“Landlord, may your lies malign Bring destruction on your head! You, yourself drink unmixed wine Water sell your guests instead!”[126] He can at least claim that his ordinary charges are moderate. His regular bill to a driver is likely to be: “Bread and a pint of wine 1 as; Meat dish 2 asses; Mule provender 2 asses; Night accommodation 2 asses.” The bronze _as_ is hardly more than 2 cents; and the whole charge, including the mule, is thus about 14 cents later-day reckoning. The real profit, however, comes when for example a burly soldier off duty tramps in with his hob-nailed boots, swings back his military cloak, and orders, “Come, mine host (_copus_), some really good wine with a little water!” If congenial spirits, male and female, are now ready, such may be the beginning of a long sousing evening, when the dice will clatter furiously and the soldier will awake in the morning with not one sesterce in his pouch. =207. Noble Frequenters of Taverns.=--Sometimes Proxenus rejoices in still more exalted company. Certain fast young nobles enjoy “doing the rounds” of low taverns; and the Inn of Hercules has fairly regular visitors of this very profitable type. When Proxenus sees Gnæus Lollius, Gratia’s black sheep of a cousin, entering, he makes haste to anoint his own locks with pungent musk, and runs to greet his visitor as ‘Dominus’ and ‘Rex,’--while the young profligate, boasting that he has come to enjoy a perfect “Liberty Hall” (_æqua libertas_), commands the host at once to call in all the loose rascals in the neighborhood and insists that they drink with him from the same goblet. At last they are all sprawling about the tavern, the noble Lollius “cheek by jowl with cut-throats, bargees, thieves, runaway slaves, hangmen, and coffin makers.”[127] All Rome has been laughing in loyal glee at the retort in verse which the clever Hadrian has just made to a certain Florus, who wrote some lines saying “he would rather not be Cæsar” because the latter was always gadding off to outlandish places. Florus is notoriously a frequenter of all-night taverns, and the Emperor instead of imitating Nero and sending him a centurion with a death message, has hit back roundly: “Florus would I never be, Now a-tramp to taverns he, Sulking now in cook-shops see, Victim of the wicked flea!” [Illustration: CHEAP GROCERY AND COOK-SHOP. _After Von Falke._]