But the most interesting person for the modern student is the grumbler about the management of town affairs, and here a page or two of the _Satiricon_ is worth a dissertation. The price of bread has gone up, and the bakers must be in league with the aediles. In the good old times, when the critic first came from Asia, things were very different.(796) “There were giants in those days. Think of Safinius, who lived by the old arch, a man with a sharp, biting tongue, but a true friend, a man who, in the town council, went straight to his point, whose voice in the forum rang out like a trumpet. Yet he was just like one of us, knew everybody’s name, and returned every salute. Why, in those days corn was as cheap as dirt. You could buy for an as a loaf big enough for two. But the town has since gone sadly back.(797) Our aediles now think only how to pocket in a day what would be to some of us a fortune. I know how a certain person made his thousand gold pieces. If this goes on, I shall have to sell my cottages. Neither men nor the gods have any mercy. It all comes from our neglect of religion. No one now keeps a fast, no one cares a fig for Jove. In old days when there was a drought, the long-robed matrons with bare feet, dishevelled hair, and pure hearts, would ascend the hill to entreat Jupiter for rain, and then it would pour down in buckets.”(798) At this point the maundering, pious pessimist is interrupted by a rag dealer(799) of a more cheerful temper. “Now this, now that, as the rustic said, when he lost his speckled pig. What we have not to-day will come to-morrow; so life rubs along. Why, we are to have a three days’ show of gladiators on the next holiday, not of the common sort, but many freedmen among them. And our Titus has a high spirit; he will not do things by halves. He will give us cold steel without any shirking, a good bit of butchery in full view of the amphitheatre. And he can well afford it. His father died and left him HS.30,000,000. What is a paltry HS.400,000 to such a fortune?(800) and it will give him a name for ever. He has some tit-bits, too, in reserve, the lady chariot-driver, and the steward of Glyco, who was caught with his master’s wife; poor wretch, he was only obeying orders. And the worthless Glyco has given him to the beasts; the lady deserved to suffer. And I have an inkling that Mammaea is going to give us a feast, where we shall get two denarii apiece. If she does the part expected of her, Norbanus will be nowhere. His gladiators were a wretched, weedy, twopenny-halfpenny lot, who would go down at a mere breath. They were all cut to pieces, as the cowards deserved, at the call of the crowd, ‘give it them.’ A pretty show indeed! When I applauded, I gave far more than I got. But friend Agamemnon, you are thinking ‘what is all this long-winded chatter.’(801) Well, you, who dote on eloquence, why won’t you talk yourself, instead of laughing at us feeble folk. Some day I may