But the most admired invention of extravagance was the one in which Otho had specially designed to outdo the luxury of Cæsar. The Romans were devoted to delicious odours. Nero had ordered perfumes to be sprinkled on the hair of his guests; but after this had been done to those who reclined at Otho’s banquet, the boys who stood behind them took off their loose slippers and bathed their feet also in liquid essences--a device of which, up to this time, the luxury of an Apicius had never dreamed. And while the guests were still admiring this daring innovation, Otho made a sign with his jewelled hand to Polytimus, the chief favourite among his slaves, who immediately turned two taps of ivory and gold, and then, to the soft breathing of flutes, two fountains sprang into the air, from silver basins, and refreshed the banqueters with a fine dew of the most exquisite fragrance. To those frivolous spirits all this unbridled materialism seemed to be the one thing which raised them nearest to the gods; and they felt a thrill of delight when it was whispered that for that single supper Otho had expended a sum of four million sesterces.[48] The conversation during the meal was vapid and licentious. Beginning with the weather, it proceeded to discuss the gladiators, actors, dancers, and charioteers. Then it repeated all the most recent pasquinades and coarse jokes which had been attached to the statues in the Forum. Then it turned to scandal, and ‘Raged like a fire among the noblest names, Imputing and polluting,’ until it might have seemed that in all Rome not one man was honest, nor one woman pure. To say such things of many of the leading senators and patricians would have been not far from the truth; but the gossip became far more piquant when it dwelt on the immense usury of Seneca, and gave vent to the worst innuendoes about his private life; or when it tried to blacken with its poisonous breath the fair fame of a Pætus Thrasea or a Helvidius Priscus. Yet another resource was boundless adulation of the Emperor and abuse of every other authority, particularly of the Senate, of which Nero, like Gaius, was intensely jealous. It was on this occasion that Vatinius surpassed himself by the celebrated remark, ‘I hate you, Cæsar, because you are a senator.’ After a time, however, scandal and adulation palled, as did the smart procacity of the young slaves, who were trained to say witty and impudent things. And as by that time the drinking bout had begun, after the healths were finished the guests were amused by the strains of the choraulæ and the dances of Andalusian girls.