The Satyricon of Petronius Arbiter/Chapter 57
CHAPTER THE FIFTY-SEVENTH. But Ascyltos threw off all restraint and ridiculed everything; throwing up his hands, he laughed until the tears ran down his cheeks. At last, one of Trimalchio’s fellow-freedmen, the one who had the place next to me, flew into a rage, “What’s the joke, sheep’s-head,” he bawled, “Don’t our host’s swell entertainment suit you? You’re richer than he is, I suppose, and used to dining better! As I hope the guardian spirit of this house will be on my side, I’d have stopped his bleating long ago if I’d been sitting next to him. He’s a peach, he is, laughing at others; some vagabond or other from who-knows-where, some night-pad who’s not worth his own piss: just let me piss a ring around him and he wouldn’t know where to run to! I ain’t easy riled, no, by Hercules, I ain’t, but worms breed in tender flesh. Look at him laugh! What the hell’s he got to laugh at? Is his family so damned fine-haired? So you’re a Roman knight! Well, I’m a king’s son! How’s it come that you’ve been a slave, you’ll ask: because I put myself into service because I’d rather be a Roman citizen than a tax-paying provincial. And now I hope that my life will be such that no one can jeer at me. I’m a man among men! I take my stroll bare-headed and owe no man a copper cent. I never had a summons in my life and no one ever said to me, in the forum, pay me what you owe me. I’ve bought a few acres and saved up a few dollars and I feed twenty bellies and a dog. I ransomed my bedfellow so no one could wipe his hands on her bosom; a thousand dinars it cost me, too. I was chosen priest of Augustus without paying the fee, and I hope that I won’t need to blush in my grave after I’m dead. But you’re so busy that you can’t look behind you; you can spot a louse on someone else, all right, but you can’t see the tick on yourself. You’re the only one that thinks we’re so funny; look at your professor, he’s older than you are, and we’re good enough for him, but you’re only a brat with the milk still in your nose and all you can prattle is ‘ma’ or ‘mu,’ you’re only a clay pot, a piece of leather soaked in water, softer and slipperier, but none the better for that. You’ve got more coin than we have, have you? Then eat two breakfasts and two dinners a day. I’d rather have my reputation than riches, for my part, and before I make an end of this—who ever dunned me twice? In all the forty years I was in service, no one could tell whether I was free or a slave. I was only a long-haired boy when I came to this colony and the town house was not built then. I did my best to please my master and he was a digniferous and majestical gentleman whose nail-parings were worth more than your whole carcass. I had enemies in his house, too, who would have been glad to trip me up, but I swam the flood, thanks to his kindness. Those are the things that try your mettle, for it’s as easy to be born a gentleman as to say, ‘Come here.’ Well, what are you gaping at now, like a billy-goat in a vetch-field?”