‘King,’ said Gallio, ‘I shall begin to think that you are a physiognomist, and are picking out some of the worst persons present. That is another informer; his name is M. Aquillius Regulus. He is a fortune-hunter as well as an informer. He has earned by infamy a fortune of sixty million sesterces. I had better tell you at once that there are several of them nearly as bad. That brazen-faced man is Suilius Nerulinus, who helped Messalina to ruin Valerius Asiaticus. He was convicted of taking bribes as a judge even in the reign of Tiberius. And, worst of the whole company, there is Eprius Marcellus, a splendid orator, but a man, as you see, of savage countenance, whose eyes flash their fiercest flame, and whose voice rolls its loudest thunder, when he is denouncing any person of special virtue.’ ‘Well,’ said Agrippa, ‘unless I am tiring your courtesy I will turn to another table. Who is that extremely stout personage with a red face, bushy eyebrows, and apoplectic neck, who is devouring his dainties with such brutal voracity?’ ‘He is a very distinguished person named Vitellius, chiefly distinguished, however, for eating and drinking. He is descended from a cobbler and a cook. He began his childhood with Tiberius at Capreæ. His father set up golden statues of the freedmen Narcissus and Pallas among his household gods, by which merit he won a statue on the rostra. Our friend then turned charioteer to please Gaius, gambler to please Claudius, and has now curried favour with Nero by urging him to sing. His domestic history is not amiable. He had by his first wife a son named Petronianus, to whom she left her wealth. Vitellius made him drink a cup of poison, which he says that the youth had prepared for _him_.’ ‘I shall begin to believe,’ said Agrippa, ‘that the Greek sage was right when he said, “Most men are bad.” Why, Berytus would not show more dubious characters--nor even Jerusalem.’ ‘But there are some honest men,’ said Gallio, ‘as well as virtuous women. Burrus is fairly honest; Fenius Rufus is indifferently honest; Pætus Thrasea is honest, though in these days even he has to dissemble; Helvidius Priscus, Barea Soranus, and Arulenus Rusticus, friends of Thrasea, are as honest as the day. So is that old man Lucius Saturninus, who, strange to say, in spite of his worth, has reached the age of ninety-three without being either killed or banished.’ ‘I will only ask you one more name. Who is the man to whom Domitius Afer is talking?’ ‘His name is Fabricius Veiento. At present he is only known as the editor of a book called “_Codicilli_,” which is immensely popular and is bringing him in a fortune. It is composed of the spiciest libels against every senator of note whom he ventures to attack. He has found that one secret of getting rich is to pander to the appetite for scandal, and half the people who are talking so fast around us are whispering stories which he has discovered or invented for them.’