Chapters 51–60

51 But there was once a workman who made a glass cup that was unbreakable. So he was given an audience of the Emperor with his invention; he made Caesar give it back to him and then threw it on the floor. Caesar was as frightened as could be. But the man picked up his cup from the ground: it was dinted like a bronze bowl; then he took a little hammer out of his pocket and made the cup quite sound again without any trouble. After doing this he thought he had himself seated on the throne of Jupiter, especially when Caesar said to him: ‘Does anyone else know how to blow glass like this?’ Just see what happened. He said not, and then Caesar had him beheaded. Why? Because if his invention were generally known we should treat gold like dirt.

52 Myself I have a great passion for silver. I own about a hundred four-gallon cups engraved with Cassandra killing her children, and they lying there dead in the most lifelike way. I have a thousand jugs which Mummius’ left to my patron, and on them you see Daedalus shutting Niobe into the Trojan horse. And I have got the fights between Hermeros and Petraites” on my cups, and every cup is a heavy one; for I do not sell my connoisseurship for any money.”’

As he was speaking, a boy dropped a cup. Trimalchio looked at him and said, “Quick, off with your own head, since you are so stupid.” The boy’s lip fell and he began to petition. “Why do you ask me?” said Trimalchio, “as if I should be hard on you! I advise you to prevail upon yourself not to be stupid.” In the end we induced him to let the boy off. As soon as he was forgiven the boy ran round the table. . . .

Then Trimalchio shouted, “Out with water! In with wine!” . . . We took up the joke, especially Agamemnon, who knew how to earn a second invitation to dinner. Trimalchio warmed to his drinking under our flattery, and was almost drunk when he said: “None of you ask dear Fortunata to dance. I tell you no one can dance the can can better.”’ He then lifted his hands above his head and gave us the actor Syrus, while all the slaves sang in chorus:

Madeia! Perimadeia!

And Trimalchio would have come out into the middle of the room if Fortunata had not whispered in his ear. I suppose she told him that such low fooling was beneath his dignity. But never was anything so variable; at one moment he was afraid of Fortunata, and then he would return to his natural self.

53 But a clerk quite interrupted his passion for the dance by reading as though from the gazette: “July the 26th. Thirty boys and forty girls were born on Trimalchio’s estate at Cumae. Five hundred thousand pecks of wheat were taken up from the threshing-floor into the barn. Five hundred oxen were broken in. On the same date: the slave Mithridates was led to crucifixion for having damned the soul of our lord Gaius. On the same date: ten million sesterces which could not be invested were returned to the reserve. On the same day: there was a fire in our gardens at Pompeii, which broke out in the house of Nasta the bailiff.’ “Stop,” said Trimalchio, “When did I buy any gardens at Pompeii?” “Last year,” said the clerk, “so that they are not entered in your accounts yet.” Trimalchio glowed with passion, and said, “I will not have any property which is bought in my name entered in my accounts unless I hear of it within six months.” We now had a further recitation of police notices, and some foresters’ wills, in which Trimalchio was cut out in a codicil; then the names of bailiffs, and of a freed-woman who had been caught with a bathman and divorced by her husband, a night watchman; the name of a porter who had been banished to Baiae; the name of a steward who was being prosecuted, and details of an action between some valets.

But at last the acrobats came in. A very dull fool stood there with a ladder and made a boy dance from rung to rung and on the very top to the music of popular airs, and then made him hop through burning hoops, and pick up a wine jar with his teeth. No one was excited by this but Trimalchio, who kept saying that it was a thankless profession. There were only two things in the world that he could watch with real pleasure, acrobats and trumpeters; all other shows were silly nonsense. “Why,” said he, “I once bought a Greek comedy company, but I preferred them to do A tell ane plays,’ and I told my flute-player to have Latin songs.”

54 Just as Trimalchio was speaking the boy slipped and fell [against his arm]. The slaves raised a cry, and so did the guests, not over a disgusting creature whose neck they would have been glad to see broken, but because it would have been a gloomy finish to the dinner to have to shed tears over the death of a perfect stranger. Trimalchio groaned aloud, and nursed his arm as if it was hurt. Doctors rushed up, and among the first Fortunata, with her hair down, and a cup in her hand, calling out what a poor unhappy woman she was. The creature who had fallen down was crawling round at our feet by this time, and begging for mercy. I was very much afraid that his petition was leading up to some comic surprise. The cook who had forgotten to gut the pig had not yet faded from my recollection. So I began looking all round the dining-room, in case any clockwork toy should jump out of the wall, especially after they had begun to beat a servant for dressing the bruise on his master’s arm with white wool instead of purple. And my suspicions were not far out. Instead of punishment there came Trimalchio’s decree that he should be made a free man, for fear anyone might be able to say that our hero had been wounded by a slave.

55 We applauded his action, and made small talk in different phrases about the uncertainty of man’s affairs.

“Ah,” said Trimalchio, “then we should not let this occasion slip without-a record.”’ And he called at once for paper, and after very brief reflection declaimed these halting verses:

“‘What men do not look for turns about and comes to pass. And high over us Fortune directs our affairs. Wherefore, slave, hand us Falernian wine.”

A discussion of poetry arose out of this epigram, and for a long time it was maintained that Mopsus of Thrace held the crown of song in his hand, until Trimalchio said, “Now, I ask you as a scholar, how would you compare Cicero and Publilius?? In my opinion the first has more eloquence, the second more beauty. For what could be better written than these lines?

The high walls of Mars crumble beneath the gaping jaws of luxury. To please thy palate the peacock in his Babylonian vesture of gilded feathers is prisoned and fed, for thee the guinea-fowl, and for thee the capon. Even our beloved foreign guest the stork, type of parental love, with thin legs and sounding rattle, the bird exiled by winter, the harbinger of the warm weather, has now built a nest in thine abhorred cooking-pot. What are pearls of price, the fruits of India, to thee? For thy wife to be adorned with sea-spoils when she lies unchecked on a strange man’s bed? For what end dost thou require the green emerald, the precious crystal, or the fire that lies in the jewels of Carthage, save that honesty should shine forth from amid the carbuncles? Thy bride might as well clothe herself with a garment of the wind as stand forth publicly naked under her clouds of muslin.’

56 “And now,” said he, “what do we think is the hardest profession after writing? I think a doctor’s ora money-changer’s. The doctor’s, because he knows what poor men have in their insides, and when a fever will come—though I detest them specially, because they so often order me to live on duck. The money-changer’s, because he sees the copper under the silver. Just so among the dumb animals, oxen and sheep are the hardest workers: the oxen, because thanks to the oxen we have bread to eat; the sheep, because their wool clothes us in splendour. It is a gross outrage when people eat lamb and wear shirts. Yes, and I hold the bees to be the most divine insects. They vomit honey, although people do say they bring it from Jupiter: and they have stings, because wherever you have a sweet thing there you will find something bitter too.”

He was just throwing the philosophers out of work, when tickets were carried round in a cup, and a boy who was entrusted with this duty read aloud the names of the presents for the guests! “Tainted metal’; a ham was brought in with a vinegar bottle on top of it. “Something soft for the neck”’; a scrap of neck-end was put on. “Repenting at leisure and obstinate badness”’; we were given biscuits made with must, and a thick stick with an apple. “Leeks and peaches”; he took a scourge and a dagger. “Sparrows and flypaper” : ; he picked up some dried grapes and a honey-pot. “Evening-dress and outdoor clothes”’ ; he handled a piece of meat and some note-books. “Canal and foot-measure” ; a hare anda slipper were introduced. “The murena and a letter” he took a mouse and a frog tied together, and a bundle of beetroot. We laughed loud and long: there were any number of these jokes, which have now escaped my memory.

57 Ascyltos let himself go completely, threw up his hands and made fun of everything, and laughed till he cried. This annoyed one of Trimalchio’s fellow-freedmen, the man who was sitting next above me. “What are you laughing at, sheep’s head?” he said.

“Are our host’s good things not good enough for you? I suppose you are richer and used to better living? As I hope to have the spirits of this place on my side, if I had been sitting next him I should have put a stopper on his bleating by now. A nice young shaver to laugh at other people! Some vagabond fly by-night not worth his salt. In fact, when I’ve done with him he won’t know where to take refuge. Upon my word, I am not easily annoyed as a rule, but in rotten flesh worms will breed. He laughs. What has he got to laugh about? Did his father pay solid gold for him when he was a baby? A Roman knight, are you? Well, I am a king’s son. ‘Then why have you been a slave?’ Because I went into service to please myself, and preferred being a Roman citizen to going on paying taxes as a provincial. And now I hope I live such a life that no one can jeer at me. am a man among men; I walk about bare-headed; I owe nobody a brass PRET tae: I have never been in the Courts; no one has ever said to me in public, ‘Pay me what you owe me.’ I have bought a few acres and collected a little capital; I have to feed twenty bellies and a dog: I ransomed my fellow slave to preserve her from indignities; I paid a thousand silver pennies for my own freedom; I was made a priest of Augustus and excused the foe I hope to die so that I need not blush in my grave. But are you so full of business that you have no time to look behind you? You can see the lice on others, but not the bugs on yourself. No one finds us comic but you: there is your schoolmaster, older and wiser than you: he likes us. You are a child just weaned, you cannot squeak out mu or ma, you area clay-pot, a wash-leather in water, softer, not superior. If you are richer, then have two breakfasts and two dinners a day. I prefer my reputation to any riches. One word more. Who ever had to speak to me twice? I was a slave for forty years, and nobody knew whether I was a slave or free. I was a boy with long curls when I came to this place; they had not built the town-hall then.

But I tried to please my master, a fine dignified gentleman whose little finger was worth more than your whole body. And there were people in the house who put out a foot to trip me up here and there. But still—God bless my master!—I struggled through. These are real victories: being born free is as easy as saying, ‘Come here.’ But why do yor stare at me now like a goat in a field of vetch?”

58 At this remark Giton, who was standing by my feet, burst out with an unseemly laugh, which he had now been holding in for a long while. Ascyltos’s enemy noticed him, and turned his abuse on to the boy. “What,” he said, “are you laughing too, you curly-headed onion? A merry Saturnalia indeed: what, have we December here? When did you pay five per cent on your freedom? He doesn’t know what to do, the gallows-bird, the crows’-meat. I will call down the wrath of Jupiter at once on you and the fellow who cannot keep you in order. As sure as I get my bellyfull, I would have given you what you deserve now on the spot, but for my respect for my fellow-freedman. We are getting on splendidly, but those fellows are fools, who don’t keep you in hand. Yes, like master, like man. I can scarcely hold myself in, and I am not naturally hot-tempered, but when I once begin I do not care twopence for my own mother. Depend upon it, I shall meet you somewhere in public, you rat, you puff-ball. I will not grow an inch up or down until I have put your master’s head in a nettle-bed,! and I shall have no mercy on you, I can tell you, however much you may call upon Jupiter in Olympus. Those pretty eight-inch curls and that twopenny master of yours will be no use to you. Depend upon it, you will come under the harrow; if I know my own name you will not laugh any more, though you may have a gold beard like a god. I will bring down the wrath of Athena on you and the man who first made a minion of you.’

“No, I never learned geometry, and criticism, and suchlike nonsense.” But I know my tall letters, and I can do any sum into pounds, shillings, and pence. In fact, if you like, you and I will have a little bet. Come on, I put down the metal. Now I will show you that your father wasted the fees, even though you are a scholar in rhetoric. Look here:

“What part of us am I? I come far, I come wide.

Now find me.’ I can tell you what part of us runs and does not move from its place; what grows out of us and grows smaller.2 Ah you run about and look scared and hustled, like a mouse in a pot. So keep your mouth shut, or do not worry your betters who are unaware of your existence; unless you think I have any respect for the boxwood rings you stole from your young woman. May the God of grab be on my side! Let us go on Change and borrow money: then you will see that my iron ring commands credit. My word, a draggled fox is a fine creature! I hope I may never get rich and make a good end, and have the people swearing by my death, if I do not put on the black cap and hunt you down everywhere. It was a fine fellow who taught you to behave like this, too; a chattering ape, not a master. We had some real schooling, for the master used to say, Are all your belongings safe? Go straight home, and don’t stop to look round you; and mind you do not abuse your elders. Count up all the wastrels, if you like; not one of them is worth twopence in the end.’ Yes, I thank God for education; it made me what I am.”

59 Ascyltos was preparing a retort to his abuse, but Trimalchio was delighted with his fellow-freedman’s readiness, and said, “Come now, stop all this wrangling. It is nicer to go on pleasantly, please do not be hard on the young man, Hermeros. Young blood is hot in him; you must be indulgent. A man who admits defeat in this kind of quarrel is always the winner. And you, too, when you were a young cockerel cried Cock-a-doodle-doo and hadn’t any sense in your head. So let us do better, and start the fun over again, and have a look at these reciters of Homer.” A troop came in at once and clashed spear on shield. Trimalchio sat up on his cushion, and when the reciters talked to each other in Greek verse, as their conceited way is, he intoned Latin from a book. Soon there was silence, and then he said, “You know the story they are doing? Diomede and Ganymede were two brothers. Helen was their sister. Agamemnon carried her off and took in Diana by sacrificing a deer to her instead. So Homer is now telling the tale of the war between Troy and Parentium.’! Of course he won and married his daughter Iphigenia to Achilles. That drove Ajax mad, and he will show you the story ina minute.”’ Ashe spoke the heroes raised a shout, and the slaves stood back to let a boiled calf ona presentation dish be brought in. There was a helmet on its head. Ajax followed and attacked it with his sword drawn as if he were mad; and after making passes with the edge and the flat he collected slices on the point, and divided the calf among the astonished company.

60 We were not given long to admire these elegant tours de force; suddenly there came a noise from the ceiling, and the whole dining-room trembled. I rose from my place in a panic: I was afraid some acrobat would come down through the roof. All the other guests too looked up astonished, wondering what the new portent from heaven was announced. The whole ceiling parted asunder, and an enormous hoop, apparently knocked out of a giant cask, was let down. All round it were hung golden crowns and alabaster boxes of perfumes. We were asked to take these presents for ourselves, when I looked back at the table. . . .

A dish with some cakes on it had now been put there, a Priapus made by the confectioner standing in the middle, holding up every kind of fruit and grapes in his wide apron in the conventional style. We reached greedily after his treasures, and a sudden fresh turn of humour renewed our merriment. All the cakes and all the fruits, however lightly they were touched, began to spurt out saffron, and the nasty juice flew even into our mouths. We thought it must be a sacred dish that was anointed with such holy appointments, and we all stood straight up and cried, “The gods bless Augustus, the father of his country.” But as some people even after this solemnity snatched at the fruit, we filled our napkins too, myself especially, for I thought that I could never fill Giton’s lap with a large enough present. Meanwhile three boys came in with their white tunics well tucked up, and two of them put images of the Lares with lockets round their necks on the table, while one carried round a bowl ot wine and cried, “God be gracious unto us.”

Trimalchio said that one of the images was called Gain, another Luck, and the third Profit.