The Satyricon of Petronius ArbiterPetronius Arbiter
General
The Satyricon of Petronius Arbiter
Petronius Arbiter
Rome -- Fiction; Satire, Latin -- Translations into English
In the porch stood the porter in a green livery, girt about with a
cherry-coloured girdle, garbling of pease in a silver charger; and
over head hung a golden cage with a magpye in it, which gave us an All
Hail as we entred: But while I was gaping at these things, I had like
to have broken my neck backward, for on the left hand, not far from
the porter's lodge, there was a great dog in a chain painted on the
wall, and over him written in capital letters, BEWARE THE DOG. My
companions could not forbear laughing; bur I recollecting my spirits,
pursued my design of going to the end of the wall; it was the draught
of a market-place where slaves were bought and sold with bills over
them: There was also Trimalchio with a white staff in his hand, and
Minerva with a train after her entring Rome: Then having learnt how to
cast accompt, he was made auditor; all exquisitely painted with their
proper titles; and at the end of the gallery Mercury lifting him by
the chin, and placing him on a judgment-seat. Fortune stood by him
with a cornucopia, and the three fatal sisters winding a golden
thread.
I observed also in the same place a troop of light-horsemen, with
their commander exercising them, as also a large armory, in one of the
angles of which stood a shrine with the gods of the house in silver, a
marble statue of Venus, and a large golden box, in which it was said
he kept the first shavings of his beard. Then asking the servant that
had the charge of these things, what pictures those were in the
middle? The Iliads and the Odysses, said he, and on the left-hand two
spectacles of sword-playing. We could not bestow much time on it, for
by this time we were coming to the dining-room, in the entry of which
sate his steward, taking every one's account: But what I most admir'd,
were those bundles of rods, with their axes, that were fastned to the
sides of the door, and stood, as it were, on the brazen prow of a
ship, on which was written,
TO CAIUS POMPEIUS TRIMALCHIO OF PRÆTORIAN DIGNITY; CINNAMUS THE
STEWARD.
Under the same title also, hung a lamp of two lights from the roof of
the room, and two tablets on either side of the door; of which one, if
I well remember, had this inscription,
THE THIRD AND SECOND OF THE KALENDS OF JANUARY, OUR PATRON CAIUS EATS
ABROAD.
On the other was represented the course of the moon, and the seven
stars; and what days were lucky, what unlucky, with an emboss'd studd
to distinguish the one from the other.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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