Book III, Epigram 82 (Ker)

Whoever can endure to be the guest of Zoilus should dine among the wives by the Walls, and drink, though sober, out of Leda's broken jar; this is a lighter and more decent thing, I maintain. Garbed in green he lies on a couch he alone fills, and with his elbows thrusts off his guests on either side, propped up as he is on purple and on silken cushions. There stands a catamite by him and offers his belching throat red feathers, and slips of mastick, and a concubine, lying on her back, with a green fan stirs a gentle breeze to cool his heat, and a boy flaps away the flies with a sprig of myrtle. With her nimble art a shampooer runs over his body, and spreads her skilled hand over all his limbs. A eunuch knows the signal of a snapped finger, and, being the inquisitor of that fastidious water, guides his boozy master's drunken person. But he himself, bending back to the crowd at his feet, in the midst of his lapdogs who are gnawing goose's livers portions among his wrestlers the kernel of a boar, and gives his concubine the rumps of turtledoves. And, while to us is supplied wine from Ligurian rocks, or must ripened in Massylian smoke, he pledges his naturals in Opimian nectar from crystal and murrine cups. And, though he himself is drenched with all the scent-bottles of Cosmus, he does not blush to parcel out to us in a gold shell a starving whore's pomatum. Then after many a half-pint he is done up and snores; we lie there, and being ordered to compliment his snorts with silence, drink our pledges by nods. This is the insolence of unconscionable Malchio which we endure, and cannot avenge ourselves, Rufus: he is a