Who dreads, or ever did dread, the falling of a house at cool Præneste, or at Volsinii seated among the well-wooded hills, or simple Gabii,[147] or the heights of sloping Tibur. We, in Rome, inhabit a city propped in great measure on a slender shore.[148] For so the steward props up the falling walls,[149] and when he has plastered over the old and gaping crack, bids us sleep without sense of danger while ruin hangs over our heads![150] I must live in a place, where there are no fires, no nightly alarms. Already is Ucalegon shouting for water, already is he removing his chattels: the third story in the house you live in is already in a blaze. You are unconscious! For if the alarm begin from the bottom of the stairs, he will be the last to be burned whom a single tile protects from the rain, where the tame pigeons lay their eggs. Codrus had a bed too small for his Procula, six little jugs the ornament of his sideboard, and a little can besides beneath it, and a Chiron reclining under the same marble; and a chest now grown old in the service contained his Greek books, and opic[151] mice-gnawed poems of divine inspiration. Codrus possessed nothing at all; who denies the fact? and yet all that little nothing that he had, he lost. But the climax that crowns his misery is the fact, that though he is stark naked and begging for a few scraps, no one will lend a hand to help him to bed and board. But, if the great mansion of Asturius has fallen, the matrons appear in weeds,[152] the senators in mourning robes, the prætor adjourns the courts. Then it is we groan for the accidents of the city; then we loathe the very name of fire. The fire is still raging, and already there runs up to him one who offers to present him with marble, and contribute toward the rebuilding. Another will present him with naked statues of Parian marble,[153] another with a chef-d'œuvre of Euphranor or Polycletus.[154] Some lady will contribute some ancient ornaments of gods taken in our Asiatic victories; another, books and cases[155] and a bust of Minerva; another, a whole bushel of silver. Persicus, the most splendid of childless men, replaces all he has lost by things more numerous and more valuable, and might with reason be suspected of having himself set his own house on fire.[156] If you can tear yourself away from the games in the circus,[157] you can buy a capital house at Sora, or Fabrateria, or Frusino, for the price at which you are now hiring your dark hole for one year. There you will have your little garden, a well so shallow as to require no rope and bucket, whence with easy draught you may water your sprouting plants. Live there, enamored of the pitchfork, and the dresser of your trim garden,[158] from which you could supply a feast to a hundred Pythagoreans. It is something to be able in any spot, in any retreat whatever, to have made one's self proprietor even of a single lizard.