When Horace started on these extraordinary journeys, he took a change of diet. "At home," said he, "I can put up with anything; my Sabine table wine seems to me delicious; and I regale myself with vegetables from my garden seasoned with a slice of bacon. But when I have once left my house, I become more particular, and beans, beloved though they be of Pythagoras, no longer suffice me." So before starting in the direction of Salerno, where he did not often go, he takes the precaution to question one of his friends as to the resources of the country; whether one can get fish, hares, and venison there, that he may come back home again as fat as a Phæacian. Above all, he is anxious to know what is drunk in those parts. He wants a generous wine to make him eloquent, and "which will give him strength, and rejuvenate him in the eyes of his young Lucanian sweetheart." We see he pushes precaution a considerable length. He was not rich enough to possess a house of his own at Baiæ, Præneste, or Salerno, the spots frequented by all the Roman fashionable world, but he had his wonted lodgings ("deversoria nota"), where he used to put up. When Seneca was at Baiæ, he lived above a public bath, and he has furnished us a very amusing account of the sounds of all kinds that troubled his rest. Horace, who liked his ease and wished to be quiet, could not make a very long stay in those noisy places. His whim gratified, he returned as soon as possible to his peaceful house amid the fields, and I can well imagine that those few fatiguing weeks made it seem more pleasant and more sweet to him. One cannot read his works carefully without noticing that his affection for his country estate goes on constantly increasing. At first, when he had passed a few weeks there, the memory of Rome used to re-awaken in his thoughts. Those large towns, which we hate when we are forced to live in them, have only to be left in order to be regretted! When Horace's slave, taking an unfair advantage of the liberty of the Saturnalia, tells his master so many unpleasant things, he reproaches him with never being pleased where he is:-- "Romæ rus optas, absentem villicus urbem Tollis ad astra levis?"