crowd at his patron's levee shall have already gone their round of compliments, when the stars are fading, or at the hour when the chill wain of sluggish Bootes wheels slowly round.[208] But what sort of a supper is it after all? Wine, such as wool just shorn would not imbibe.[209] You will see the guests become frantic as the priests of Cybele. Wranglings are the prelude of the fray: but soon you begin to hurl cups as well in retaliation; and wipe your wounds with your napkin stained with blood; as often as a pitched battle, begun with pitchers of Saguntine ware, rages between you and the regiment of freedmen. The great man himself drinks wine racked from the wood under some consul with long hair,[210] and sips[211] the juice of the grape pressed in the Social war; never likely, however, to send even a small glass to a friend, though sick at heart. To-morrow, he will drink the produce of the mountains of Alba or Setia,[212] whose country and date age has obliterated by the accumulated mould on the ancient amphora; such wine as, with chaplets on their heads, Thrasea and Helvidius used to drink on the birthdays of the Bruti and Cassius. Virro himself holds capacious cups formed of the tears of the Heliades[213] and phialæ incrusted with beryl. You are not trusted with gold: or even if it is ever handed to you, a servant is set as a guard over you at the same time, to count the gems and watch your sharp nails. Forgive the precaution: the jasper so much admired there is indeed a noble one: for, like many others, Virro transfers to his cups the gems from off his fingers, which the youth, preferred to the jealous Hiarbas,[214] used to set on the front of his scabbard. You will drain a cup with four noses, that bears the name of the cobbler of Beneventum,[215] already cracked, and fit to be exchanged, as broken glass, for brimstone.[216]