Chapter VIII

Early Roman Satire—C. Lucilius, Died 102 b.c.

Poetical satire, as a branch of cultivated literature, arose out of the social and political circumstances, and the moral and literary conditions of Roman life in the last half of the second century b.c. The tone by which that form of poetry has been characterised, in ancient and modern times, is derived from the genius and temper of a remarkable man, belonging to that era, and from the spirit in which he regarded the world. C. Lucilius invented satire, by first imparting a definite purpose to an inartistic kind of metrical composition, in which miscellaneous topics had been treated in accordance with the occasional mood or interests of the writer. Although the satire of Lucilius was rude and unfinished, and evidently retained much of the vague general character belonging to the satura of Ennius, yet he was undoubtedly the first Roman writer who used his materials with the aim and in the manner which poetical satire has permanently assumed. The indigenous satura existing at Rome before the rise of regular literature had been merged partly in the Latin comedy of Naevius, Plautus, Caecilius, etc., partly in the metrical miscellanies of Ennius and Pacuvius, which, though not written for the stage, retained the name of the old scenic medley. The new satire differed from Latin comedy in form and style, and in the personal and national aims which it set before itself. The satire of Lucilius, and even that of Horace, retained many features in common with the desultory medley which Ennius had formed out of the older satura. But the latter was the parent of no permanent form of literary art. The miscellanies of Varro, the most famous work produced on this model, were composed partly in prose and partly in verse, and were never ranked by the Romans among their poetical works. The former, on the other hand, was the parent of the satire of Horace, of Persius, and of Juvenal, and, through that, of the poetical satire of modern times. The spirit of censorious criticism, in which Lucilius treated the politics and morals, the social manners and the literary taste of his age, has become the essential characteristic of that form of literature which derived its name from the old Italian satura.

Of all the forms of Roman poetry, satire was least indebted to the works of the Greeks. Quintilian claims it altogether for his countrymen—'satira tota nostra est.' Horace characterises it as 'Graecis intacti carminis.' While the names by which they are known at once betray the Greek invention of the other great forms of poetic art, the name of satire alone indicates a Roman origin. It is true that Lucilius, like every educated man of his time, was acquainted with the Greek language and literature. It is true also that the critical spirit in Greece had found vent for itself in the works of the early iambic writers, Archilochus, Simonides of Amorgos, and Hipponax, of the great authors of the old political comedy of Athens, and apparently in later writings such as the satiric discourses of Bion of Borysthenes, mentioned in Horace's line—

The spirit by which satire is animated was native to Italy. The germ out of which it was developed was the Fescennina licentia, or, as it is called by Dionysius, the κέρτομος καὶ σατυρικὴ παιδιά, peculiar to the Italian people. But in assuming a regular literary form, this native raillery was tempered by the serious spirit and vigorous understanding of Rome, and liberalised by the tastes and ideas derived from a Greek education. The age in which satire arose,—the age of the Gracchi,—was one of social discontent, of political excitement, of intellectual activity, of moral and religious unsettlement: and all these conditions exercised a powerful influence on its character. As addressed not to the imagination but to the practical understanding, it was in a peculiar manner the literary product of a people 'rebus natus agendis.' It combined the practical philosophy of the 'abnormis sapiens,' expressing itself in proverbial sayings, anecdotes, and homely illustrations; the keen perceptions, the criticism, and vivacity of a circle, educated, well-bred, and versed in affairs; the serious purpose of a moral censor; and the knowledge of life, which results from the mixed study of men and books. Their circumstances, temper, and pursuits, united these various elements, in different proportions, first in Lucilius, and after him in Horace. By writing what interested themselves, in accordance with their own natural bent, they satisfied the practical and social tastes of their countrymen. While the higher poetical imagination was a rare and exceptional gift among Roman authors, and was appreciated only by a limited class of readers, there was in Roman satire a true popular ring and a close adaptation to the national character, understanding, and circumstances. Martial writes in his day—

Nescis heu, nescis dominae fastidia Romae:

Crede mihi nimium Martia turba sapit:

Maiores nusquam rhonchi; iuvenesque senesque

As the most genuine product of actual Roman life, satire was, if not so luxuriant, a more vigorous plant than any other species of Roman poetry. It is seen growing up in hardy vigour under the free air of the Republic, attaining to mature perfection amid the rich intellectual life of the Augustan age, and still fresh and vital in the general intellectual languor and corruption of the Empire.

The Roman character of satire is attested also by the fact that other Roman poets and authors, besides those who professed to follow in the footsteps of Lucilius, have exhibited the satiric spirit. The caustic sense of Ennius, the generous scorn of Lucretius, the license of Catullus, attest their affinity, in some elements of character, to the Roman satirists. There may be remarked also in the best modern works of poetical satire,—such as the Absalom and Achitophel, the Prologue to Pope's Satires, the Vanity of Human Wishes,—a conscious or unconscious echo of that vigorous sense and nervous speech, which accompanied the great practical energy of the Romans.

Satire was not only national in its intellectual and moral characteristics, but it played a part in public life at Rome. Even under the Empire, when free speech and comment on the government were no longer possible, the Roman satirists claimed to perform an office similar in spirit to that which the Republic in its best days had devolved on its most honourable magistracy. But the satire of the Republic, besides performing this magisterial office, played an active part in the politics of the day. It combined the freedom of a tribune with the severity of a censor. It held up to public criticism the delinquencies of leading politicians, and of the mass of the people in their elective divisions,—

Nor was it confined to aggressive criticism: it was used also as an instrument of political partisanship, to paint the virtues of Scipio as well as the vices of his antagonists. It thus performed something of the same kind of public office as the political pamphlet of an earlier time, and the newspaper of the present day.

It endeavoured also, by acting on individual character, to effect objects which the Roman State strove to accomplish by direct legislation. The various sumptuary laws of that age, and the enactments made to repress the study of Greek rhetoric and philosophy, emanated from the same spirit which led Lucilius to denounce the increase of luxury and the affectation of Greek manners among his contemporaries. The strong Roman appetites and the novelty of new studies prevailed alike over the artificial restraints of legislative enactments, and over the contemptuous and the earnest teaching of satire. But the influence of satire could reach further than that of censors or sumptuary laws. While it could brand notorious offenders it was able also to unmask hypocritical pretences—

It could stimulate to virtue as well as denounce flagrant offences. It wielded something of the power of the preacher to produce an inward change in the characters of men. By its close contact with real experience and its close adherence to the national standard of virtue, it might educate men for the duties of citizens more effectually than the teaching of Greek rhetoric or philosophy.

But while satire in its earlier manifestation, from one side, is to be regarded as the directest expression of Roman public life, it was, at the same time, the truest exponent of the character, pursuits, and interests of the individual writer. The old definition of it by a Latin grammarian, 'Carmen maledicum et ad carpenda hominum vitia compositum,' is quite inapplicable to those familiar writings of Horace, in which he gives a pleasant account of his habits and mode of life in town and country, or that in which he humorously narrates his various adventures on his journey to Brundisium. The writings of Horace and Lucilius bore a more varied and miscellaneous character than that of the satire of the Empire or of modern times. Horace expresses his opinions and feelings in the form sometimes of a dialogue, sometimes of a familiar epistle, sometimes of a discourse put into the mouth of another, sometimes of a moral disquisition. He makes abundant use of fables, anecdotes, personal portraiture, real and imaginary, autobiography, and self-analysis. The fragments of Lucilius, and the notices about him in ancient authors, prove that in these respects Horace followed in his footsteps. The testimony of the lines—

implies that Lucilius used his satire as a natural vehicle for expressing everything that interested him, in his own life and in the circumstances of his time. In regard to the miscellaneous nature of the topics treated by him, and the frankness of his personal revelations, his truest modern parallel is Montaigne,—the father of the prose essay, which has performed the function of the older Roman satire more completely than even the poetical satire of modern times.

Among the poets of the Republic, whose works have reached us only in fragments, Lucilius is only second in importance to Ennius. Roman Satire owes as much in form, substance, and spirit to him as the Roman epic does to the older poet. While Ennius represents the highest mood of Rome, and first gave expression to that imperial idea which ultimately realised itself in history, Lucilius is the exponent of her ordinary moods, manifested in the streets and the forum, and of those internal dissensions and destructive forces by which her political life was agitated and ultimately overthrown. His personal characteristics and literary position can be inferred with nearly as much certainty as those of Ennius. The most important external evidence from which we form our idea of him is that of Horace and Cicero. But the numerous fragments of his writings bear a strong impress of his personality. From the confirmation which they give to other testimonies, we may endeavour to recover some of the lines and colours of that 'votiva tabula' which the contemporaries of Horace found in his books, and to realise the nature of the work performed by him and of the influence which he exercised over his countrymen.

The time at which he appeared was one of the most critical epochs in Roman history, the end of one great era,—that of the undisputed ascendency of the Senate,—the beginning of the century of revolution which ended with the Battle of Actium. The mind of the nation began then to turn from the monotonous spectacle of military conquest and to busy itself with the conditions of internal well-being. A spirit of discontent with these, similar to that which called forth the legislation of the Gracchi, opened up a new path for Latin literature. It began then to concern itself, not with the national idea of conquest and empire, but with the actual condition of men. It sought for its material, not in the representation which had been fashioned by Greek dramatic art out of the heroic legends of early Greece or the citizen life of her later days, but out of the every day life of the Roman streets, law-courts, public assemblies, dinner-tables, and literary coteries, and out of the baser details of actual experience by which the magnificent ideal of Roman greatness was largely qualified. Though there is considerable difficulty in accepting the dates usually assigned for the birth and death of Lucilius, there is no reason to doubt that his active literary career began about the time of the tribunates of Tib. Gracchus, and continued till nearly the end of the first century b.c. This period is so important and interesting that such glimpses of light as are afforded by the fragments of the contemporary satirist are highly to be prized.

lose their point, unless senis is to be understood in its usual sense. He supposes that the mistake of Jerome arose from a similarity in the names of the Consuls of 148 b.c. and 180 b.c., and would therefore throw the date of the poet's birth more than thirty years further back than that commonly received.

His birth-place was Suessa Aurunca in Campania. Juvenal calls him 'Auruncae magnus alumnus.' He belonged to the equestrian order, a fact indicated in the passage in which Horace speaks of himself as 'infra Lucili censum.' The Scholiast on that passage mentions that he was on the mother's side grand-uncle to Pompey—a relationship confirmed by a passage in Velleius, who mentions that the mother of Pompey was named Lucilia.

The first impression produced by reading these fragments, as they have been arranged by Müller or Lachmann, is one of extreme desultoriness and discursiveness of treatment. The words applied by Horace to Lucilius,—

characterise not his style only but his whole mode of composition. Subjects most widely removed from one another seem to have been introduced into the same book. We have no means of determining whether the separate books consisted of one or several miscellaneous pieces. He seems to start off on some new chase on the slightest suggestion, verbal or otherwise, as in the opening of Book v.—

Quo me habeam pacto, tametsi non quaeri', docebo,

Quando in eo numero mansti, quo in maxima nunc est

Pars hominum,

Ut periise velis quem visere nolueris, cum

Debueris. Hoc nolueris et debueris te

Si minu' delectat, quod τεχνίον Isocratium est,

Ληρῶδέςque simul totum ac συμμειρακιῶδες,

We cannot accordingly expect to trace in them anything of the unity of purpose, the formal discourse and illustration of a set topic, which characterise the Satires of Persius and Juvenal, nor yet, of the apparently artless, but carefully meditated ease with which Horace, in his Satires, reproduces the manner of cultivated conversation. Lucilius adopts many modes of bringing himself into relations with his reader. Sometimes he speaks of himself by name, and appears to be communing with himself on his own fortunes or feelings. Sometimes he carries on a controversy in the form of dialogue; at other times he addresses the reader directly; or again, he puts a discourse in the mouth of another, as that on the luxury of the table in the mouth of Laelius. He makes frequent use of the epistolary form—a form which in prose and verse became one of the happiest products of Roman literature. He employs fables, quotations, and parodies, to illustrate his subject. He gives a narrative of his travels, and describes scenes and incidents at which he was present, such as a fight between two gladiators, a rustic feast, and a storm which he encountered in his voyage to Sicily. In other places he plays the part of a moralist, and discourses to a friend on the nature of virtue. More frequently he takes on himself the special office of a censor, and assails the vices of the day by direct denunciation and living examples. In other places he appears as a literary critic and a dictator on questions of grammar and orthography.

In Book i., dedicated to Aelius Stilo the grammarian, a council of the gods was introduced, debating how the Roman State was still to be preserved; and some of the most notorious men of the time were exposed by name to public reprobation. Book iii. contained an account of the author's journey from Rome to the Sicilian Strait, and has been imitated by Horace in his journey to Brundisium. From the line—

This establishment of a personal relation with his readers was one of the most original elements in the Lucilian satire. He was the first of Roman, and one of the first among all, writers, who took the public into his confidence, and gained their ear, without exposing himself to contempt, by making a frank and unreserved display of his inmost and most personal thoughts and feelings. Had his works reached us entire, we should probably have found the same kind of attraction in them, from the sense of familiar intimacy with a man of interesting character and intelligence, which we find in the Epistles of Cicero and the Satires and Epistles of Horace.

The excesses of his contemporaries in the way of good living, against which numerous sumptuary laws (the Lex Fannia and Lex Licinia for instance), enacted in that age, vainly contended, were largely satirised by Lucilius. Such passages as these—

O Publi, O gurges Galloni, es homo miser, inquit,

Cenasti in vita numquam bene, quom omnia in ista

Consumis squilla atque acipensere quum decumano.

Hoc fit item in cena, dabis ostrea millibu' nummum

Empta.

Occidunt, Lupe, saperdae te et iura siluri.

Vivite lurcones, comedones, vivite ventres.

Illum sumina ducebant atque altilium lanx

Hunc pontes Tiberinu' duo inter captu' catillo.

show the proportions already assumed by a form of sensuality the beginnings of which may be traced in Plautus and in the publication of the Hedyphagetica of Ennius, but of which the final culmination is to be sought in the ideal of life realised under the Empire, by Apicius, Vitellius, Elagabalus, and many men of less note.

The other extreme of unceasing activity in getting, and sordid meanness in hoarding money, and the discontent produced among all classes by the restless passion to grow rich, which fills so large a place in the Satires and Epistles of Horace, appears also frequently in the fragments of Lucilius; as, for instance, in the following:—

Milia dum centum frumenti tolli medimnum,

Vini mille cadum.—

Denique uti stulto nihil est satis, omnia cum sint.—

Rugosi passique senes eadem omnia quaerunt.—

Mordicus petere aurum e flamma expediat, e caeno cibum.—

Cui neque iumentumst nec servos nec comes ullus,

Bulgam et quidquid habet nummum secum habet ipse,

Cum bulga cenat, dormit, lavit; omnis in unast

In other passages he inculcates the lessons of good sense and moderation in the use of money, or urges, in the person of an objector, that a man is regarded in proportion to the estimate of his means. In his enumeration of the various constituents of virtue, one on which he dwells with emphasis, is the right estimation of the value of money. In all his thoughts and expressions on this subject it is easy to see how closely Horace follows on his traces.

The extravagance, airs, and vices of women, are another theme of his satire. But he deals with these topics rather in the spirit of raillery adopted by Plautus, than in that of Juvenal. In one fragment he compares, in terms neither delicate nor complimentary, the pretensions to beauty of the Roman ladies of his time with those of the Homeric heroines. In another he contrasts the care which they take in adorning themselves when expecting the visits of strangers with their indifference as to their appearance when alone with their husbands,—

Cum tecum'st, quidvis satis est: visuri alieni

Another fragment—

indicates the same repugnance to marriage, which is expressed in a fragment of contemporary oratory, quoted by A. Gellius: 'If, Quirites, we could get on at all without wives, we should all keep clear of that nuisance; but since, in the way of nature, life cannot go on comfortably with them, nor at all without them, we ought rather to provide for the continued well-being of the world than for our temporary comfort.' The dislike to incur the responsibilities of family life, which appears so conspicuously among the cultivated classes in the later times of the Republic, was probably, if we are to judge from the testimony and examples of Lucilius and Horace, as much the result of the license allowed to men, as of the extravagant habits or jealous imperiousness of women.

The intellectual, as well as the moral and social peculiarities of the age were noted by Lucilius. One fragment is directed against the terrors of superstition, and shows that Lucilius, like all the older poets, was endowed with that strong secular sense which enabled the educated Romans, notwithstanding the forms and ceremonies of religion encompassing every private and public act, to escape, in all their ordinary relations, from supernatural influences. This passage affords a fair specimen of the continuous style of the author:—

Terriculas Lamias, Fauni quas Pompiliique

Instituere Numae, tremit has, hic omnia ponit;

Ut pueri infantes credunt signa omnia ahena

Vivere, et esse homines; et sic isti omnia ficta

Vera putant, credunt signis cor inesse in ahenis;

His attitude to philosophy, like his attitude to superstitious terrors, was not unlike that of Horace. We find mention in his fragments of the 'Socratici charti,' of the 'eidola atque atomus Epicuri' of the four στοιχεῖα of Empedocles, of the 'mutatus Polemon,' spoken of in Horace (Sat. ii. 3, 253), of Aristippus, and of Carneades; but his own wisdom was that of the world and not of the schools. In these lines,—

and—

Graecum te, Albuci, quam Romanum atque Sabinum,

Municipem Ponti, Tritanni, Centurionum,

Praeclarorum hominum ac primorum signiferumque,

Maluisti dici. Graece ergo praetor Athenis,

Id quod maluisti, te, cum ad me accedi', saluto:

Chaere, inquam, Tite. Lictores turma omni' cohorsque

We learn from Cicero's account of the orators antecedent to, and contemporary with himself, that this denationalising fastidiousness was a not uncommon result of the new studies. The practice of Lucilius of mixing Greek words and phrases with his Latin style might, at first sight, expose him to a similar criticism. But this mannerism of style, which is condemned by the good sense of Horace, is merely superficial, and does not impair the vigorous nationality of the sentiment expressed by the Roman satirist. Like the similar practice in the Letters of Cicero, it was probably in accordance with the familiar conversational style of men powerfully attracted by the interest and novelty of the new learning, but yet strong enough in their national self-esteem to adhere to Roman standards in all the greater matters of action and sentiment. Lucilius seems however to recognise a deeper mischief than that of mere literary affectation in the general insincerity of character produced by the rhetorical and sophistical arts fostered by the new studies, and finding their sphere of action in the Roman law-courts.

The satire of Lucilius, besides its political, moral, and social function, assumed the part of a literary critic and censor. The testimony of Horace on this point,—

The antagonism displayed by Lucilius to the more ambitious style of the tragic and epic poets was perhaps as much due to his own deficiency in poetical imagination, as to his keen critical discernment, the 'stili nasus' or 'emunctae nares' attributed to him by Pliny and Horace.

The criticism of Lucilius was not only aggressive, but also directly didactic. In the ninth book he discussed, at considerable length, disputed questions of orthography; and a passage is quoted from the same book, in which a distinction is drawn out between 'poëma' and 'poësis.' Under the first he ranks—

under the second, whole poems, such as the Iliad, or the Annals of Ennius. The only interest attaching to these fragments is that, like the didactic works of Accius, they testify to the crude critical effort that accompanied the creative activity of the earlier Roman poets.

As specimens of his continuous style the two following passages may be given. The first exemplifies the serious moral spirit with which ancient satire was animated; the second vividly represents and rebukes one of the most prevalent pursuits of the age—

Virtus, Albine, est pretium persolvere verum,

Queis in versamur, queis vivimu' rebu', potesse:

Virtus est hominis, scire id quod quaeque habeat res.

Virtus scire homini rectum, utile, quid sit honestum;

Quae bona, quae mala item, quid inutile, turpe, inhonestum;

Virtus quaerendae rei finem scire modumque:

Virtus divitiis pretium persolvere posse:

Virtus id dare quod re ipsa debetur honori:

Hostem esse atque inimicum hominum morumque malorum,

Contra defensorem hominum morumque bonorum,

Hos magnifacere, his bene velle, his vivere amicum;

Commoda praeterea patriae sibi prima putare,

If there is no great originality of thought nor rhetorical grace of expression in this passage, it proves that Lucilius judged of questions of right and wrong from his own point of view. To him, as to Ennius, common sense and a just estimate of life were large ingredients in virtue. To be a good hater as well as a staunch friend, and to choose one's friends and enemies according to their characters, is another quality of his virtuous man. With him, as with the best Romans of every age, love of country, family, and friends, were the primary motives to right action. The next passage, written in language equally plain and forcible, gives a graphic picture of the growing taste for forensic oratory—

Nunc vero a mane ad noctem, festo atque profesto,

Toto itidem pariterque die, populusque patresque

Iactare indu foro se omnes, decedere nusquam,

Uni se atque eidem studio omnes dedere et arti,

Verba dare ut caute possint, pugnare dolose,

Blanditia certare, bonum simulare virum se

These passages are probably not unfavourable specimens of the author's continuous style. At its best that style appears to be sincere, serious, rapid, and full of vital force, but careless, redundant, and devoid of all rhetorical point and subtle suggestiveness. Even to these passages the censure of Horace applies,—

but we fail to recognise not only the 'disjecti membra poetae,' but even the elements of the rhetorician, or of the ironical humourist—

Thus it is difficult to understand what Cicero means when he speaks of the 'Romani veteres atque urbani sales' as being 'salsiores' than those of the true masters of Attic wit, such as were Aristophanes, Plato, and Menander.

But these passages are simple, direct, and clear, compared with many of the single lines or longer passages, already quoted in illustration of the substance of his satire. These leave an impression not only of a total want of the 'limae labor,' but of an abnormal harshness and difficulty, beyond what we find in the fragments of Pacuvius, Accius, or Ennius. The fragments of his trochaics and iambics are much simpler, 'much less depart from the natural order of the words,' than those of his hexameters: a fact which reminds us of the great advance made by Horace in adapting the heroic measure to the familiar experience of life. Lucilius is moreover a great offender against not only the graces but the decencies of language. Lines are found in his fragments as coarse as the coarsest in Catullus or Juvenal: nor could he urge the extenuating plea of having forgotten the respect due to his readers from the necessity of relieving his wounded feelings or of vindicating morality.

But if we cannot altogether account for, we may yet partially understand the admiration which his countrymen felt for Lucilius. In every great literature, while there are some works which appeal to the imagination of the whole world, there are others which seem to hit some particular mood of the nation to which their author belongs, and are all the more valued from the prominence they give to this idiosyncracy. Every nation which has had a literature seems to have valued itself on some peculiar humour or vein of observation and feeling, which it regards as specially allotted to itself, over and above its common inheritance of the sense of the ludicrous, which it shares with other races. Those writers who have this last in unusual measure become the favourite humourists of the world. But their own countrymen often prefer those endowed with the narrower domestic type; and of this type Lucilius seems to have been a true representative. The 'antiqua et vernacula festivitas,' attributed to him, seems to have been more combative and aggressive than genial and sympathetic. The 'Italum acetum' was employed by the Romans as a weapon of controversy with the view of damaging an adversary and making either himself or the cause he represented appear ridiculous and contemptible. The dictum of a modern humourist, that to laugh at a man properly you must first love him, would have seemed to an ancient Roman a contradiction in terms. When Horace writes—

he means that men are more likely to be made better by the fear of contempt than of moral reprobation.

But Lucilius had much more than this power of personal raillery, exercised with the force supplied and under the restraints imposed by an energetic social and political life. He is spoken of not only as 'comis et urbanus,' but also as 'doctus' and 'sapiens.' Even his fragments indicate that he was a man of large knowledge of 'books and men.' Horace testifies to the use which he made of the old comic poets of Athens:—

His fragments show familiarity with Homer, with the works of the Greek physical and ethical philosophers, with the systems of the rhetoricians, and some acquaintance with the writings of Plato, Archilochus, Euripides, and Aesop. His habit of building up his Latin lines with the help of Greek phrases illustrates the first powerful influence of the new learning before the Roman mind was able thoroughly to assimilate it, but when it was in the highest degree stimulated and fascinated by it. The mind of Lucilius was susceptible to the novelty of the new thoughts and new impressions, but like that of his contemporaries was insensible to the grace and symmetry of Greek art. Terence is the only writer in the ante-Ciceronian period who had the sense of artistic form. But all this foreign learning was, in the mind of Lucilius, subsidiary to the freshest observation and most discerning criticism of his own age. He was a spectator of life more than an actor in it, but he yet had been present at one of the most important military events of the time, and he had lived in the closest intimacy with the greatest soldier and most prudent statesman of his age. His satire had thus none of the limitation and unreality which attaches to the work of a student and recluse, such as Persius was. To the writings of Lucilius more perhaps than to those of any other Roman would the words of Martial apply—

It was by the rectitude and manliness of his character, as much as by his learning, his quick and true discernment, his keen raillery and vivid portraiture, that he became the favourite of his time and country, and, alone among Roman writers, succeeded in introducing a new form of literature into the world.

'This too is the case at dinner, you will give oysters, bought at a thousand sesterces.'

'Sardines and fish-sauce are your death, O Lupus.'

'Long live, ye gluttons, gourmands, belly-gods.'

'One was attracted by sow-teats and a dish of fatted fowls; another by a gourmandising pike caught between the two bridges.'

'Then he wiped the ample table with a purple cloth.'