The Portable Roman Reader (Portable Library) (63 page)

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 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 doesn’t he deserve to have me keep my eye on him? But of course Fortunata won’t have it. Isn’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 comfortable, 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’ll tell you one rule of life, and another’ll tell you another. But I say, ‘Buy cheap and sell dear,’ and so you see I’m just bursting with wealth. (Well, grunter, are you still crying? Pretty soon I’ll give you something to cry for!) Well, as I was going on to say, my clever management 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 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 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 honeycomb. 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 making 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 possible point. He knew my very insides, and the only thing he didn’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?
‘Youhave 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 be. You have great estates. You are cherishing 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. Moreover, 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 bedrooms, two marble porticoes, an upstairs dining-room, a bedroom 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 wouldn’t put up anywhere else, even though he has his father’s house to go to, on the sea-shore. 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 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 ointment, 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’ll 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 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 extreme, 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 something nice about me.”

The hornblowers blew a funeral march; and one of them, the slave of the undertaker, who was really the most respectable man in the crowd, blew such a tremendous blast that he roused up the whole neighbourhood. The police who were on duty in the vicinity, thinking that Trimalchio’s house was on fire, suddenly broke down the door, and rushed in with axes and water, as was their right. Seizing this very favourable opportunity, we gave Agamemnon the slip, 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 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 daytime; 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 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, therefore, have spent the entire night on the doorsteps had not Trimalchio’s courier with ten wagons come upon us, and after clamouring for a little while, at last. smashed the door of the inn and thus enabled us to enter.

(Marcus Valerius Martialis, 40? A.D.-?104 A.D.)

 

You fondle your mother and she fondles you: You’re her “brother” and she is your “sister.” Why those mischievous names, I should much like to know? Why are you not her son when you’ve kissed her? If you think that such conduct is merely a jest, You’re mistaken, my innocent brother; When a mother as “Sister” would fain be addressed, She’s neither the one nor the other.