperor his maitre de plaisirs {elegan- tiarum arbiter)^ — an earlier Beau Brummell to an earlier George the Fourth. This pref- erence having roused the jealousy of Tigelli- nus, this former favourite worked upon a vein of cruelty in the emperor's nature, — a passion even stronger with him than his love of pleasure, — charged Petronius with being a friend of the traitor Scsevinus, suborned a slave to testify against him, and contrived to prevent him from being present to defend himself. Petronius was journeying from Rome to Cumae in Nero's own retinue when he was arrested. He did not wait for a formal condemnation, dreading the suspense, but took his own life by opening his veins ; yet not instantaneously, for he caused his veins to be bound up, and again reopened, so that he died by inches, conversing mean- while and jesting with the friends who were Introduction 47 with him, and listening to loose songs and verses, rewarding some of his slaves and punishing others, taking part in banquets, enjoying naps, — all this, so that to the world at large his death might appear to have been accidental. He did not in his will, like most men who died at the command of the emperor, flatter Nero or his favourite Tigellinus ; but, in place of the usual complimentary codicil, set forth the hideous vices of the emperor under the names of lewd men and women, describing in blunt language the monstrosity of their strange and unnatural excesses ; and this exposure he sent to Nero himself. He then broke his seal-ring, lest it should serve to bring others into danger. Nero, in trying to discover how the secrets of his debauches could have become known, remembered one Silia, a woman of some social position, the wife of a senator, and herself at once a par- taker of the emperor's shameful secrets and an intimate of Petronius. Nero, therefore. 48 Introduction fixed upon her as the guilty person, and executed her for revealing the secrets of which she had become cognisant. The identification of this Petronius with the author of the Satira has been almost universally accepted, and it seems to us for excellent reasons. In the first place, the Satira was surely written in that part of the first century in which Petronius lived, as is established by the language of the book and by the allusions which it contains ; in the second place, the novel is precisely such a work as a man of the character described by Tacitus, brilliant, cultivated, cynical, and familiar with every kind of life, would be admirably fitted to write ; and in the third place, there is absolutely no evidence that can discredit the identification. It is inter- esting, also, to remember that the name *' Arbiter," which is applied to Petronius by Tacitus, is also applied to the author of the Satira by one of the Roman grammarians as early as the end of the first century. Introduction 49 Some scholars have tried to discover in the Satira the libellous book which Petronius at his death sent to Nero, and they have therefore regarded this work, as being a dia- tribe against Nero and his court. This theory, however, which is usually called the Neronian Hypothesis, has little or nothing in its favour when examined in the light of reason and common sense ; for it is unlikely that so extensive a work (It originally ex- tended through at least sixteen books) could have been written in the interval between the arrest of Petronius and his death ; or that Nero would have permitted the continued existence of the book ; and there is so much in the book itself that cannot possibly relate to the emperor and his friends as to render the hypothesis absolutely untenable. The Satira is, properly speaking, neither a romance nor a satire. So far as it is a romance this character is only a pretext, a skeleton whose frame the author has clothed with a great diversity of material, — 4 50 Introduction serious discussions, moral teachings, scenes of refined pleasure, beautiful thoughts, sentiments of the most revolting cynicism, amusing descriptions, biting criticisms, enter- taining anecdotes, and even one epic frag- ment. This variety of subject is wedded to an equal variety of style which is chameleon- like in its rapid changes, and which shifts with perfect ease from the language of litera- ture to the patois of the provinces and the dialect of the rabble. The episodic character of the narrative and the curious features of its language are responsible for two facts in the history of the text : (i) that it was largely used for excerpts and selections in the scrap-book period of Latin literature, which led to its final loss as a whole ; and (2) that the grammarians con- tinually cite it, which fact enables us to trace its existence as a whole or in part down to the end of the sixth century. The quotations from it and the allusions to it in Macrobius (a. d. 400), Servius (a. d. 400), Lydus Introduction 51 (a. d. 520), St. Jerome (a. d. 410), Fulgen- tius (a. d. 500), Priscian (a. d. 450), Dio- medes (a. d. 500), Victorlnus (a. d. 350), Isidorus (a. d. 6^6), and Sidonius Apolll- narls (a. d. 475), all serve as indications of its existence, at least upon the shelves of scholars. In the seventh and eighth cen- turies we hear no more of Petronius ; but in the ninth, the poetical fragment usually known as the Carmen de Bella Civili, of 295 hexameter lines, is found to have been used for reading in the schools. A manuscript of the tenth century is now in existence and is the oldest known. It contains, however, only a part of the present text, substantially all except § 26 (middle), venerat iam tertius dies — §78, — that is, all except the Cena Trimalchionis. In the same century the ecclesiastic Eugenius Vulgarius cites the Satira ; and so, too, in the twelfth century, the English scholar John of Salisbury. In the thirteenth century, Vicentius of Beau- vais quotes Petronius. 52 Introduction There are now known to exist twenty-one manuscripts of the Satira^ distributed among eleven European libraries, — five in the Na- tional (Imperial) Library of France, one in the Bibliotheque Mazarin,four in the Library of the University of Leyden, two in the Royal Library of Munich, two in the Im- perial Library at Vienna, one in the Royal Library at Dresden, one in the Ambro- sian Library at Milan, two in the Lauren- tian Library at Florence, one in the Vatican Library at Rome, and one in the Library of the Benedictine Convent of St. Placidius at Messina, besides the oldest of all, the Codex Bernensis, usually spoken of as No. 357. This is written on fine parchment (quarto), and consists of 43 leaves or 86 pages, con- taining, besides the fragment of Petronius, a number of other things, — a Greek glossary, a Latin glossary, and a part of the Catilina of Sallust. The whole Cena is missing, as are also a number of other chapters. The most important manuscript is the so- Introduction 53 called Codex Traguriensis, now in the Bib- liotheque Nationale at Paris. This which alone contains, in addition to other portions of the Satira^ the whole of the Cena Trimalchio- niSy was discovered in the Dalmatian town of Trau (the Roman Tragurium) by one Mari- nus Statilius (Pierre Petit, a Frenchman) in 1663. It was contained in the library of Nicolaus Cippi, an Italian gentleman, bound up with the poems of Catullus, Tibullus, and Propertius. The news of its discovery created a sensation through Europe. It was reported that the whole of Petronius had been recovered, and great was the general anxiety to see it. Before Marinus, who was a scholar of much ability, had finished his work upon the manuscript, a Paduan printer named Frambotto in some way got access to it and made a hasty and necessarily careless copy which he printed at Padua in 1664. So rude and imperfect was the copy made by Frambotto, and so many were the errors of his printed edition, that Wagenseil 54 Introduction and others pronounced the discovery a fraud, and the whole fragment an impu- dent forgery. To this attack, Marinus put forth two very able and convincing replies, and followed them by printing an accurate edition of the manuscript at Paris later in the same year (1664). This, and a careful examination of the manuscript itself, which proved its great age, soon put an end to the controversy, though it was not until the end of the century that the Tragurian fragment was universally accepted as genuine. The Codex Traguriensis is a small folio bound in leather containing 237 written and 1 1 blank pages, the latter being ruled in con- formity with the rest. The Satira begins at page 185. From page 185 to page 205 is found the part contained in the ordinary editions. On page 205 is the statement in red ink : Petronii Arhitri Satyri Fragmenta Explici , . . ex Libro ^into Decimo et Sexto Decimo. Then on page 206 follows the Cena Trimalchionis. The end of the manuscript Introduction 55 contains the Moretum of Vergil and the poem of Claudianus on the Phoenix. The intense interest and furious con- troversy aroused by this discovery of Mari- nus, and the suggestions of fraud that were made by so many, were undoubtedly respon- sible for a very remarkable attempt on the part of one Fran9ois Nodot in 1693 to foist a real forgery upon the learned world. No- dot, who was a French soldier of fortune and possessed of a fair education, came forward with what professed to be an entire copy of Petronius. The story told by him was this : That one Du Pin had been present at the storming of Alba Graeca (Belgrade) in 1688, and in the sack of the town had secured a manuscript of great antiquity written in characters very difficult to decipher; that this manuscript had been copied by some person not named, and by him brought in the copy to a merchant of Frankfort-on-the Main (also not named) who had in the course of time sent it to Nodot in France. 56 Introduction This story, though somewhat dubious on the face of it, was ingenious in one respect, in that it absolved Nodot from the necessity of producing the original manuscript itself The copy was laid before the provincial Academies of Nimes and Aries, and after examining the text, and listening to Nodot's story, the Latinists of those institutions were convinced of the genuineness of both. The text of Nodot was presently published at Paris by Charpentier with the punning motto. Nodi solvuntur a Nodo. It is fortunate for the reputation of French classical scholarship, so seriously compro- mised by the credulity of the faculties of Nimes, and Aries, that the fraudulent char- acter of Nodot's production was at once detected and exposed by a Frenchman, P. D. Huet, best known as the author of the work De Origine Fabularum. It is difficult, in- deed, to see how even a third-rate Latinist could have been imposed upon ; for the Latin of Nodot's text was not merely bad. Introduction 57 not merely not the Latin of Petronius, but very evidently the Latin of a seventeenth- century Frenchman. So when we find such phrases and words as ad scientias explicandas molesti impetri, and castella for villa^ it is very clear indeed that the language is the Latin of Paris and not the Latin of Rome. It was also a suspicious circumstance that Nodot's manuscript supplied every omission in the existing text with the exception of those found between chapters 26 and 73, i. e. in the Cena Trimalchionis^ a fact which seemed to show that he shrank from the attempt to fill in the text where a minute knowledge of archaeological detail was abso- lutely essential. Nodot's fraud never had the slightest chance of success, and soon ceased to be dis- cussed ; though as it supplies a continuous narrative in place of what would otherwise be a fragmentary and broken one, several editors have printed his additions as a part of the authentic text, distinguishing it some- times by the use of a different type. 58 Introduction One other attempt at forgery was that of a learned Spaniard, Marchena, who, simply as an amusement and to test the acumen of the critics, published at Strasburg, in 1800, a small fragment purporting to be the part of the text missing from the twenty-sixth chap- ter after the words subinde osculis verberabat. This fragment, which would make in Buch- eler's text some 34 lines, and which Mar- chena claimed to have found at St. Gallen in Switzerland, had absolutely no internal marks of fraud. It was an altogether perfect imitation of the style and manner of Petro- nius, and was of an indecency that if anything surpassed the indecency of the original text. The only objection that scholars could make to it was the objection based upon the fact that Marchena would not produce the man- uscript copy which he professed to have found. Having received this tribute to his Petronian knowledge, however, Marchena promptly acknowledged that he had himself written the fragment as a pure hoax. Since Introduction 59 that time there have been no additions to the accepted text, either genuine or fraudu- lent ; though the lost books of Petronius, like the lost books of Livy, continue to tan- talise contemporary Latinists with the hope of their ultimate recovery. There is a passage in Sidonius Apollinaris in which the poet, addressing Petronius in company with Cicero, Livy, and Vergil, associates him with Marseilles : " Quid vos eloquii canam Latini Arlinas, Patavine, Mantuane ? Et te Massiliensium per hortos Sacri stipitis. Arbiter, colonum Hellespontiaco parem Priapo ? " Servius, again, in his commentary, dealing with a line of the Mneid, cites Petronius as an authority regarding a certain usage of the people of Marseilles. It is a tempting sug- gestion that one finds in these two stray allusions which imply a Gallic nativity for the author of the greatest novel of antiquity. There is probably no other people except 6o Introduction the Jews that have kept, down to the pres- ent day, their early racial traits and mental characteristics so completely as the Gauls. The passages of Caesar, and even those of Cato, that describe them, are as true to-day as the observations of Philip Gilbert Hamer- ton or Mr. W. C. Brownell. The nervous eagerness for something new, the lack of political stability, the rash bravery, the im- pulsiveness, the love of warfare and of la gloire, the intellectual quickness, the fond- ness for brilliant talk, — all these were noted down for us two thousand years ago, and they still remain the most striking character- istics of the modern French. Upon the orig- inal stock some other elements have been grafted, but they have been absolutely as- similated. The Norseman and the Teuton, on French soil, have become thorough Kelts. It is, therefore, a tempting hypothesis that makes Petronius the literary prede- cessor of those preternaturally clever writers of modern France whose spirit at least is Introduction 6i that which breathes in every page of the Satira, Perfect precision and firmness of stylistic touch are theirs and his. A per- vasive cynicism — not the cynicism that makes men bitter, but the far more hopeless cynicism that makes them utterly contempt- uous — they share with him. The versatility, the keen observation, the unerring strokes of the great literary artist, are conspicuous in both. The sexual instinct, pervasive, always present, and manifested at the most unexpected times, this, too, Petronius shares with the school of Gustave Flaubert and Guy de Maupassant. If he was a Roman by race, a Roman as Cicero and Tacitus were Roman, it is strange indeed that he had no predecessors and no true successor, but that to seek a fitting parallel for his strangely brilliant fiction we must pass over the intervening centuries and find it only in our own century and in the literary art of modern France. Ill THE CENA TRIMALCHIONIS TRIMALCHIO'S dinner party Is one of the great masterpieces of comic literature. Wholly apart from the picture it gives — one of the very best that have come down to us from ancient times — of the typical life of the Roman bourgeoisie^ apart from the archaeological value of the wealth of minute details in which it abounds, and apart also from its unusual linguistic interest in giving us connected specimens of the plebeian Latinity of daily life, it is from beginning to end a bit of character-drawing and sustained fun to be ranked with the creations of Fielding and Dickens in Eng- lish, of Stinde in German, and of Daudet in French. Trimalchio himself is a grotesque composite of Tittlebat Titmouse and Tartarin; his point of view, and what Introduction 63 painters might call his atmosphere, are those of the immortal Familie Buchholz. The two companions, Encolpius and Ascyltus, are invited to a dinner given by this personage, and the narrative of their experiences there is given in full. Trimal- chio is a freedman who, having secured his start in life by no very dainty practices, has amassed an enormous fortune and is now enjoying it. He is a bald, red-faced old fellow, fond of eating and fonder of display, inordinately conceited, forever bragging of his money, and anxious also to seem a man of literary attainments, though his ignorance of everything is unbounded. His compan- ions at table are nearly all men of his own rank ; and there is his wife Fortunata, a sharp, practical, shrewish little woman, to whose fidelity and care Trimalchio, who has some good points, frankly ascribes a large share of his success. The details of the dinner are given in full, and the mixture of lavish profusion and utter 64 Introduction lack of taste and savoirfaire recall the descrip- tion by Horace of the dinner which the snob Nasidienus gave in honour of Maecenas (Sat. ii. 8). Trimalchio does not come to the table until his guests have been seated and the dinner is well under way. When he does enter, somewhat after the fashion of the Duke of Omnium in Framley Parsonage, he takes care to let his guests know that he is a good deal inconvenienced by having to keep his engagement with them. Taking the chief place at table, he ostentatiously picks his teeth with a pin, and for a time plays checkers with a friend instead of taking any part in the conversation. Eggs are served under a wooden hen, and when opened prove to be only paste with a bird inside. Wine is served which is labelled, " Opimian : 100 years old," though the genuine Opimian would have been much older. Trimalchio brags of it and politely adds : " It is even better than what I put on my table yesterday, when I had guests who were of much higher Introduction 65 social standing than you." A remarkable medley of rich food is presently set upon the table : capons, hare, sow's pau2ich, fish, kidneys, roast beef, meat pie, cheese, lobster, goose, honey, and bread. The guests begin to talk ; one of them describes in an under- tone, for the enlightenment of Encolpius, the different personages at the table, and tells tales of the hostess Fortunata. Trimalchio makes jokes and begins to display his learning. More dishes appear. A whole boar is served up with sucking pigs of pastry. A slave rips up the boar with a knife, and a number of little birds fly out into the room. A slave boy recites some of Trimalchio's poetry to the company, and receives his freedom as a reward. Presently Trimalchio gets up from the table to visit the next room, and con- versation becomes general. One of the guests deplores the practice of bathing every day. They praise drink, and tell anecdotes of friends who have lately died. Another laments the degeneracy of the times, and 5 66 Introduction recalls the days when he first came over from Asia. Gladiators and the races are talked over. One of the freedmen gives his views on education. " My son," he says, " is getting to be quite a scholar. ... I 've just been buying the boy some law-books, as I want him to get a snack of that for use in business. This sort of learning makes bread and butter; but as for literature, he 's daubed himself up enough with that already. The fact is, I 'm going to have him learn a real trade, either barbering or auctioneering, or law, which will stick to him till he dies. I keep dinning into his ears every day, ' My boy, don't forget that whatever you learn is your own. Just look at Phileros the lawyer. Why if he had n't been educated he 'd have starved. Only the other day he was a pedler with his wares on his shoulder. Now he 's as rich as Norbanus himself. I tell you a good trade never goes hungry.' " Trimalchio presently returns and dis- Introduction 67 courses on the state of his bowels, with a dis- quisition on the most efficacious cathartics. Later he lectures on Corinthian bronzes, glass, and bric-a-brac. He has a slave come in and read the official report of what had happened on Trimalchio's estates the pre- ceding day, — this in imitation of the Roman Acta Diurna. Trimalchio then discusses poetry, writes an impromptu verse himself, and, growing somewhat dogmatic with wine, utters a number of aphorisms. " Of all dumb brutes the ox and the sheep are the most laborious ; to oxen we owe the bread we eat and to the sheep the clothes we wear. What a shame, then, it is that any one should eat mutton or wear a tunic ! As to bees, I think them almost divine, for they can spit honey. . . . That 's why they sting, too, for there 's no rose without its thorns." The guests now begin to feel the effects of the wine. Ascyltos quarrels with one of the freedmen, and gets a flood of Billingsgate, which is checked by Trimalchio. A troop 68 Introduction of declaimers enter who recite from Homer, in costume. Trimalchio tells the story of the Trojan War. " Diomede and Ganymede were two brothers, whose sister was Helen. Aga- memnon carried her off and surreptitiously substituted a hind in her place, for Diana. So, as Homer tells us, the Trojans and Tarentines fought together, but Agamemnon conquered, and married his daughter Iphi- genia to Achilles, which drove Ajax mad, as you shall presently see." At this, a boiled calf is brought in, and an actor followed to represent Ajax. Simulating madness, he rushes at the calf with drawn sword, slashes it into slices, and then presents a piece to each of the astonished guests. The dessert follows : sweetmeats, pastry, apples, grapes, and other fruits, and then more wine. Those present begin to tell stories. Niceros relates his adventures with a were- wolf; Trimalchio, a witch story. A friend of Trimalchio's with his wife enters and takes Introduction 69 his place at table. Trimalchio, becoming maudlin, has his will brought in and read, and, after telling what arrangements he has made for his burial, begins to weep. All rise from the table and follow him to the bath-house for a hot bath, after which they proceed to another dining-room where a second elaborate meal is ready. Trimal- chio has a chicken stewed in the room as a special dish for himself; and presently falls to quarrelling with Fortunata, flings a cup at her head, and abuses her in a volley of invec- tives. Peace is restored, more wine is drunk, and finally Trimalchio stretches himself out as though lying in state, the horn- blowers play a funeral march, and with this the dinner ends. TRIMALCHIO'S DINNER Trimalchio's Dinner THE day at last arrived with its promise of a free dinner for us ; but we were so much done up that we really thought of getting out of the whole affair. While we were thinking the matter over, however, one of Agamemnon's servants came in and said : " Don't you really know at whose house the dinner is to be ? Why, it 's at Trimal- chio's, and a most sumptuous sort of person he is. He keeps a time-piece in his dining- room and has a man blow on a horn every hour of the day, so as to remind him just how much of life he 's losing." At this we forgot all our troubles and started to dress for dinner, telling our young friend Giton to follow us to the baths in the character of our attendant, — a part which he 74 Trimalchio's Dinner very willingly assumed. And so, after dress- ing, we took a preliminary stroll, and pres- ently espied a bald-headed old man, in reddish clothes, playing tennis in the midst of a number of long-haired slaves. It was not the slaves, however, that attracted us so much as the old gentleman himself who, with slippers on his feet, was serving a green ball. As soon as a ball fell to the ground he refused to touch it again, but took a fresh one from a bag which a slave by his side held out to the players. While I was watching his luxurious manner of playing, up comes Menelaus and says he : " This is the gentleman at whose house you are going to dine ; and, in fact, this game is really a preliminary to the dinner." Before long, we entered the public bath and, after remaining a while in the hot water, we changed to cold. Trimalchio, after being carefully perfumed, was rubbed down, though not with towels, but with mantles made of the very softest wool ; while three atten- Trimalchio's Dinner 75 dants who stood there drank Falernian wine, of which they spilled a good deal in their wrangling ; whereupon Trimalchio remarked that this was all his treat. Afterwards, wrapped up in a scarlet dressing-gown, he took his seat on a litter preceded by four gorgeously decorated footmen, and by a wheeled chair in which was his favourite slave, a blear-eyed old fellow, homelier even than his master. Then Trimalchio was carried off home, a musician marching beside him with a pair of shrill pipes and playing all the way as though he were saying some- thing privately in his master's ear. We followed along, filled with admiration, and in Agamemnon's company we reached Trimalchio's front door, on one of whose posts was fastened a notice with this in- scription : **If any Slave shall leave the House without his Master's Permission he shall Receive a Hundred Lashes." 76 Trimalchio's Dinner At the entrance to the house was the doorkeeper, dressed in green with a cherry- coloured belt around his waist, and engaged in shelling peas into a silver dish. Above the threshold hung a golden cage in which a magpie kept saying, " How do you do ? " to us as we entered. I fell to staring at all these things until I bent over backwards so far that I nearly broke my legs ; for on the left as we entered, and not far from the janitor's room, was a great dog fastened by a chain and painted on the wall, while over- head in capital letters was the inscription : ** Beware of the Dog!" My friends laughed at me; but I soon re- covered my presence of mind and let my eyes rove over the entire wall ; for on it was painted, first a slave auction, and then Tri- malchio himself, with long hair and holding a wand in his hand, entering Rome guided by Minerva. Another painting represented him learning arithmetic, and another showed "Beware of the Dog." (Pompeian Mosaic.) Trimalchio's Dinner 77 him as promoted to a stewardship. The meaning of all these things the thoughtful artist had carefully explained by legends painted under each. At the other end of the entrance, Mercury was represented as raising Trimalchio aloft by the chin, and there was also Fortune with her horn of plenty, and the three Fates twisting their golden threads. I observed in the portico a number of running footmen who were prac- tising with their trainer, and in one corner I saw a large closet in a recess of which were household gods made of silver, a marble statuette of Venus, and a large gold box in which they said the master of the house kept his beard after it had been shaved off. I fell to questioning the janitor as to what were the pictures in the middle, and he told me that they represented scenes from the Iliad and the Odyssey ^ and also the glad- iatorial contests of a certain Laenas. I had very little time to gaze on them, however, for presently we entered the dining-room, near 78 Trimalchio's Dinner the door of which a bailiff was making up the accounts. What I most wondered at was that on the door-posts was a bundle of rods with axes, one end of which tapered off into the semblance of the beak of a ship with the legend : ** To Gaius Pompeius Trimalchio, Augustan Com- missioner, CiNNAMUs, HIS Steward, has Consecrated this." Beneath the inscription a double lamp was suspended, and tablets were affixed to each door-post, one, if I remember rightly, bear- ing this announcement : ** On the 30TH and 3 1ST of December, our Master DINES OUT." On the other were painted the moon and the seven stars, and on a calendar a little knob served to indicate which days were lucky and which were unlucky. Imbued with all these delightful facts, just as we were entering the dining-room a slave who had been assigned to this office Trimalchio's Dinner 79 called out, " Right foot first ! " It quite upset us for a moment for fear lest any one of us should cross the threshold in an ill- omened way contrary to orders ; but we managed to get our right feet in first, and just at this moment a slave, stripped of his outer clothing, threw himself at our feet and begged us to save him from punishment. He explained that the offence for which he was in peril was no great one ; that he had simply allowed the steward's clothes to be stolen from the bath-house; and that these were worth only ten thousand sesterces. So we went back, right foot first, and begged the steward, who was counting his money in the outer hall, to let the slave oflf from punish- ment. The steward looked up disdainfully and replied : " It is n't the loss that I 'm vexed about, so much as the carelessness of this confounded slave ! The clothes that he lost were my dinner-clothes which a dependent of mine gave me on my birthday. To be sure, they 8o Trimalchio's Dinner were of Tyrian purple, but they 'd already been washed once. Well, well, I '11 let him off for your sake." Greatly impressed by this mark of favour, we had no sooner entered the dining-room than the slave whose punishment we had begged off rushed up to us, and to our sur- prise showered kisses upon us and thanked us for our kindness, saying finally : " You '11 find out pretty soon what sort of a man he is to whom you have done a favour. You know the master's wine is always the butler's gift." Presently we took our places, and Alexan- drian slaves poured water cooled with snow over our hands, while others approached our feet and with great skill began paring our corns ; nor were they silent even over this rather disagreeable task, but kept singing all the time. I wanted to find out whether the whole household sang ; and so I asked for something to drink ; whereupon a slave served me, singing the while, like the others. Trimalchio's Dinner 8 i a shrill ditty ; and in fact, every slave who was asked for anything did exactly the same, so that you would have imagined yourself in the green-room of a comic opera troupe rather than in the dining-room of a private gentleman. A very choice lot of hors cTa^uvres was then brought in ; for we had already taken our places, all except Trimalchio himself for whom the seat of honour was reserved. Among the objects placed before us was a young ass made of Corinthian bronze and fitted with a sort of pack-saddle which con- tained on one side pale green olives and on the other side dark ones. Two dishes flanked this ; and on the margin of them Trimalchio's name was engraved and the weight of the silver. Then there were little bridge-like structures of iron which held dormice seasoned with honey and poppy- seed ; and smoking sausages were arranged on a silver grill which had underneath it dark Syrian plums to represent black coals, and 6 8 2 Trimalchio's Dinner scarlet pomegranate seeds to represent red- hot ones. In the midst of all this magnificence Tri- malchio was brought in to the sound of music and propped up on a pile of well- stuffed cushions. The very sight of him almost made us laugh in spite of ourselves ; for his shaven pate was thrust out of a scar- let robe, and around his neck he had tucked a long fringed napkin with a broad purple stripe running down the middle of it. On the little finger of his left hand he wore a huge gilt ring, and on the last joint of the next finger a ring that appeared to be of solid gold, but having little iron stars upon it. Moreover, lest we should fail to take in all his magnificence, he had bared his right arm, which was adorned with a golden brace- let and an ivory circle fastened by a glit- tering clasp. As he sat there picking his teeth with a silver toothpick, he remarked : " Well, friends, it was just a bit incon- Trimalchio's Dinner 83 venient for me to dine now ; but, so as not to delay you by my absence, I have denied my- self a considerable amount of pleasure. You will allow me, however, to finish my game." A slave came in carrying a backgammon- board of polished wood and also crystal dice; and I noted, as a very dainty detail, that instead of white and black pieces, he used, in playing, gold and silver coins. While he went on with his game, uttering as he played all sorts of Billingsgate, and while we were still eat- ing the hors d^osuvres^ a tray was brought in with a basket on which a wooden fowl was placed with its wings spread out in a circle after the fashion of setting hens. Immediately two slaves approached and amid a burst of music began to poke around in the straw, and having presently dis- covered there some pea-hens' eggs, they dis- tributed them among the guests. Trimalchio looked up during this opera- tion and said, " Gentlemen, I had the hens* eggs placed under this fowl ; but I 'm rather 84 Trimalchio's Dinner afraid they have young chickens in them. Let 's see whether they 're still fit to suck." So we took our spoons, which weighed not less than half a pound each, and broke the egg-shells, which were made of flour paste. As I did so, I was almost tempted to throw my egg on the floor, for it looked as though a chicken had just been formed inside ; but when I heard an old diner-out by my side saying : " There 's bound to be something good here," I thrust my finger through the shell and drew out a plump reed-bird, surrounded by yolk of egg well seasoned with pepper. Trimalchio had now given up his game and called for the same dainties that we had had, inviting us with a loud voice to take a drink of honeyed wine also. Just then, however, at a signal given by music, all the dishes were swept oflF at once by a troop of slaves who sang over their work. Amid the bustle, a silver dish happened to fall on the floor, and when one of the servants started Trimalchio's Dinner 85 to pick it up, Trimalchio ordered him to be soundly cuffed, and told him to throw it down again ; and presently there came in a servant, broom in hand, who swept up the silver dish along with the rest of the rubbish that lay upon the floor. After this, there entered two long-haired iEthiopian slaves carrying little bags such as are used for sprinkling the sand in the amphitheatre, and from these they poured wine over our hands ; for water was not good enough to wash in at that house. We complimented Trimalchio on all these elegant little details, and he observed complacently : " Mars loves a fair field ; so I had a separate table given to each guest. Inciden- tally, too, these wretched slaves will not overheat us by their crowding." Immediately glass wine-jars were brought in, carefully sealed with plaster, and on their necks there were little tags with this legend : " Falernian Opimian^ one hundred years old J* 86 Trimalchio's Dinner While we were reading the tags, Trimalchio clapped his hands, and presently began to hold forth : " Oh dear, see how much longer-lived wine is than any poor mortal ! Let 's drink, then, and make merry, for wine is really life. Just look ; here 's genuine old Opimian. I didn't put nearly such good liquor as this on the table yesterday, and yet the people who dined with me then were socially very much superior to you." As we were drinking the wine, and noting very carefully all his evidences of good taste, a slave brought him a silver skeleton ingen- iously put together so that its limbs could be thrown out of joint and made to turn in any direction. This Trimalchio kept throwing again and again upon the table and making it assume all sorts of shapes, until at last he observed : ** Alas and alack ! what a nothing is man ! We all shall be bones at the end of life's span : So let us be jolly as long as we can." Trimalchio's Dinner 87 We were still complimenting him on his philosophy, when a course was served whose peculiarity attracted every one's attention ; for the double tray in which it was set had the twelve signs of the Zodiac arranged in a circle and over each sign the chief butler had arranged some kind of food that was appro- priate to it, — over the Ram, some chick-peas with tendrils that curled like a ram's horns ; over the Bull, a bit of beef; over the Twins, a pair of lamb's fries and kidneys ; over the Crab, a garland ; over the Lion, an African fig ; over the Virgin, a sow's paunch ; over the Balance, a pair of scales on one of which was placed a tart and on the other a cake ; over the Scorpion, a crab ; over Aquarius, a goose ; over the Fish, two mullets. In the middle was a piece of fresh turf supporting a honeycomb. An Egyptian slave passed us some bread in a silver bread-plate, while Trimalchio croaked out a popular song from the musical farce called l^he Garlic Eater. We were making ready to attack these 88 Trimalchio's Dinner absurd viands, though with no great eager- ness, when Trimalchio remarked : " Come, let 's dine. This is really the very sauce of the dinner." As he said this, four slaves came forward with a solemn dance-step to the sound of music and took off the cover from the upper part of the tray. As soon as they had done this we saw, underneath the cover, capons and sows' breasts, and a hare with feathers stuck in its back so as to represent Pegasus. We observed also in the corner of the tray a figure of Marsyas, holding a wine-skin from which highly peppered fish-sauce flowed out over the fish, which swam in it as though they were in a brook. The slaves began to applaud, and we all joined in vigorously, laughing as we fell to, over these choice dainties. Trimalchio, equally delighted at this culinary surprise, called out : " Carver ! " and at once a man provided with a knife and making elaborate gestures in time to the music, hacked up the meat in such a fashion that Trimalchio's Dinner 89 you would have imagined him to be a chariot- fighter slashing about to the sound of a water-organ. Trimalchio in a drawling tone kept up his exclamation, " Carver ! Carver ! " so that suspecting the repetition of this word to have some humorous intention, I did not hesitate to question the guest who sat beside me. He was quite familiar with the whole thing, and explained it by saying : " Do you see the man who has carved the meat ? His name is Carver. And so, as often as Trimalchio says : * Carve her ! ' he calls the slave by name and at the same time tells him what to do." I was unable to eat another mouthful ; and so, turning to my companion, I tried to draw as much information out of him as possible, and to get the run of the gossip of the house, asking, in the first place, who the woman was who was darting here and there about the room. " Oh ! " said he, " that 's Trimalchio's wife. Her name is Fortunata. She has go Trimalchio's Dinner money to burn now, but a little while ago what do you suppose she was ? Your honour will excuse me for saying so, but really in those days you would n't have taken a piece of bread from her hand. And now, without any why or wherefore, she 's at the top notch and is all the world to Trimal- chio, — in fact, if she should say it was night at noonday, he 'd believe her. As for Tri- malchio himself, he 's so rich that he does n't know how much money he 's got ; but this jade has an eye to everything, even the things that you would n't think about yourself. She does n't drink, she 's as straight as a string — in fact, a really smart woman ; but she has an awfully sharp tongue, a regular magpie on a perch. If she likes any one, she likes him way down to the ground, and if she doesn't like him, she just hates him ! Tri- malchio's estates are so large that it would tire a bird to fly over them, and he has heaps on heaps of cash. Take his silver plate, for instance. Why, there 's more of Trimalchio's Dinner 91 It in his janitor's office than most persons have in their entire outfit; and his slaves, — well, sir, they 're so numerous that I don't think that a tenth part of them would recog- nise their own master. In fact, when it comes to money he can buy up any of these chumps here ten times over; and there 's no reason for his paying out money for any- thing at all, because he produces everything on his own place — wool and cedar wood and pepper, — why, if you were to ask for hens' milk, you 'd get it ! To give you an instance : he found that he was n't getting very good wool ; so he bought some rams at Tarentum and changed the breed of his sheep. Again, because he wanted to have Athenian honey right here on his estate, he imported bees from Athens, and incidentally these improved the breed of the native bees also. Only a few days ago he wrote and ordered mushroom-seed to be sent him from India. He has n't a single mule on his place that was n't sired by a wild ass. Just see 92 Trimalchio's Dinner how many cushions he has here. Every single one of them has either purple or scar- let stuffing. That 's what I call being rich. But you 're not to suppose that his associates here are to be sneezed at, for they 've got plenty of rocks too. Just look at that man who has the last place at the table. Even he has to-day his little eight hundred thou- sand, and yet he started out with nothing. It was n't very long ago that he was a porter carrying wood on his back through the street. But, as the saying goes, he found a fairy wishing-cap. I never grudge a man his good luck. It only means that he knows how to lookout for himself; and this chap over here not long ago put up his shanty for sale with this sort of an advertisement : " * Gaius Pompeius Diogenes will let this lodging from July first, having just bought a large house for himself.' " Now take the case of that other man over there who has the freedman's place at the table. How well off do you suppose he is ? ^j-v-^y \,: % 1 Interior of Roman House. Trimalchio's Dinner 93 I don't know anything against him, but he 's seen the time when he had his httle million ; only somehow or other he went wrong. To-day I don't imagine he has a hair on his head that is n't mortgaged, and it is n't his own fault either, for there 's no better man in the world; but it's the fault of his con- founded freedmen who made way with every- thing that he had. You know the saying, ' Too many cooks spoil the broth,' and the other saying that * He who loses money loses friends.' And what a fine profession he had, too, just as you see him now ! He was an undertaker. He used to dine like a king, on wild boar, with pastry and birds, and he had cooks and bakers by the score. They used to spill more wine under his table than most men have in their whole wine-cellars. In fact, he was a fairy vision rather than a man. When his affairs got into Queer Street and he was afraid his creditors would think that things were in a bad way, he wanted to raise some money on his goods 94 Trimalchio's Dinner and chattels ; so he advertised an auction of them in this fashion : * Julius Proculus will hold an auction for the sale of his superflu- ous property/ " Trimalchio interrupted this pleasant gos- sip, for the course had already been removed, and the guests, growing lively, had begun to give their attention to the wine and to gen- eral conversation. So, resting on his elbow, he remarked : " I hope that you will compliment this wine by drinking a plenty. You know the fish that you have eaten ought to have some- thing to swim in. Did you really suppose, I should like to know, that I was satisfied with the sort of dinner that you saw in the lower part of the tray ? Did you take me for that sort of a hairpin ? Well, well, a man has got to have some scientific knowl- edge in dining. God bless my former owner who was bound to make me a man of the world; for now I can encounter nothing that really surprises me, not even such Trimalchio's Dinner 95 things as this tray had on it. The heaven represented here, in which the twelve gods dwell, is divided into the same number of signs ; and now, for example, it falls under the dominion of the Ram, and so whoever is born under that sign owns many flocks and much wool, and has himself moreover a hard head, a brow without shame, and a sharp horn. Most debaters are born under the Ram, and so are r^»?bunctious people." We warmly praised the elegant learning of the astrologer and so he went on : " Next, then, the whole heaven comes under the dominion of the Bull, and so at that season kickers are produced and herds- men, and men who know how to browse for a living. Under the Twins are born those who are affinities and good yoke-fellows, and those who can kill two birds with one stone. I myself was born under the Crab, and so I have many feet to stand on, and many possessions both on sea and land ; for the crab squares with both : and that 's the 96 Trimalchio's Dinner reason why I placed nothing over that sign lest I should obscure my own horoscope. Under the Lion, great eaters and high- spirited fellows are born ; under the Virgin, women and runaway slaves, and people who are controlled by others ; under the Balance, butchers and dealers in ointment, and all those who sell things by weight ; under the Scorpion, poisoners and cut-throats; under the Archer, cross-eyed men who when they look out of the window see up the chimney; under Capricorn, moody chaps who have strength given them in proportion to their misfortunes ; under Aquarius, innkeepers who water their wines, and cabbage-heads ; under the Fish, caterers and also rhetoricians who cater to our ears. Thus the orb turns like a mill and always brings some misfor- tune, because at every moment men are either being born or else are dying. But as to your seeing a turf in the middle and a honeycomb on the turf, I had a reason for that arrangement. For Mother Earth is in Trimalchio's Dinner 97 the middle, round as an egg, and she contains within herself all sorts of good things, like the honeycomb." " Learnedly expounded ! " we all cried out ; and lifting our hands toward the ceiling we swore that the astromomers Hipparchus and Aratus were not to be compared with our host ; and we kept up this eulogy until the servants came and hung pieces of tapestry along the front of our couches, with hunt- ing nets embroidered on them and huntsmen armed with spears, and all the paraphernalia of the hunt. We hardly knew what these preparations foreboded, when outside the dining-room a great hubbub began, and, lo and behold. Spartan dogs began dashing around the table. A tray followed them in which was set a boar of great size with a liberty-cap above him, while there hung from his tusks two little palm-leaf baskets, one full of nut-shaped dates, and the other full of Theban dates. All around were little pigs made of pastry and intent on the breasts. 98 Trimalchio's Dinner this signifying that the boar was supposed to represent a sow. These were intended for keepsakes to carry away. The slave called Carver, who had mangled the capons, did not come in to cut up the boar ; but instead, a big fellow with a beard, wearing leggings and with a light cloak on his shoulders, slashed the side of the boar vigorously with a drawn hunting-knife, till out of the gash live thrushes flew forth. Bird-catchers were at hand with long rods, and they caught the birds very quickly as they were fluttering around the dining-room. After Trimalchio had ordered a bird to be given to each guest, he added : " Just see what a fine big acorn this wild boar had eaten ! " Directly after, the slaves went to the little baskets which hung from the boar's tusks, and distributed the dates among the guests to the accompaniment of music. Meanwhile I in my remote corner was much distracted in mind as to why the boar Trimalchio's Dinner 99 had come in with a liberty-cap set upon him ; so after I had eaten up all my sweet- meats, I resolved to question my informant. " Oh," said he, " the slave here waiting on you can easily tell you that, for it is n't a puzzle but a perfectly obvious thing. This boar was brought on in the last course of yesterday's dinner, and was allowed by the guests to go untouched. So, you see, he comes back to-day to dinner like a freedman." I fell to cursing my own stupidity, and asked no more questions lest I should appear never to have dined among gentlemen before. While we were having this talk, a hand- some young slave crowned with ivies and taking the part of Bacchus, the Free Father, passed grapes about in a basket and rendered his master's poems in a very shrill voice. Trimalchio turning in his direction said : " Dionysus, I give you your freedom." The slave at once took the liberty-cap off the boar and set it on his own head, upon which Trimalchio inquired of us all — lOO Trimalchio's Dinner " Why am I of honourable birth ? Be- cause I have a Free Father." We all commended this witty saying, and as the slave went around the table we kissed him warmly by way of congratulation. After this course, Trimalchio got up to go to the lavatory ; so that, feeling a certain freedom in the absence of our master, we began to draw each other into conversa- tion. Dama, first of all, calling for a goblet, remarked : " A day is nothing. Night comes before you can turn around. That 's why I think there 's nothing better than to go from your bed straight to the dining-room. It 's a cold climate we have here. Even a bath scarcely warms me up. In fact, a hot drink is my wardrobe. I 've had several stiff drinks already, so that I 'm loaded for bear ; for the wine has gone to my head." At this point Seleucus interrupted him, remarking, — " Well, for my part, / don't take a bath Roman Cookshop. Trimalchio's Dinner loi every day. The cold water nips you so that when you bathe every day your courage all oozes out of you. But after I 've swigged a toby of booze, I tell the cold to go to the devil. But I could n't take a bath to-day, anyhow, for I was to a funeral. Chrysan- thus, a fine man and such a good fellow, kicked the bucket. I saw him only the other day, — in fact, I can hear him talking to me now. Dear me ! we go around like blown-up bladders. We 're of less conse- quence than even the flies, for flies have some spirit in them, while we are nothing but mere bubbles. But as to Chrysanthus, what if he was n't a total abstainer ? Anyhow, for five days before he died, he never threw a drink in his face nor ate a crumb of bread. Well, well, he's joined the majority. It was the doctors that really killed him or perhaps just his bad luck ; for a doctor is nothing after all but a sort of consolation to your mind. He was laid out in great style on his best bed, with his best bedclothes on. I02 Trimalchio's Dinner and he had a splendid wake, though his wife was n't sincere in her mourning for him. But I say, what if he did n't treat her very well ? A woman so far as she is a woman is a regu- lar bird of prey. It is n't worth while to do a favour for a woman, because it 's just the same as though you 'd chucked it down a well. But love in time becomes a regular ball-and-chain on a man." I He was getting to be rather boresome when Phileros chimed in : "Oh, let's think of the living. Your friend has got whatever was his due. He lived an honourable life and he died an honourable death. What has he to com- plain of.'' From having nothing, he made a fortune, for he was always ready to pull a piece of money out of a muck-heap with his teeth ; and so he grew as rich as a honey- comb. By Jove ! I believe the fellow left a cool hundred thousand, and he had it all in cash. I 'm giving you this straight, for I have a rough tongue. He was a man of Trimalchio's Dinner 103 unlimited cheek, a tonguey fellow, and he always had a chip on his shoulder. His brother was a good sort of chap, a friend to a friend, a man with an open hand and a generous table. At the start he had a hard road to hoe, but his first vintage set him on his legs again, for he sold his wine at his own price. But what especially kept his head above water was this, that he got hold of a legacy, and waltzed into a good deal more of it than had been really left him. But this friend of yours, because he had quar- relled with his brother, left his fortune to some outsider. I tell you a man has to go mighty far to get away from his relatives ! Unfortunately he had slaves who blabbed all his secrets and harmed him. A man makes a mistake who trusts others too readily, especially if he 's a business man. Never- theless, while he lived, he enjoyed what he had ; and, after all, he is the luckiest man who has things given to him and not merely promised to him. He was really Fortune's I04 Trimalchio's Dinner favourite, for in his hand even lead turned to gold. Of course that 's easy enough when your affairs run on all-fours. How old do you think he was when he died ? Why, he was over seventy ; but he was hard as nails, he bore his years well, and his head was as black as a crow. I knew the fellow ; he was a gay bird, — ready to play Jack to any woman's Jill. But I don't blame him, for that 's the only thing that he 's been able to take away with him." After Phileros had finished, Ganymedes started in : " All this talk of yours is n't the least bit to the point. No one here seems to care about the high price of grain. By Jove, I could n't get a mouthful of bread to-day ! And how the drought keeps on ! We 've had a sort of famine for a year. Confound the officials anyhow, who are standing in with the bakers ! * Scratch my back, and I '11 scratch yours,' as the saying goes. So the public has to suffer for it and their jaws Trimalchio's Dinner 105 get a long vacation. Oh, if we only had those roaring blades that I found here when I first arrived from Asia ! I tell you, that was life ! If the flour sold was n't equal to the very best, they used to go for those poor devil officials as if Jupiter himself was angry with them. I remember Safinius. In those days he used to live down by the old archway, when I was a boy. He was hot stuff! Wherever he went he used to make the ground smoke. But he was per- fectly straight, a man to rely on, a friend to a friend, a chap with whom you could safely throw dice with your eyes shut. In the court-room too, how he used to make things hum ! And he did n't talk in figures either, but straight to the point, and when he was arguing his voice used to swell like a trumpet. He never used to hem and haw, and I think he had a touch of the Asiatic about him, — he was so fluent. How afi^able he was, bowing to everybody, and calling everybody by name just as Nl/ 1 06 Trimalchio's Dinner though he was one of us ! In those days, I tell you, grain was as cheap as dirt. If you bought a loaf of bread for a penny, you could n't eat it up even if you hired an- other man to help you ; whereas nowadays, I 've seen bulls'-eyes that were bigger than the loaves. Dear, dear, every day things are getting worse ! The town is growing backward like a calf's tail. And why do we have a mayor who 's no good and who thinks more of a penny piece than of the lives of all of us? He has a soft snap in private, for he takes in more money in a day than most of us have in our whole fortunes. / know one source from which he got a thou- sand gold pieces. If we had any spunk he would n't be so stuck on himself. But our people are lions in private and foxes in public. ' As far as I 'm concerned, I' ve already eaten up my wardrobe, and if this sort of a harvest keeps on I '11 have to sell my shanties. What 's going to happen if neither gods nor men take pity on this RoM-AX Barber-shof Trimalchio's Dinner 107 place ? So help me gracious, I think that all this trouble comes from the gods, for nowadays nobody believes in Heaven and nobody cares a straw for Jove ; but every man-jack of them shuts his eyes and just keeps thinking about his own affairs. In the good old days the married women used to go bare-footed up the Sacred Hill with their hair down their backs, and with pure souls prayed to Jupiter for rain. And then it used to rain by the bucketful — or if it did n't then, why, it never did ; and they all came back like drowned rats. That 's why the gods are stealthily dogging us to-day. It's because we have n't any more religion. The fields are — " " Oh, I say," said Echion, the rag dealer, " do be a little more cheerful ! Sometimes it 's one way and sometimes it 's another, as the countryman said who had lost a spotted pig. What you don't get to-day, you '11 get to-morrow ; that 's the way life shogs on. This country 'd be all right enough if it only io8 Trimalchio's Dinner had real men. To be sure, it 's in trouble just at this time, but it is n't unique in that. We ought n't to be too finical, for Heaven is just as near to one place as to another. If you lived anywhere else, you 'd be saying that the pigs were walking around here ready roasted. I tell you, we 're going to have a first-class show of gladiators on the next holiday, to last for three days. The fighters are not professional gladiators, but most of them freedmen. My friend Titus, who is paying for the thing, is a generous, high- spirited fellow. With him it 's always either one thing or the other, and something anyhow ; and I know this, for I visit at his house, and he 's not a changeable person. He 's going to provide a splendid bit of fighting for us with no quarter given, — a regular slaughter-house, so that every one present can see it. And he has the means to do it, too, for his father, who just died, left him thirty million sesterces, so that he can easily blow in four hun- Trimalchio's Dinner 109 dred thousand without his fortune's feel- ing it, and he '11 win an immortal reputation by it. He 's got together some country- jays and a woman charioteer and Glyco's steward who was found to be on too inti- mate terms with his master's wife. You will see a great popular outbreak between the jealous husbands and the lovers, for Glyco, a real cad, has given his steward to the wild beasts, thereby giving himself away. How was the slave to blame who was obliged to do what he did ? It is really Glyco's slat of a wife who deserves to be tossed by a bull ; but when a man can't beat his mule, he whacks the saddle. How on earth did Glyco ever suppose that a daughter of Hermogenes could come to a good end? Why, old Hermogenes would steal the pennies off a dead man's eyes, and you know that like begets like. The fact is, Glyco has fouled his own nest, and as long as he hves he will have the disgrace of it, so that nothing but death can ever take it iio Trimalchio's Dinner away. But every man sins to his own hurt. I have a sort of suspicion, by the way, that Mammaea is going to give us a feast with a present of money at the end of it. If he does, he '11 take the wind out of Norbanus's sails and beat him hands down. For the matter of that, Norbanus never did much for us anyhow. When he gave a show he brought out some tupenny-ha'penny gladi- ators so feeble that if you 'd blown on them they would have fallen flat. I Ve seen far better men fed to the wild beasts. His mounted fighters were as much like the real thing as a lot of dissolving views ; you 'd have taken them for barnyard fowls. One was a regular dummy, another was lame, and the third was as good as dead already, for he had been hamstrung. There was one fellow, though, of some spunk, a Thracian, but even he fought only to order in a mechanical sort of way. In fact, all of them afterwards were soundly flogged, for the spectators all called out : * Beat them and brand them ! * Gladiatorial Contest. Trimalchio's Dinner 1 1 1 They were every one of them quitters. Of course Norbanus would probably say, 'I 've given you an entertainment anyhow.' Then I should answer, * Yes, and I 've given you my applause. Reckon the thing up and you '11 see that I 've given you more than I got from yoif.' One good turn de- serves another. 'Well, Agamemnon, you look as though you were saying, * Why is this bore babbling ? ' Why, simply because you, who know how to talk book talk, won't speak at all. You don't belong to our set, and so you make fun of everything a poor man says. I know you 're cracked on account of your learning, but what good is it all to you ? «Some day I '11 persuade you to come out to my country place and look at my humble dwelling. We '11 find some- thing there to chew on, — chickens and eggs, — and it '11 be rather nice there even though the drought this year has burnt everything brown. Still, we '11 find some- thing to fill our bellies with. My little 112 Trimalchio's Dinner shaver is growing up to be a pupil of yours. Already he can say his table of four times ; and if he lives, you '11 find him a very faithful pupil, for when he has any time to himself he never takes his head out of a book. He 's clever and has good stuff in him, though he 's crazy after pet birds. I 've already killed three goldfinches of his and told him that the weasel ate them up; but he took up some other nonsense, and just now he *s very fond of painting. He *s just given Greek the go-by, and he's begun to take hold of Latin very well, even though his teacher is too easy-going and does n't stick to one thing, but just comes and sets him a lesson to learn, and never wants to take any pains himself. I Ve also another tutor for him who does n't know very much, to be sure, but who 's very dili- gent and teaches more than he understands himself On the quarter-days he comes to the house and is perfectly satisfied with what- ever you pay him. I 've just bought the Trimalchio's Dinner 113 boy some law-books, because I want to have him get a little snack of law for home use, for this is a practical, bread-and-butter sub- ject. The boy has really pottered over literature long enough, and if he does n't care about it in the end, I 've decided to teach him a trade, — either the barber's, or the auctioneer's, or else the lawyer's, — and then nothing but death can take it from him. That 's why I say to him every day, * My dear boy, believe me, whatever you learn you learn for your own good. Just look at Phileros, the lawyer. If he had n't learned law, he would n't be able to-day to keep the wolf from the door. Why, not very long ago he was carrying around goods for sale on his back, whereas now, he matches him- self even against Norbanus.* Yes, learning is a treasure ; but still a trade never dies." The talk was passing back and forth in this way when Trimalchio returned, and, after wiping his forehead, washed his hands in 114 Trimalchio's Dinner perfumed water. Then, after a moment or two of delay, he said : " You will excuse me, my friends, but my stomach for a good many days has been out of sorts, and the doctors don't know where they are at. However, I have been helped by pomegranate rind and a mixture of pitch and vinegar. I trust that my internal economy will soon feel ashamed of itself. Moreover there is a rumbling in my stomach so that you would imagine it to be a bull. And so if any of you wish to go out don't be bashful. You '11 find all the conveniences. Flatulence goes to the head and kicks up a disturbance all through the body. I know of a good many persons who have died because they were too modest to speak the truth." We thanked him for his kind generosity and concealed our laughter by taking numer- ous drinks. We had no idea, after all the rich things already eaten, that we had n't yet, as they say, reached the top of the hill ; but ^«: OJr Roman Youth. Trimalchio's Dinner 115 now, as soon as the table had been cleared off to the sound of music, three white swine were brought into the dining-room, deco- rated with muzzles and little bells. The slave who announced the guests said that one of the pigs was two years old, another three years old, and a third already six years old. I thought that rope dancers were com- ing in and that the pigs, as is often the case in the side-shows, were going to perform some remarkable tricks. But Trimalchio, putting an end to our suspense, said : " Which of these pigs would you like to have served up at once on the table ? Country cooks can prepare a fowl or a piece of beef and other trifles of that sort, but my cooks are accustomed to serve up whole calves boiled ! " Immediately he had the cook summoned ; and not waiting for us to make a choice, he ordered the oldest pig to be slaughtered. Then he asked the slave in a loud voice : " Which of my slave-gangs do you belong to?" ii6 Trimalchio's Dinner " The fortieth," said the cook. " Were you purchased for me," said Tri- malchio ; " or born on my estate ? " " Neither," replied the cook. " I was left to you in Pansa's will." " See then," said Trimalchio, " that you set the pig before us in good style. If you don't, I shall have you transferred to the gang of running footmen." So the cook, after receiving this hint of his master's power, led the pig away to the kitchen. Trimalchio, looking at us with a genial countenance, then remarked : " If the wine does n't suit you, I '11 have it changed; but you really must relish it. Thank God, I don't have to buy it ; but everything that can make your mouth water is now produced on that estate of mine just outside the city, which I myself have not yet seen. It is said to be near Tar- racina and Tarentum. I have a notion to add Sicily to my estates, so that when I take it into my head to go to Africa, I can Trimalchio's Dinner 117 sail between my own possessions. But tell me, Agamemnon, what rhetorical debate did you take part in to-day ? For even though I don't plead cases myself, I have, neverthe- less, some learning for home use. You are not to suppose that I think little of study. I have two libraries, one in Greek and one in Latin. So tell me, please, the subject of your debate." " The subject," said Agamemnon, " is this, — * A poor man and a rich man were enemies — ' " " What on earth is a poor man ? " in- terrupted Trimalchio. " Oh, how witty ! " cried out Agamemnon ; and he went on to explain the subject of his argument. But Trimalchio at once inter- rupted him again and said : "If all this really happened, there is no question to debate. If it did n't really happen, then there is nothing in it at all." We received these and other sallies of his with the most effusive compliments. ii8 Trimalchio's Dinner " Tell me," said he, " my dear Agamem- non, do you remember the Twelve Labours of Hercules, or the story of Ulysses, and how the Cyclops twisted his thumb after he had been turned into a pig ? When I was a boy I used to read these things in Homer ; and with my own eyes I once saw the Sibyl at Cumae hanging in a great jar, and when the young men asked her, * Sibyl, what do you want ? ' she said, ' I want to die.' " He had not yet finished blowing, when a tray was placed upon the table containing an immense pig. We fell to wondering at the rapidity with which it had been cooked ; for we vowed that not even a barnyard fowl could have been thoroughly done in so short a time ; and we wondered all the more because the pig seemed to us to be consider- ably larger than the live pig had appeared to be a little while before. Then Trimalchio looking more and more intently at it said : " What ? What ? Has n't this pig been Trimalchio's Dinner 119 drawn ? No, by Jove, it has n't ! Just call the cook in." Then when the cook, looking very much disconcerted, came to the table and admitted that he had forgotten to draw the pig, Tri- malchio called out, — "What? Forgotten? One would imagine that this fellow had never handled pepper and salt. Strip him ! " Immediately the cook was stripped of his outer garments, and took his place in a de- jected way between two slaves whose duty it was to administer a flogging. All the guests began to beg him off and said, — " This sort of thing often happens. We beg you, let him off, and if he should ever do it again, none of us will plead for him." I I, however, being a man of unflinching sternness, could not restrain myself, but putting my mouth to Agamemnon's ear, said, — " Really, this must be a most worthless I20 Trimalchio's Dinner slave. Could any one really forget to draw a pig ? By Jove, I would n't forgive him if he had forgotten to clean even a fish." But not so Trimalchio, whose countenance relaxed into a genial expression as he said, — " Well, since your memory is so bad, just draw him here in our presence." So the cook put on his tunic and, seizing his knife, cut into the pig's stomach this way and that way with a careful hand. Instantly, after the cuts had been made and by reason of the pressure from within, sausages of various kinds came tumbling out. The whole company broke out into spontaneous applause and called out : " Good for Gaius ! " The cook was rewarded with a drink, a silver crown, and a cup on a salver of Cor- inthian bronze. As Agamemnon began to examine this salver very closely, Trimalchio remarked : " I 'm the only person who has genuine Corinthian bronze." Trimalchio's Dinner 121 I Imagined that, in accordance with the rest of his conceit, he was going to say that his bronze had been brought to him from Corinth ; but he gave the thing a better turn than that by saying : "Perhaps you would like to know why I 'm the only man who has true Corinthian bronze. Well, it 's because the bronze- dealer from whom I buy it is called Corin- thus ; for how can anything be Corinthian unless one has a Corinthus to make it ? And lest you imagine that I 'm an ignorant person, I '11 let you know that I under- stand how Corinthian bronze first came to be made. When Troy was taken, Hannibal, a clever fellow, and a sly dog, had all the bronze and gold and silver statues heaped up into one pile and built a fire under them. The various metals all melted down into a single one, and then from the blended mass the artisans took metal and made dishes, and plates, and statuettes. That 's the way that Corinthian bronze was first produced, — a 12 2 Trimalchio's Dinner single metal made out of all the others and itself neither one nor the other. You will excuse me for what I am going to say, but for my part I prefer vessels of glass, for they have no smell to them. Indeed, if they could n't be broken, I should prefer them even to gold. But now, of course, they 're cheap. Nevertheless, there once lived an artisan who made a glass bottle that could n't possibly be broken. He gained admission to the emperor's presence with his invention ; and making as if to hand it over to Caesar, he let it fall on the stone floor. Caesar naturally supposed that it had been broken, but the artisan picked up the bottle from the floor, and, lo and behold, it was simply dented like a vessel of bronze. Then, taking a little hammer from his pocket, he straightened the bottle out with perfect ease. He naturally thought that he had made a great hit, espe- cially after Caesar asked him, — " ' Does any one else understand this man- ner of making glass ? ' Trimalchio's Dinner 123 " Listen now : when the workman had said no, Caesar ordered him to be beheaded, because if the secret of this manufacture should leak out, gold would becomes as cheap as dirt. I 'm a good deal of a con- noisseur in silver. I have a hundred large goblets, more or less, made of that metal, on which Cassandra is represented as killing her sons, and the dead boys are depicted so vividly that you would think they were alive. I have also a thousand sacrificial bowls which Mummius left to my former owner, and on which is shown Daedalus shutting up Niobe in the Trojan Horse. I have, too, the battles of Hermeros and of Petrais depicted on drinking-cups, all of them very heavy. In fact, I would n't sell my special knowledge for any money." While he was saying this, a boy let a cup fall on the floor. Looking at him Tri- malchio said : " Be off quickly and commit suicide, for you 're a fool ! " I 24 Trimalchio's Dinner Immediately the boy, with quivering lip, began to beg. Trimalchio asked : " Why do you beg of me as though / had done anything to you ? I advise you to beg of yourself not to be such a fool." At length, however, persuaded by us, he let off the boy, who at once ran about the table, while Trimalchio exclaimed, — " Out with the water and in with the wme ! We applauded his witty geniality, and especially did Agamemnon applaud it, for he knew by what sort of services he would get another invitation to dinner. Trimal- chio, after having been duly flattered, fell to drinking merrily, and now being nearly drunk, he said : " Are n't any of you going to ask my Fortunata to dance for you ? Believe me, no one can do the coochee-coochee better than she." And spreading his hands above his head, he gave us an imitation of Syrus, the Trimalchio's Dinner 125 actor, while all his slaves droned out together, — « Well done, by Jove ! Well done ! " In fact he would have stood forth in the midst of us to give his exhibition, had not Fortunata said something in his ear, and, as I imagine, reminded him that such trifling follies did not befit his dignity. He was really very inconsistent ; for at one moment he seemed to be in awe of Fortunata, and at another moment to revert to his own natural ways. Presently, however, the keeper of his official records checked Trimalchio's desire for dancing by coming in and reading these records aloud as though they were the annals of the city. " July 26th : on the estate at Cumas which appertains to Trimalchio, born thirty male slaves and forty female slaves ; trans- ferred to the granary from the threshing floor, five hundred thousand measures of wheat; broken in, five hundred oxen. On the aforesaid day : the slave Mithridates 126 Trimalcliio's Dinner suffered crucifixion as having in conversation been guilty of lese majeste against our master Gaius. On the aforesaid day : placed in the safe, as having been found impossible to in- vest, one hundred thousand sesterces. On the aforesaid day : a fire took place in the gardens at Pompeii, originating in the house of the steward Nasta." "How?" exclaimed Trimalchio. "When were gardens at Pompeii purchased for me r " Last year," replied the keeper of the records ; " and so they have not yet been entered upon your accounts." Trimalchio grew hot with anger. " Unless I shall be informed within six months of any estates that have been pur- chased for me," cried he, " I forbid them to be carried to my account." Presently, also, there were read aloud the proclamations of Trimalchio's agents, and the wills of his rangers by which Trimalchio received no legacy but a very eulogistic Trimalchio's Dinner 127 mention ; and there were further read the names of his stewards, and how a freed- woman who had been caught with a bath- ing attendant had been divorced by her husband, the watchman ; and how a jan- itor had been exiled to Baias ; and how a steward had been put on trial ; and how a judgment had been rendered with regard to the chamberlains. After this, acrobats were introduced. A most uninteresting performer took his stand by a ladder and caused a boy to mount the rungs and to do a song-and-dance on the top one, after which he leaped through blazing hoops holding a wine jar in his teeth. Tri- malchio was the only one of the company who admired these feats ; and he remarked that it was a thankless occupation, but that there were just two things in the world that gave him the very greatest pleasure to witness, — acrobats and quail-fights, — while all other diversions were idle follies. " I myself purchased," he said, " some 128 Trimalchio's Dinner slaves who were good actors of Greek comedies ; but I prefer to have them take part in Latin plays, and I have given in- structions to my Greek flute-player to per- form only Latin music." At the moment that he was saying this, the performing boy fell from above and struck Trimalchio on the neck. Both slaves and guests cried out, not for the sake of their absurd host whose neck they would gladly have seen broken, but because the accident seemed to involve an unfortunate ending to the dinner and to make it neces- sary for them to lament a death. After Trimalchio himself had groaned deeply and had bent himself double over his arm as though it had been injured, his medical attendants rushed in ; and Fortunata especi- ally, with dishevelled hair and carrying a pitcher in her hand, declared herself the most unhappy and unfortunate of women. The boy who had fallen went about and, kneeling at our feet, begged forgiveness. Interior of Roman House. Trimalchio's Dinner 129 What struck me most unpleasantly was the thought, in the midst of his prayers, that some absurd proceeding was intended at the critical moment ; for I had still a lively recollection of the cook who had forgotten to draw the pig. And so I began to let my glance rove over the dining-room lest some automaton should come through the wall ; and my suspicion was enhanced after I noticed one of the slaves get a beating for wrapping up his master's injured arm with plain white, rather than with purple-dyed, wool. Nor was I very far astray ; for, in place of punishment, Trimalchio issued an order that the boy should immediately re- ceive his freedom lest any one should after- wards be able to say that so great a man as Trimalchio had been injured by a slave. We admired this act of his, and then began chattering on the subject of the muta- bility of human fortune. " Really," said Trimalchio, " we must not let this accident pass without an epigram." 9 130 Trimalchio's Dinner And immediately he called for tablets, and after racking his brains for a little while, read us out the following lines : *' What you expect turns out some other way. For Chance it is that rules us day by day. Then fill the cup, my boy, and let 's be gay! " This epigram of his led us to mention the poets ; and for some time perfection in poetry was ascribed to Mopsus, the Thracian, until Trimalchio observed : " Tell me, Agamemnon, wherein do you find the chief distinction between Cicero and the comic writer, Publilius Syrus ? For my part I think that Cicero was more elegant and Publilius more noble. Can anything be better than these lines ? ** * The walls of Rome are crumbling to decay. Fated to fall while Luxury holds sway. The gorgeous peacock, tipped with feathery gold, Now for thy palate must be bred and sold ; The pheasant also and the capon rare — Are all for thee who knowest naught to spare. E'en the poor stork, that welcome foreign guest. Must in thy kettle build its final nest, — Trimalchio's Dinner 131 Haunter of temples, graceful on the wing. Exile of winter, harbinger of spring. '* * Why dost thou make the Indian pearl thy care ? Is it alone for modest maids to wear ? Lustrous it gleams upon the matron's head. While she goes shameless to a stranger's bed. Why dost thou prize the emerald's vivid green ? Canst thou learn Virtue from its lucent sheen ? Why dost thou seek the ruby's worth to know ? Does Honour sparkle in its fiery glow ? ** * Nay, the young bride, of stainless race and proud. Clothed like a harlot in a flaxen cloud Or woven wind, goes forth with sullied name. Bold-eyed to tread the path of public shame ! * " What are we to suppose," said he, " next to literature, to be the most difficult trade ? / think the doctor's trade and the money-changer's. The doctor's, because he knows what we poor mortals have in our insides, and when a fever is going to come on. To be sure, I hate doctors awfully myself, because they so often put me on a diet of duck's meat. And I think the money-changer's trade is difficult, because he 132 Trimalchio's Dinner has to look through silver and see the brass underneath. The most painstaking of the dumb beasts are oxen and sheep, — the oxen, through whose kindly toil we have bread to eat, and the sheep because by their wool they clothe us so splendidly. It 's really a great shame that any one ever eats mutton and wears a coat. As for bees, I think that these creatures are really divine, because they can spit up honey, although the general opinion is that honey is given them by Jupiter ; and they have a sting because, according to the saying, * There 's no rose without thorns.' " My friend Ascyltos, a fellow who never restrains himself, made fun of all this pros- ing, stretching out his hands and laughing until he cried, whereupon one of Trimal- chio's fellow freedmen, who was placed next to me, grew very angry and called out, — " What are you laughing at, you mutton head? Doesn't his honour's elegant style satisfy you ? I suppose you are richer than he and are accustomed to dine in better Trimalchio's Dinner 133 style ! So help me Heaven, if I were next to this fellow I 'd have stopped his blatting long ago. He 's a daisy, is n't he, to be laughing at other men, this tramp, this fly-by-night, who is n't worth his salt ! I 'm not accustomed to get angry easily, but in tender meat maggots are easily pro- duced. He 's laughing, is he ? What has he got to laugh at ? He is n't so preci- ous, is he, that his father had to buy him for money ? Oh yes, you 're a Roman knight ! Well, I 'm the son of a king. I suppose you ask, then, why I was ever a slave. I '11 tell you. I became a slave of my own free will and then had myself set free, because I preferred to be a Roman citizen rather than a tributary king ; and now I imagine that I 'm living such a life as to be nobody's fool. I 'm as good as any other man and I go about with my head in the air. I don't owe any one a red cent. I 've never had a summons served on me. No one has ever had to say to me in the Forum, 134 Trimalchio's Dinner *Pay up.' I've bought a little ground, I 've scraped together a little cash, and now I keep twenty slaves and a dog. I bought my sweetheart's freedom too, so that no one should have the right to wipe his hands on her head. I paid a thousand denarii for her. I was made a commissioner without having to buy the honour ; and I think that when I come to die I '11 not have to blush for myself after I 'm dead. But you are such a Paul Pry that you don't have time to see your own faults. You see a mote in another man's eye, but you never see the beam in your own. You 're the one and only person to whom we seem laughable. Here 's your teacher, a man better born than you, and we are quite good enough for him. You great baby ! you have n't sense enough to say boo to a goose — a cheap creature, a regular thong-in-water, softer than we but not sounder. You 're very rich, are you ? Very well, can you eat more meals on that account ? I regard my credit as far better than riches, and I should like to Trimalchio's Dinner 135 know whether any one has ever had to dun me for his money. I was a slave for forty years, but now no one cares whether I was a slave or a freeman. I came to this town when I was a long-haired boy, before the town hall was built, and I worked diligently to please my owner who was a very majestical and digni- ferous man. His little finger was worth more than your whole body. I had enemies in his house who tried to trip me up now and then; but nevertheless, thanks to him, I came out all right in the end. These things are real tests, for it 's just as easy to be born a gentleman as it is to say Jack Robinson. Well, what are you gaping at now like a goat in a garden ? " At this outbreak, Giton, who was standing behind us and who had for a long time been suppressing his laughter, now burst into a most unbecoming guffaw. When the guest who had been reviling Ascyltos noticed this, he directed his invective upon the boy, and called out, — 136 Trimalchio's Dinner " And you 're laughing, too, are you, you curly onion ? Well, I should like to know whether it's the month of December when the slaves are allowed to do as they please. When werejyoz^ set free ? What have you got to do with this affair, anyhow, you gallows bird, — you food for crows ! May Jupiter confound you and this master of yours who does n't restrain you ! May I never have bread to eat if I 'm not really repressing myself out of regard to Trimalchio. If it had n't been for his presence, I 'd have given you your deserts long ago. There 's really nothing the matter with us^ but only with these worthless fools here who don't keep you in check. The old saying is very true, * Like master, like man.' It's hard for me to control my feelings, and yet I 'm not naturally hot-headed ; only, when I once get started, I 'd throw stones at my grand- mother. All right ! I '11 see you outside, you rat, you toadstool ! May I never grow another inch if I don't knock your master ;3 o o a: Trimalchio's Dinner 137 into a cocked hat ; and I won't let up on you, either, even if you should pray to Olympian Jove. I '11 knock your head off and your worthless master's too. Yes, yes, I '11 put you under the harrow. Either I don't know myself, or else you '11 have to stop laughing at us, even though your beard should be gilded like a god's. I '11 do you up and the man who brought you here, too. Maybe I don't know geometry and criticism and all those senseless follies, but I can read print and I understand fractions, and weights, and coinage. In fact, if you want to, I '11 make a little bet with you and put up the money, and you shall find out that your father wasted whatever he spent on making you a scholar. I say this to you : " ' What do you want of me ? I have a long reach and a wide sweep. Mind your eye ! ' That 's what I say to you when you go scurrying around and yet don 't gain an inch. You puff yourself up and yet you look 138 Trimalchio's Dinner meaner and meaner all the time. You dart here and there, you gape, you bustle about like a mouse in a match-box, so you 'd better shut up or else stop annoying a man who is better than you are and who does n't take the trouble to think of you. Perhaps you imagine that I 'm impressed by those wooden armlets of yours which you swiped from your mistress ! Just let 's go to the Forum and try to borrow money, and then you '11 find out that my name has some value. Pah ! a sick chicken like you is a fine thing, is n't it ? May I never make another cent, and may I die in disgrace, if I don't run you out of the place ! And this master of yours, who puts you up to all these things, he 's a daisy, is n't he ? He 's more of a mug than a master. I 've had some education myself, for my teacher used to say to me, * Is every- thing all right ? Straight home now. See that you don't go staring around or speaking disrespectfully to your betters, or stop and look in the shop windows ! * No second- Trimalchio's Dinner 139 rate person ever graduated from that school. I thank God that my trade has made me what I am." Ascyltos was starting in to answer this tirade when Trimalchio, greatly tickled by his friend's flow of language, said : "Oh, come! stop your quarrelling and let's have things pleasant. And you, Her- meros, let up on the young fellow. He 's hot- blooded, but you ought to be more sensible. The man who comes off best in this sort of thing really comes oflF worst. And when you were a young rooster you, too, used to crow away and had n't any sense. So let 's all be happy from the word go, which is much more sensible, and listen to the Homeric actors." A troupe immediately came in, clattering their shields and spears. Trimalchio sat up on his couch, and while the Homeric actors in a pompous fashion began a dialogue in Greek verse, he read a book aloud in Latin with a singsong tone of voice. Presently, when the rest had become silent, he said: 140 Trimalchio's Dinner " Do you know what play they 're acting ? Diomede and Ganymede were two brothers. Their sister was Helen. Agamemnon carried her off and put a deer in her place for Diana, and so now Homer explains how the Trojans and the Parentines are waging war. Agamemnon, you must know, came off victor and gave his daughter Iphigenia to be the wife of Achilles. Thereupon Ajax went mad, and presently now will show us the denouement y As Trimalchio said this, the Homeric actors set up a shout, and while the slaves bustled about, a boiled calf was brought on in an enormous dish and with a helmet placed upon it. The actor who took the part of Ajax followed with a drawn sword, fell upon it as though he were mad, and hacking this way and that he cut up the calf and offered the bits to us on the point of his sword, to our great surprise. We had no time to admire these elegant proceedings, for all of a sudden the ceiling < o Trimalchio's Dinner 141 of the room began to rumble and the whole dining-room shook. In consternation I jumped upj fearing lest some acrobat should come down through the roof; and all the other guests in surprise looked upward as though they expected some miracle from heaven. But lo and behold ! the panels of the ceiling slid apart, and suddenly a great hoop as though shaken off from a hogshead was let down, having gold crowns with jars of perfume hanging about its entire circum- ference. These things we were invited to accept as keepsakes, and presently a tray was set before us full of cakes with an image of Priapus as a centre-piece made of con- fectionery and holding in its generous bosom apples of every sort and grapes, in the usual fashion, as being the god of gardens. We eagerly snatched at this magnificent display, and suddenly renewed our mirth at discov- ering a novel trick ; for all the cakes and all the apples, when pressed the least bit, squirted forth saffron-water into our faces. 142 Trimalchio's Dinner Thinking that there was something of a reHgious turn to a course that was so suggest- ive of divine worship, we all rose up together and pronounced the formula, " Success to Augustus, Father of his Country ! " But some of us, even after this solemn act, snatched up the apples and filled our napkins with them to carry away, — a thing which I did myself, for I thought that I could not heap up enough presents in Giton's lap. While this was going on, three slaves dressed in white tunics entered, two of whom placed images of the household gods upon the table, and the other one carrying around a bowl of wine called out : " God bless us all ! " Trimalchio told us that one image was the image of the God of Business, the second the image of the God of Luck, and the third the image of the God of Gain. There was a very striking bust of Trimalchio also, and as everybody else kissed it, I was ashamed not to do the same. Trimalchio's Dinner 143 Presently, after all of us had Invoked health and happiness for ourselves, Trimal- chio, looking in the direction of Niceros, said : "You used to be better dinner-company. Somehow or other now, though, you 're absolutely mum and don't open your head. I beg you, if you wish to oblige me, tell me some of your experiences." Niceros, flattered by the notice of his friend, said : " May I never make another farthing if I am not bursting with joy to see you in such good form ; so let 's be as happy as we can, though I am awfully afraid of these learned persons present for fear they should laugh at me. However, that 's their affair. I '11 spin my yarn all the same ; for what harm does any one do me who laughs at me ? It's a great deal better to be laughed at, than to be laughed down." And then he began the following story : " When I was still a slave I used to live 144 Trimalchio's Dinner in a little street where Gavilla lives now. At that time, as the gods would have it, I fell in love with the wife of Terence, the inn- keeper. You must have known her, — her name was Melissa, a native of Tarentum, and a very kissable girl, too. Yet there wasn't anything wrong in my love for her, but I just liked her because she had such nice ways. "Whatever I asked of her she gave me. If she made a penny she gave me half of it, and whatever I had I turned over to her to keep for me, and never was cheated. As it happened, her husband died at his place in the country and so I tried by hook and by crook to get to her, for you know a friend in need is a friend indeed. As chance would have it, my master had gone to Capua to look after some wares ; and so, seizing the opportunity, I asked a man who was staying with us to go with me as far as the fifth mile- stone. He was a soldier, as bold as hell. We set off about cock-crow, while the moon was still shining as bright as mid-day. At Trimalchio's Dinner 145 last we came to a cemetery and my com- panion went off among the tombstones, while I took a rest, humming a tune and counting the monuments. Presently, when I looked at my companion, he had undressed and had put all his clothes by the roadside. My heart was in my mouth, and I sat there like a dead man ; but he walked around his clothes and all of a sudden was turned into a wolf. Now don't imagine that I 'm fooling you, for I would n't tell any lies for the world. But, as I was going on to say just now, he was turned into a wolf, and began to howl, and then ran off into the woods. At first I did n't know where I was at, but when I went up to his clothes to pick them up, — lo and behold, they had all been turned into stone ! Well, I was about ready to die of fright, but I drew my sword and all along the road I cut and thrust at every shadow until I reached my friend's house. When I entered as pale as a ghost I almost fainted. The sweat was running down my crotch, my 146 Trimalchio's Dinner eyes were fixed, and it was with the greatest difficulty that I was brought to. Mehssa wondered at me to think that I was out so late and she said, ' If you 'd only come sooner you might have been of some help to us; for a wolf has just entered the grounds and attacked our flocks and made them bleed like a butcher. He did n't get off unhurt, however, for one of my slaves stuck him in the neck with a spear.' After I had heard this I could n't close my eyes ; but as soon as it was bright daylight, I hurried home like a plundered pedlar ; and when I came to the place where the clothes had been turned into stone I found nothing there but a pool of blood. But when I reached home, there lay my friend the soldier, in his bed like a stuck pig with the doctor putting a plaster on his neck. Then I knew that he was a were- wolf, and from that day on I could n't have eaten a mouthful of bread with him even if you had killed me. I leave it to others to say what they think of this ; but if I *ve lied Trimalchio's Dinner 147 to you I hope your honours will have noth- ing more whatever to do with me." After we had all expressed our wonder, Trimalchio remarked : " If you '11 beHeve me, my hair stood on end, because I know that Niceros never tells any idle yarns, but he 's a straightforward fellow, and by no means fond of hearing himself talk. Now I 'm going to tell you a frightful thing myself, as strange as an ass on the house-tops. When I was still a long- haired boy — for even from early youth I led a pretty gay life — my master's favourite died, a regular jewel, a rare fellow, and one that could turn his hand to anything. His poor mother was mourning over him and we were all of us in a very sad state of mind, when suddenly we heard witches shrieking so that you would imagine that it was a pack of hounds chasing a hare. We had with us at that time a Cappadocian, a tall fellow, very bold and so strong that he could have picked up a mad bull. He drew his sword 148 Trimalchio's Dinner valiantly, rushed out of the house, and, wrap^ ping his left arm carefully in his cloak, he thrust a hag right through the middle. We heard a groan yet, (really, I 'm not lying) we could n't see the witches themselves. Pre- sently, however, our man came in again and threw himself down on the bed, and — lo and behold, his body was all black and blue as though it had been scourged because, no doubt, an evil hand had touched him 1 Closing the door, we went on about our business, but when the mother went to em- brace her son's body, she touched it and found nothing but a dummy made of litter, with no heart, no vitals, nothing at all. So you see that the witches had swooped down on the boy and put a puppet in his place. Believe me, there are witches, real night hags, and they turn everything upside down. But as for this stout fellow of ours, after what had happened he never came to himself again, and after a few days he died raving crazy." We all expressed alike our wonder and o o a-, Trimalchio's Dinner 149 our entire belief, and we touched the table with our lips, begging the night hags to stay in their own haunts when the time came for us to go home from dinner. Then the lights seemed to me to blaze up in an uncom- mon way and the whole dining-room to be transformed in appearance, when Trimalchio observed : " I say, Plocamus, have n't you anything to tell us ? Are n't you going to contribute to our entertainment ? You used to be bet- ter company and ready to chat delightfully, and you were quite ready also to sing a song. Dear, dear, ' where are the snows of yester-year ? ' " "Well," said Plocamus, "my sporting days were over as soon as I had the gout. Before that, and when I was a young man, I used to sing so much that I almost got consumption. And as to dancing and talk- ing and gossiping, I never met my match except in Apelles." And putting his hands up to his mouth 150 Trimalchio's Dinner he wheezed forth some tiresome thing which he afterwards said was Greek. Trimalchio himself then gave us an imita- tion of trumpet-blowing, and after he had finished he cast his eyes on his favourite slave whom he called Croesus, but who was, in fact, a blear-eyed fellow with discoloured teeth, and at this moment occupied with a small dog, black and disagreeably fat. This beast he was rolling on the couch in a green rug and was stuffing him with a great hunk of bread until the animal refused to swallow another mouthful. The sight of him reminded Trimalchio of a dog of his own, and he directed his Scylax to be led in, describing him as " the guardian of my house and home." Immediately a dog of monstrous size and fastened by a chain was led in, and after having been kicked by the door-keeper to make him lie down, he took up his place before the table, where- upon Trimalchio, throwing a piece of white bread to him, observed : Trimalchio's Dinner 151 " There is no one in my house that loves me more." On this the slave, enraged to think that his master was praising Scylax so effusively, put his own little dog on the floor and " sicked " him on to fight. Scylax in the usual canine fashion filled the whole dining- room with the most terrific barking, and almost tore in pieces the smaller dog belong- ing to Croesus and named by him " Pearl." The noise, however, was not restricted to the combat, but at the same time a branched candlestick was upset on the table breaking all the glass dishes and spattering a number of the guests with hot oil. Trimalchio, however, not wishing to seem troubled by the loss of the dishes, kissed the slave who was responsible for the uproar and made him climb up on his back as if to play horse, which he immediately did, and struck Tri- malchio's shoulders with his clenched fist, calling out with a laugh : " Button, button, who 's got the button ? " 152 Trimalchio's Dinner After a while, however, Trimalchio made him get down, and had a huge bowl of wine mixed which he caused to be divided among all the slaves who were on duty, adding this proviso : " If any one is n't willing to drink this, then pour it over his head. There 's a time to play and a time to be serious." After this refined exhibition, some special dainties were put upon the table, the very recollection of which, if you will believe me, makes me ill ; for in place of dainty little thrushes there were fat hens, and also goose eggs prepared with pastry, all of which Tri- malchio earnestly begged us to eat, saying that the fowls had been boned. While this was still going on, a lictor knocked on the dining-room door, and, immediately after, a guest clothed in white and with a long retinue entered. Impressed by the dignity of his appearance, I imagined that the praetor of the city had arrived ; and so I tried to get up and set foot on the floor even though Trimalchio's Dinner 153 I had not my slippers on. Agamemnon, however, laughed at my excitement, saying : " Hold on, you fool ! It 's Habinnas, the commissioner, a stone-cutter by trade, who is thought to make a superior quality of tombstones." Reassured by this explanation, I resumed my place and gazed at Habinnas, as he en- tered, with profound admiration. He, being about half seas over, leaned his arm on his wife's shoulder ; and wearing several crowns on his head and with ointment streaming down his forehead into his eyes, he took a place at the table and immediately called for wine and hot water. Tickled by his jovi- ality, Trimalchio himself called for a still larger goblet than the one he had, and asked Habinnas what sort of a reception he had met with at the house from which he had just come. "Oh," said Habinnas, "we had every- thing there that we wanted except you ; for my heart was here all the time. But, by Jove, I 54 Trimalchio's Dinner it was n't a bad lay-out ! Scissa was giving a funeral dinner in honour of a slave of his whom he had freed just as the poor fellow was dying ; and I imagine that he is getting quite a neat sum for his share of the dead man's property, for they say that he was rated at fifty thousand sesterces. Anyhow, everything went off well, even though we were obliged, according to custom, to pour half of all the drinks that we took over the dead man's bones." " Yes, yes," said Trimalchio ; " but what had you for dinner ? " " Oh, I '11 tell you if I can. I have such a memory that sometimes really I can't re- call my own name. Let 's see. We had for the first course pork washed down with wine, and cheese cakes and chicken livers, mighty well cooked, and also beets and graham bread, which for my part I prefer to white for it makes you strong and helps along your digestion. The next course con- tained little tarts with a hot sauce of honey Trimalcliio's Dinner 155 and first-rate Spanish wine. As. for the tarts, I didn't eat a mouthful of them, but I just smeared myself up with the honey, I can tell you ! At the same time, there were peas and nuts, and apples for each of us. I carried off two of these last, and I have them here in my napkin. Just look, for if I should n't carry away home something for my pet slave, I should get a blowing up, and my wife here reminded me of it just in time. We had set before us also a piece of bear's meat. When Scintilla had unwisely eaten some of this, she nearly threw up her insides. For my part, however, I ate more than a pound, for it tasted like wild boar ; and if, says I, a bear eats a man, all the more ought a man to eat a bear when he gets a chance. Finally we had pot-cheese, and jelly, and snails, and a dish of heart and liver, and eggs and turnips, and some kind of a dish fixed up with mustard, — but so much for that. There were also offered to us in a dish pickled olives, of which 156 Trimalchio's Dinner some one who had no manners took three fistfuls, for we gave the go-by to the ham. But tell me, Gaius, please, why is n't For- tunata at the table ? " Oh," said Trimalchio, " you know her ways. Unless she gets the silver together and divides scrapings from the plates among the slaves, she won't drink a drop." " Well," replied Habinnas, " unless she does come to the table, I 'm going to clear out." And he would have started to get up had not Fortunata, as soon as a signal was given, been called for four times by all of the slaves present. On this she came in with a bright yellow belt on, fastened in such a way that her cherry-coloured tunic and twisted anklets and gilded shoes were plainly visible. Wiping her hands on her handkerchief which she wore tucked into her neck, she went to the couch on which Scintilla, the wife of Habinnas, was reclining; and when Trimalchio's Dinner 157 Scintilla began to admire her clothes, she kissed her, saying : " Well, so I see you again, do I ? " Their talk presently became so intimate that Fortunata began drawing off the brace- lets from her pudgy arms and showed them to the admiring Scintilla. Finally she even took off her necklace and her gold hair- net, which she said was eighteen carats fine. Trimalchio, observing this, ordered all these ornaments to be brought to him, and remarked : " You see here a woman's fetters. That's the way we merchantmen are robbed. She 's bound to have six pounds and a half of gold on her. I myself have a bracelet of no less than ten pounds' weight, bought out of the profits dedicated to the god Mercury." And then, lest he should seem to be exaggerating, he called for a balance and had it carried around so that the weight might be verified by all of us. With equal taste, Scintilla, taking from her neck a little gold 1^8 Trimalchio's Dinner case which she called her mascot, extracted from it a couple of ear-rings, which in her turn she gave Fortunata to look at, saying : " Thanks to my husband's kindness, no woman has finer ones." " Yes, yes," said Habinnas ; " you wheedled me into buying you these glass beans. Really, if I had a daughter I would cut her ears off. In fact, if there were no women, everything would be as cheap as dirt ; but now we have to buy dear and sell cheap." Meanwhile the women, being a little affected by the wine which they had drunk, giggled together, and in their hilarity began kissing each other, while one boasted of her carefulness as a housekeeper, and the other complained of the luxury and neglect of her husband. While they had their heads to- gether in this way, Habinnas slyly rose, and seizing Fortunata by the feet, tipped her up on the couch. " Ow, ow ! " she cried as her skirt slipped z T Toilet of a Roman Lady. Trimalchio's Dinner 159 over her knees ; and presently, having ar- ranged her dress, she hid her face, which flamed with blushes, on Scintilla's breast and covered it with a handkerchief. A little later, after Trimalchio had ordered the second part of the dinner to be brought in, his slaves took away all the tables and brought in new ones, sprinkling the floor with red and yellow sawdust, and also with mica ground to powder, a thing which I had never before seen done. Straightway Tri- malchio observed: " I could be perfectly satisfied myself with this course alone, for you now have really a second dinner. Still, if there 's any- thing else especially choice, bring it on." Meanwhile an Alexandrian slave who was serving the hot drinks, began to imitate the song of the nightingale, Trimalchio calling out from time to time : " Change your tune ! " and then, lo and behold, came another diversion ; for the slave who sat at Habinnas* feet, having got i6o Trimalchio's Dinner the hint, I imagine, from his master, sung out all of a sudden in a droning voice these lines from the JEneid : " Meanwhile ^neas, with majestic sweep. Skimmed with his fleet the waters of the deep." A more excruciating sound never struck my ears ; for, apart from the crescendo and diminuendo of his barbarous rendering, he interpolated other lines, so that for the first time I found even Vergil tiresome. When he had finished, however, Habinnas ap- plauded him, remarking : " He never had to learn these things, but I educated him up to it by sending him out to listen to the performances in the street, with the result that he has n't his match I at imitating the mule-drivers and the moun- tebanks. He 's awfully clever, for he can take the part of a cobbler, or a cook, or a baker ; in fact, he is a perfect Jack-of-all- trades. To be sure, he has two faults, apart from which he is really out of sight, — he has been circumcised and he snores, for as to Trimalchio's Dinner i6i the fact that he 's squint-eyed, I don't mind that, for they say that Venus herself has a cast in her eyes. These two faults, however, have this result : he is never silent and he keeps an eye on everything. I paid three hundred denarii for him." Scintilla interrupted him in the midst of his talk, observing : "Yes, but you don't tell all the accom- phshments of this wretched slave. He is a pimp, and I shall see that he gets branded for it." Trimalchio laughed at this. "I recognise in him," said he, " a real Cappadocian. He 's very good to himself, and, by Jove ! I praise him for it, for this is the only way for a man to do. But don't be jealous. Scintilla. Depend upon it, I understand you both. As sure as I 'm alive, I used in my time to be aux petit s soins with my master's wife, so that even my master had a sort of inkling of it, and that 's why he had me transferred to the stewardship of II i62 Trimalchio's Dinner his country place. But least said, soonest mended." On this the miserable slave, precisely as though he had received high praise, pulled a clay lamp out of his pocket, and for half an hour or more gave us an imitation of trum- peters, Habinnas chiming in, flipping his lower lip with his finger. At last the slave sat up in the midst of us and gave us an imitation of flute-players with their instru- ments, and later, putting on his cloak and taking a whip, he took the part of mule- drivers, until Habinnas called him and kissed him and offered him a drink, saying: " Bully for you, Massa ! I 'm going to give you a pair of brogans ! " These tiresome proceedings would never have come to an end had not a dessert been brought in, consisting of thrushes made of pastry and stuffed with nuts and raisins. Following these came quinces stuck full of thorns so as to represent hedgehogs. One could have stood these things, had not the Trimalchio's Dinner 163 disgusting abundance of the course made us prefer to die of hunger ; for after there had been set before us, as we supposed, a fat goose surrounded by fish and every kind of birds, Trimalchio remarked : " My friends, whatever you see set before you here has been made out of one single kind of material." Thereupon, I, being a man of great insight immediately understood what it was, as I thought, and looking at Agamemnon I said : " I should n't be surprised if all these things were made out of filth, or at any rate, out of mud, for I have seen at Rome at the timeof the Saturnalia the very same thing in the way of a dinner." But before I had finished speaking, Trimalchio observed : " As I hope to grow in wealth and lose in flesh, this cook of mine made all these things out of pork. There cannot be a more valuable fellow to have around than he. 164 Trimalchio's Dinner Should he take a fancy to do so, he could make you fish out of a sow's paunch, and pigeon out of bacon, a turtle-dove out of ham, and a chicken out of a knuckle of beef And that's why, by a happy thought of mine, I have given him a first rate name, for he is called Daedalus ; and because he has his wits about him I brought him from Rome a pres- ent of some knives made of Noric steel." These he at once ordered to be brought out, and after we had looked at them he expressed his admiration. He even made us test the edges of the knives on our cheeks. All of a sudden there came in two slaves, who had been quarrelling apparently at the town-pump ; for they still carried their water-jars on their necks. While Trimal- chio was hearing the case between these two brawlers, neither one of them accepted his decision, but each broke the other's water- jar with a club. In our surprise at the rude- ness of the drunken pair, we fixed our eyes on them as they quarrelled, and I noted that Trimalchio's Dinner 165 out of the broken vessels came tumbling oysters and scallops which a slave collected in a dish and carried around. The clever cook matched these dainties, for he had served up snails on a silver gridiron, sing- ing all the time himself with a quavering and disagreeable voice. It is unpleasant to relate what followed, for boys wearing their hair long, brought in ointment in a silver dish and anointed the feet of the reclining guests after they had bound their legs and ankles with garlands. Then they poured a quantity from the same ointment into the wine-cooler and the lamp. Fortunata now expressed a desire to dance, while Scintilla applauded more often than she talked, when Trimalchio observed : " Philargyrus and Cario, although you always bet against me in the circus games, come and invite your concubine Menophila to take her place at table." Not to make a long story of it, we were almost crowded off the couches, so 1 66 Trimalchio's Dinner rudely did the whole body of slaves take possession of the entire dining-room. At any rate, I noticed beside me the cook who had made the goose out of pork, reeking with pickle-brine and spices. Nor was he satisfied with having a place at the table, but he at once began to give an imitation of Ephesus, the tragic actor, and from time to time challenged his master to bet as to whether the jockeys who sported the green would carry off the first prize at the next circus games. Roaring with laughter at his familiarity, Trimalchio observed : " Really, my friends, slaves too are human beings, and they have drunk the same milk as ourselves, even though they have had hard luck. Nevertheless, if I live, mine shall soon breathe the air of freedom. In fact, I 'm going to set them all free in my will. I bequeath to Philargyrus a farm, and the freedom of his wife, and to Cario a dwell- ing-house and the amount of his emanci- Trimalchio's Dinner 167 pation-tax, and a bed with bedclothlng. I 'm making Fortunata my heir and I com- mend her to the care of all my friends. And I let these things be known now, so that my slaves may love me just as much at the present time as if I were already dead." At this they all began to express their thanks for their master's kindness ; where- upon he, putting aside his trifling, had a copy of his will brought in, and caused it to be read aloud from beginning to end while the slaves all groaned. Then looking at Habinnas, he said : " What do you think of that, my dear friend ? Are you going to construct my monument as I have directed? I ask you particularly to put a little dog at the foot of my statue with crowns and ointments and the contests of PetraTs, so that through your goodness I may be able to live even after death ; and take care to have the plot one hundred feet front and two hundred feet 1 68 Trimalchio's Dinner deep. And I want to have every kind of fruit tree around my remains, and lots of vines, for it's a great mistake that houses should be carefully attended to for a man when he is alive, but that the house where we have to dwell a great deal longer should be neglected. And so, above all, I want to have this inscription placed upon it : ** * This Monument does not Descend to Heirs.' " Moreover, I shall take care to have it provided in my will that when I am dead I shall suffer no harm ; for I shall set one of my freedmen over my tomb to watch it, so that no one may commit any nuisance there. I ask you also to depict on the front of my monument ships under full sail, and myself sitting on the judgment-seat with my best toga on, and wearing my five gold rings, and pouring money out of a bag for the benefit of the people. For you know that in my will I have provided a public dinner with a present of two denarii for each guest. Just represent that, please, and represent Trimalchio's Dinner 169 also the public having a good time. Put, also, at my right hand a statue of my wife Fortunata holding a dove, and let her be leading along a little dog with a blanket on ; and introduce also my favourite young slave, and wine-jars carefully sealed up so as not to leak. And you might also carve a broken urn and a youth weeping over it. In the middle of it place a clock, so that whoever comes to see what time it is will have to read my name whether he wants to or not. Consider also, whether this in- scription seems to you entirely suitable : — ** * Here lies Gaius Pompeius Trimalchio, a second mi^cenas. a commissionership was bestowed upon HIM WITHOUT HIS SOLICITATION. ThOUGH HE MIGHT HAVE BEEN ENROLLED ON THE BenCH WITH THE JuDGES AT Rome, he did not desire this. Loyal, Brave, AND Faithful, he rose from Poverty to Wealth, he left behind him Thirty Million Sesterces, and YET he never studied PHILOSOPHY. FaREWELL ! Go THOU AND DO LIKEWISE ! ' " As Trimalchio repeated these words, he began to weep copiously. Fortunata also lyo Trimalchio's Dinner wept, and Habinnas wept, and the slaves wept ; and as though invited to his funeral, they filled the whole dining-room with the sound of their mourning. Nay, even I had begun to weep when Trimalchio briskly said : " Well, since we know that we all have to die in the future, why should n't we live in the present? Bless your hearts! let's all take a plunge in the bath-tub at my expense. It won't do any harm. It 's as hot as a furnace." "Yes, yes," said Habinnas; "I like nothing better than to make two days out of one." And with bare feet he got up and began to follow Trimalchio, who applauded his sentiments. "What do you think of this?" said I, looking at Ascyltos. " For my part if I shall even see a bath, I shall die on the spot." " Oh, let *s follow them," said he, " and Trimalchio's Dinner 171 while they 're on the way to the bath-room, we '11 make our escape In the crowd." As this seemed a good scheme, we approached the door, following Giton through the portico where a dog chained up received us with such a barking that Ascyltos fell into the cistern. I, too, being rather affected by drink, and being the same man also who had feared even the painted dog before dinner, while I was now attempting to assist rriy sub- merged friend, was dragged into the same pool. We were both rescued, however, by the janitor, who, on his arrival, quieted the dog and dragged us shivering to the dry floor. Giton had already preserved himself from the dog by a very shrewd device ; for when the animal barked, the boy had thrown to him everything that had been given him by us from the table, and the dog, attracted by the food, had stopped his barking. But when, suffering from the cold, we had begged the janitor to let us out through the doorway he said : 172 Trimalchio's Dinner " You are mistaken if you imagine that you can leave by the same way that you came. No guest has ever been let out through the same door ; for they enter by one and depart by another." What on earth were we poor fellows to do, shut up in a new sort of labyrinth, and already beginning to experience a desire for a hot bath ? So we next gladly asked the man to conduct us to the bath-room ; and there, throwing aside our clothing, which Giton set himself to dry at the entrance, we entered the bath. It was very narrow, like a cistern, and in it Trimalchio was standing upright. Not even in this situation could he stop his absurd boasting, for he kept saying that there was nothing better than to bathe apart from the mob, and that once upon a time in this very place there had been a bakery. Presently, growing weary, he sat down ; and attracted by the echo of the bath-room, he opened his drunken mouth toward the ceiling and began to murder the Cistern in Roman House. Trimalchio's Dinner 173 songs of Menecrates, as those present who understood what he was saying informed us. The other guests joined hands around the bath and made a great uproar by their gig- gling. Still others, with hands clasped be- hind them, tried to pick up rings from the floor, or else, kneeling, attempted to bend backward and touch the tips of their toes. While the others were disporting themselves in this way, we went down to the warm bath which was being heated for Trimalchio. Having dispelled the fumes of wine, we were next led into a second dining-room where Fortunata had so arranged her table ornaments that I observed lights and bronze statues of fishermen, and tables of solid silver, and gilded earthenware cups set around and wine before us flowing from a wine-bag. Trimalchio at once remarked : " My friends, a slave of mine has to-day celebrated the first shaving of his beard. He 's a thrifty fellow and one who never 174 Trimalchio's Dinner wastes a crumb. So let's moisten our clay and not go home till morning ! " As he said this a cock crew. Somewhat perturbed by the sound, which he thought a bad omen, Trimalchio ordered wine to be poured out under the table and to be sprin- kled also on the lamp. Nay, he even shifted a ring to his right hand and remarked : " It is n't for nothing that chanticleer has sounded his signal ; for either a fire is bound to break out, or some one in the neighbourhood is going to die. I hope it is n't any of us. And so whoever brings me that bird shall get a present. " Immediately the cock was brought in from the neighbourhood, and Trimalchio ordered it to be killed and cooked. There- fore, as soon as it has been cut up by the accomplished cook who a little while before had made birds and fishes out of pork, it was thrown into the pot, and while Daedalus tossed off a hot drink, Fortunata ground up some pepper in a wooden pepper-box. Trimalchio's Dinner 175 After some trifling dainties had been consumed, Trimalchio, looking around at the servants, said : " Well, have n't you had your dinner yet ? Go and get it, and let other servants come here and wait upon us." Directly, then, another set came in, those who went out exclaiming, " Farewell, Gaius ! '* and those who came in saluting him with, " Hail, Gaius ! " Soon after, for the first time, our mirth was checked ; for when a young slave who was by no means bad look- ing had come in among the new servants, Trimalchio pounced upon him and began to kiss him for a long time. Whereupon Fortunata, in order to prove her equal right in the household, began to abuse Trimalchio, styling him the scum of the earth and a disgraceful person. At last she called him a dog. Taking offence at this vitupera- tion, Trimalchio threw a cup in her face, and she, as though she had lost an eye, shrieked and placed her trembling hands 176 Trimalchio's Dinner before her face. Scintilla also was very much disturbed and hid the cowering woman in her robe. A slave at once in an officious manner placed a cold jug against her cheek, leaning upon which Fortunata began to moan and cry. On his side Trimalchio exclaimed, — " How now ? The jade does n't remem- ber that I took her off the stage and made an honest woman of her ; she puffs herself up like a frog and fouls her own nest, — a faggot and not a lady. But, as the say- ing goes, one who was born in a garret does n't fit a palace. So help me gracious, I '11 see that this clodhopping tragedy queen is brought up with a round turn. I, when I was only a poor devil, had a chance to marry a fortune of ten million sesterces, and you know I 'm not lying about it. Agatho, who sold perfume to a lady who lived next door, took me aside and said : ' I beg you not to let your race perish from the earth ; ' but just because I was a good fellow and did n't Trimalchio's Dinner 177 want to seem fickle, I fastened this ball-and- chain to my leg. Very well, now, I '11 teach you to claw me, and just to show you on the spot what you 've brought upon yourself, I order you, Habinnas, not to put her statue on my tomb, lest even after my death I should be having scraps with her. In fact, to teach her how severe I can be, I forbid her to kiss me when I am dead." After this thunderous blast, Habinnas fell to begging him not to be angry, saying : " None of us is perfect. We are men, you know, not gods." And Scintilla also, weeping, addressed him in the same way and exhorted him by his better nature to be mollified, calling him, " Gaius." On this Trimalchio could not keep back his tears and remarked : " I beg you, Habinnas, as you hope to be lucky, if I have done anything wrong, just spit in my face. I kissed this excellent young slave, not because of his good looks but because of his intelligence. He can say 12 178 Trimalchio's Dinner his table of ' ten times/ he can read a book at sight, and he's saved up some money for himself out of his daily food allowance, and bought a little stool and two ladles with his own money. So does n't he de- serve to have me keep my eye on him ? But of course Fortunata won't have it. Is n't that so, you bandy-legged creature ? You'd better be thankful for your blessings, you bird of prey, and not make me show my teeth, you dainty darling, or else you shall find out what my anger is like. You know me ! What I 've once decided on is as sure as fate. But come, let 's think of something more cheerful. I hope you 're all comfor- table, my friends. I used to be myself the same sort of person that you all are, but, by my own merits, I became what I am. It 's brain that makes men, and everything else is all rot. One man '11 tell you one rule of life, and another '11 tell you another. But / say, * Buy cheap and sell dear,' and so you see I 'm just bursting with wealth. (Well, Trimalchio's Dinner 179 grunter, are you still crying? Pretty soon I '11 give you something to cry for !) Well, as I was going on to say, my clever manage- ment brought me to my present good fortune. When I came from Asia, I was about the height of this candle-stick here, and, in fact, I used to measure myself against it every day. And so as to get a beard on my mug, I used to smear my lips with lamp-oil. I was a great favourite with my master for fourteen years, and I was on pretty good terms with my master's wife. You understand what I mean. I 'm not saying anything about it, because I 'm not one of the boastful kind ; but, as the gods would have it, I was really master in the house myself and I took his fancy greatly. Well, there 's no need of a long story. He made me his residuary legatee, and I came into a fortune fit for a senator. But nobody never gets enough. I became crazy to go into business; and, not to bore you, I had five ships built, loaded them with wine (and wine at that time was i8o Trimalchio's Dinner worth its weight in gold), and sent them to Rome. You 'd imagine that it had been actually planned that way, for every blessed ship was wrecked, and that 's fact and not fable. On one single day the sea swallowed down thirty million sesterces. Do you think I gave up ? Not much ! This loss just whetted my appetite as though it had been a mere nothing. I had other ships built, bigger and better, and they were luckier too, so that everybody said I was a plucky fellow. You know the proverb, that it takes great courage to build a great ship. I loaded them with wine once more, with bacon, beans, ointment, and slaves, and at that crisis Fortunata did a very nice thing, for she sold all her jewelry and even all her clothes, and put a hundred gold pieces in my hand. And this was really the germ of my good fortune. What the gods wish happens quickly. In a single round trip I piled up ten million sesterces, and immediately bought in all the lands that had belonged to my former Trimalchio's Dinner i8i owner. I built me a house and bought all the cattle that were offered for sale, and whatever I touched grew as rich as a honey- comb. After I began to have more money than my whole native land contains, then, says I, enough. I retired from business and began to lend money to freedmen. A fortune-teller, a young Greek named Serapa, a man who was on very good terms with the gods, gave me some points when I was mak- ing up my mind to go out of business. He told me of things that even I had forgotten. He set them forth down to the finest pos- sible point. He knew my very insides, and the only thing he did n't tell me was what I had had for dinner the day before. You would imagine that he had lived in the same house with me. I say, Habinnas, you were there, I think. Didn't he say this? * Ton have married a wife from such-and-such a position. You are unlucky in your friends. No one is ever as grateful to you as he ought to he. Tou have great estates. Tou are cherishing i82 Trimalchio's Dinner a viper in your bosom^ And he also told me something that I haven't mentioned, — that there remains to me now of life just thirty- years, four months, and two days. More- over, I 'm going to come into a legacy pretty soon. That's what my horoscope tells me. But if I shall be so lucky as to unite my Apulian estates, I shall not have lived in vain. In the mean time, while my luck held, I built this house which, as you know, was once a mere shanty, but is now a palace. It has four regular dining-rooms, twenty bed-rooms, two marble porticoes, an upstairs dining-room, a bed-room in which I sleep myself, a sitting-room for this viper here, and an. excellent janitor's office. It holds as many strangers as a hotel. Indeed, when Scaurus came here, he would n't put up any- where else, even though he has his father's house to go to, on the seashore. There are a good many other things that I *m going to show you presently ; but, believe me, a man is worth just as much as he has in his Trimalchio's Dinner 183 pocket ; and according to what you hold in your hand so will you be held in esteem by others. This is what your friend has to say to you, a man who once, as they say, was a cat, but now is a king. Meanwhile, Stichus, bring out my grave-clothes in which I want to be buried, and bring out also some oint- ment, and a snack from that wine-jar there from which I wish to have my bones washed." Stichus immediately complied and brought a white coverlet and a purple tunic into the dining-room ; whereupon Trimalchio asked us to feel whether they were all wool or not, and then, smiling, he said, — " See to it, Stichus, that neither the mice nor the moths get hold of these ; for if they do I '11 have you burnt alive. I want to be buried in a glorious fashion, so that all the people will bless me." Then he opened a jar of ointment and anointed us all, saying as he did it, — " I hope that everything will please me as 184 Trimalchio's Dinner much when I 'm dead as it does while I 'm alive." Then he ordered wine to be poured into a wine-cooler and observed, — " Consider that you have received an invitation to my funeral." The thing had gone to a disgusting ex- treme, when Trimalchio, sodden with drink, hit upon a new sort of exhibition, and had hornblowers brought into the dining- room. Then, having been propped up on a number of pillows, he sprawled himself out upon the lowest couch and said, — " Imagine that I am dead. Say some- thing nice about me." The hornblowers blew a funeral march ; and one of them, the slave of the under- taker, who was really the most respectable man in the crowd, blew such a tremendous blast that he roused up the whole neigh- bourhood. The police who were on duty in the vicinity, thinking that Trimalchio's house was on fire, suddenly broke down the Trimalchio's Dinner 185 door, and rushed in with axes and water, as was their right. Seizing this very favourable opportunity, we gave Agamemnon the sHp, and made our escape as hastily as though we were really fleeing from a conflagration. There was no light in front of the house to show us the way as we wandered about, nor did the intense stillness of the night o give us any hope of meeting wayfarers with torches. The effects of the wine, moreover, and our ignorance of the locality would have confused us even had it been in the day- time ; and so, after we had dragged our bleeding feet for almost an hour over the sharp stones and bits of broken pottery that lay in the street, we were at last saved by the ingenuity of Giton ; for he, fearing to lose his way even in daylight, had cleverly marked all the pillars and columns of the houses with chalk, and these marks were visible even in the thick darkness, and by their whiteness showed us the way as we wandered about. Nevertheless, we 1 86 Trimalchio's Dinner had considerable trouble even after we reached our inn ; for the old woman who kept it, having passed a good deal of time in drinking with her various guests, would not have known it even though the place had been on fire. We might very well, there- fore, have spent the entire night on the doorsteps had not Trimalchio's courier with ten wagons come upon us, and after clamour- ing for a little while, at last smashed the door of the inn and thus enabled us to enter. BIBLIOGRAPHICAL APPENDIX BIBLIOGRAPHICAL APPENDIX SELECTED LISTS OF BOOKS I. On Primitive Forms of Fiction. — Tylor, Primi- tive Culture (London, 1871); Fergusson, Tree and Serpent Worship (London, 1868) ; Dorman, Origin of Primitive Superstitions (Philadelphia, 1881); Lee, Ghostly Fisitants (London, 1882); Sterne, Naturgeschichte der Gespenster (Weimar, 1863) ; Sayce, Introduction to the Science of Lan- guage^ch.lx. (London, 1880) ; Lang, Custom and Myth,Tpp. 103-120, 212-242 (London, 1885); Frazer, Totemis?n (London, 1887); Mannhardt, IVald- und Feldkulte (Berlin, 1875); Gubernatis, Zoological Mythology (London, 1874) ; Clouston, Popular Tales and Fictions, vol. i., p. 275 foil. (London, 1887); ]X\\y^-D^.wlds, Buddhist Birth- Stories (London, 1880) ; Benfey, Introduction to the Panchatantra (1859) ; Rutherford, Intro- duction to his edition of Babrius (London, 1883) ; Keller in the fahrbiicher fur Klassische iQO Bibliographical Appendix Philologie (1861-67); Sir Richard Burton's " terminal essay " (section iii.) in vol. x. of his Thousand Nights and a Night (1886); Keith- Falconer, Fables of Bidpai (London, 1885); Jacobs, " A Short History of the i^sopic Fable " in The Fables of JEsop (New York, 1894), this volume also containing (pp. 196 foil.) some valuable notes on the origin of the different iEsopic fables; id. The Fables of Msop w'wh an introduction, 2 vols. (London, 1889); and Bedier, Les Fabliaux (Paris, 1893). II. On Greek and Roman Fiction. — A. Lang, Ho?ner and the Epic (London, 1893) ; Dunlop, History of Fiction (last ed. London, 1 890); Nicolai, Ueber Entstehung und TVesen des griechischen Romans (Berlin, 1867); Rohde, Der griechische Roman und seine Vorldufer (Leipzig, 1876); Paldamus, Rbtnische Erotik (Greifswald, 1833); Chauvin, Les Ro?nanciers Grecs et Latins (Paris, 1862) ; Chassang, Histoire du Roman dans PAntiquite Grecque et Latine (Paris, 1862); -Warren, A History of the Novel prior to the Seventeenth Century (New York, 1895); and Salverte, Le Roman dans la Grece Ancienne (Paris, 1893). Bibliographical Appendix 191 m. On Roman Life in the Petronian Age. — Friedlander, Sittengeschicbte R0771S (Leipzig^ 1888-90); Marquardt-Mau, Privatleben der ^oVw^r (Leipzig, 1886) ; Menard, La Vie Priv'ee des Anc'iens (Paris, 1880); Thomas, La Socl'ete Romaine d'apres Petrone (Paris, 1 89 2); Inge, Roman Society under the Ca:sars (New York, 1888) ; Preston and Dodge, The Private Life of the Romans (Boston and New York, 1894); Lanciani, ^indent Rome in the Light of Recent Discoveries (Boston and New York, 1888); id. Ruins ajid Excavations of Ancient Rome (1897); Becker-Goll, Gallus (Leipzig, 1880-82); Overbeck-Mau, Pompeii (Leipzig, 1884). Works of fiction that help the reader to an understanding of this period are : Sienkiewicz, ^0 Vadis (Boston, 1896); and Farrar, Dark- ness and Dawn (London, 1892). See also Bar- ing-Gould's Tragedy of the Caesars (London, 1892). IV. Texts, Translations, etc. — The Greek ro- mances are printed in the Courier-Larcher collection, 12 vols. (Paris, 1824), and are edited with a Latin version by Westermann and Hercher in the Didot collection (Paris, ig2 Bibliographical Appendix 1856). English translations of the principal ones are printed in the Bohn Library (London, 1856). Of Petronius, the standard Latin text is that of Biicheler {editio 7naior^ Berlin, 1862; editio W/W-, Berlin, 1895). There is a recent edition of the Cena Trimalchionis with a German translation and commentary by Fried- lander (Leipzig, 1891); and a text with English notes by W. E. Waters has been announced but has not yet appeared. There is an Eno-lish translation of the whole of Petronius by Kelly (London, 1856). A French version was made by De Guerle (Paris, 1886); and by Nisard (Paris, 1882); an Italian ren- dering by Cesareo ; and German ones by Heinse (Schwabach, 1783) and Schliiter (last ed. Stuttgart, 1873). German versions of the Cena Trimalchionis alone are by Wellauer in Jahn's Archiv^ vol. x. 194J and Merkens (Jena, 1876). For an account of the MSS. of Petronius, see Beck, The Age of Petronius (Cambridge, Mass., 1856) ; id. The MSS. of Petronius (Cam- bridge, Mass., 1863); and the introduction to Biicheler's larger edition. On the plebeian Latinity in general, see Cooper, The Roman Bibliographical Appendix 193 Sermo Plebeius (Boston and New York, 1895); and, with especial reference to Petronius, Cesareo, De Petro7iii Sermone (Rome, 1887). There is a lexicon to Petronius {Lexicon Petron'ianum by Segebade and Lemmatzsch (Leipzig, 1898). As to the locality where Trimalchio's dinner may be supposed to have taken place, see H. W. Hayley in Harvard Classical Studies^ vol, ii. (Boston, 1896). For some general remarks on Petronius see Petre- quin, R'echerches sur Petrone (Paris, 1869) ; Col- lignon, ^tude sur Petrone (Paris, 1892); and a paper by M. Gaston Boissier in the Revue des Deux Mondes for November, 1874. INDEX TO THE INTRODUCTION INDEX TO THE INTRODUCTION Achilles Tatius, 17. JEsop, 5. ^thiopica of Heliodorus, 35. Alciphron, 38. Antonius Diogenes, 34. Apollonius Tyrius, 37. Apuleius, 8, 24, 41, 42. " Arbiter," the name, 46, 48. Aristsnetus, 38. Aristides of Miletus, 20. Babrius, 5. Babyknica, 35. Babylonian Tales, 30. Balzac, H. de, 30. Beast Fables, 5. Bidpai, 5. Bithynian Tales, 30. Bodach Glas, the, 13. Carmen de Bella Chili, 5 1 . Cena Trimalchionis, synopsis of the, 62-69. Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles of Loms XI., 30. Cheereas and Callirrhoe, 37. Cippi, Nicolaus, 53. 198 Index to the Introduction Codex Bcrncnsis, 52. Codex Traguricnsis, 52, 53, 54, 55. Confessio Amatitis, source of the, 37. CoJites Drblatiques of Balzac, 30. Cupid arid Psyche, 8, 42. Cyprian Tales, 30. C)T9/iii'^/M of Xenophon, 34. Daphnis and Chloe, 39, 40. Dark Ages, the, 42, 43. Dolph Heyliger, 14. Don Juan, source of the story of, 3 7. Du Pin, 55. Egyptian Tales, 30. Empusa, 1 2. Ephesiaca, 35. Ephesian Matron, story of the, 24, 25, 26, 27. Ephesian Tales, 30. Epic as representing the true Greek fiction, 15, £ro//V^ of Parthenius, 21, 22. Eugenius Vulgarius, 5 1 . Fable, development of the, 4, 5. ** Fairy," origin of the name, 9. Fairy Stories, 8, 9. Fictitious letters, 38, 39. Folk-lore of Greece and Rome, 6. Frambotto, 53. Fraudulent additions to Petronius, 55, 56, 57, 58. Getitle Shepherd of Ramsay, 40. Gesta Romanorum, 43, 44. Index to the Introduction 199 Ghost Stories in antiquity, 12, 13, 14. Golden Ass of Apuleius, 24, 41, 42. Gower, John, 37. Greek Fiction, i, 2, 3. Hardy, Thomas, cited, 24. Hebert, 25. Heliodorus, 17. Herodotus, 16, Hetasrae in Greece, 3, Huet, P. D., 56. Hysmine and Hysminias, 37. Incubo, legend of the, 10, 11. Irving, Washington, 14. John Dietrich, story of, 11. John of Salisbury, 25, 51. KoBOLD, legend of the, 10. Lamia, legend of, 11, 12. Lares, 9. Larva, 9, 10. Lemures, 10. Leprechaun, 10. Leucippe and CUtophon, 37. Longus, 39, 40. Lydian Tales, 30. Manuscripts of Petronius, 52-59. Marchena, forgery by, 58. 2 00 Index to the Introduction Marinus Statilius (Pierre Petit), 53. Marvels beyond Thule, 34. Mediaeval fiction, 42, 43, 44. Mcndes, Catulle, 22. Metamorphoses, of Lucius of Patrse, 41 ; of Apuleius, 41, 42. Milesian Tales, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24. Mormolyce, 12. Mulock, Miss, II. Nature myths, origin of, 6, 7, 8. Naxian Tales, 30. Nero, 46, 47, 49. Neronian hypothesis in the Satira of Petronius, 49. Nicetas Eugenianus, 37. Nodot, Francois, forgery by, 55, 56, 57. Odysseus and Polymela, 22, 23. Oriental origin of Greek fiction, 16, 17, 18, 19. Orientalism in ancient fiction, 42. Orientalism in Greek character, 2. Pallenian Tales, 30. Parthenius, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24. Paul et Virginie, 40. Pericles, Prince of Tyre, source of the play, 37. Persian influence in Greek fiction, 16. Persian Wars, their influence on Greece, 33. Petronius Arbiter, 41, 45, 46, 47, 48 ; nationality of, 59, 60, 61. Phaedrus, 5. Plautus, 13. Index to the Introduction 201 Pliny the Younger, 14. P o/y me /a of Far thenins, 22, 23. Prevost, Marcel, 38. Primitive superstitions, 7. Prose fiction, late origin of, 3. Prose fiction in Greece, i, 2, 3. Prose fiction in Rome, 40, 41. Ramsay, Allan, 40. Roman fiction, 40, 41. Romantic love among the Greeks, 2. Romeo and Juliet, source of the story, 35. St. Pierre, Bernardin de, 40. Satira of Petronius, the, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50 ; episodic character of, 50 ; history of the MSS., 50, 51, 52, 53, 54; fraudulent addition to, 55, 56, 57, 58. Scsvinus, 46. Scott, Sir Walter, 13. Severus, 17. Short Story, the, 16- Silia, 47. Sisenna, 41, Subjective novel, the, 39. Superstitions, 14. Sybaritic Tales, 30. Tacitus, 45, 46, 48. Taylor, Jeremy, 25. Theodorus Prodromus, 37. Theophilus of Simocatta, 38. Tigellinus, 47. 20 2 Index to the Introduction Tragurian Fragment, the, 52, 53, 54, 55. Trojan Tales, 30. Utopia of Sir Thomas More, 34. Vampires, legend of the, i 2. Vergil, a pupil of Parthenius, 20. Verne, Jules, 35. Vicentius of Beauvais, 51. Voltaire's Zadig, 25. Waver ley, cited, 13. Xenophon of Antioch, 17 ; of Ephesus, 17 ; of Cyprus, 17 ; of Athens, 34. Zola, fimile, 40. CENTRAL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY University of California, San Diego DATE DUE FEB 1 9 1976 .*l;s JUiv lb 1978 CI 39 UCSD Libr. UC SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY AA 000 864 757