He had improved the breed of his flocks by importing rams from
Tarentum. He had bees from Hymettus in his hives. He sent to India for
mushroom spawn.(766) A gazette was regularly brought out, full of
statistics, and all the daily incidents on his estates;(767) the number of
slave births and deaths; a slave crucified for blaspheming the genius of
the master; a fire in the bailiff’s house; the divorce of a watchman’s
wife, who had been caught in adultery with the bathman; a sum of
HS.100,000 paid into the chest, and waiting for investment—these are some
of the items of news. Trimalchio, who bears now, after the fashion of his
class, the good Roman name of Caius Pompeius, has risen to the dignity of
Sevir Augustalis in his municipality;(768) he is one of the foremost
persons in it, with an overwhelming sense of the dignity of wealth, and
with a ridiculous affectation of artistic and literary culture, which he
parades with a delightful unconsciousness of his blunders.
When the wandering adventurers arrive for dinner,(769) they find a bald
old man in a red tunic playing at ball, with eunuchs in attendance. While
he is afterwards being rubbed down with unguents in the bath, his servants
refresh themselves with old Falernian. Then, with four richly dressed
runners preceding him, and wrapped in a scarlet mantle, he is borne to the
house in his sedan along with his ugly minion. On the wall of the
vestibule, as you entered, there were frescoes, one of which represented
the young Trimalchio, under the leadership of Minerva, making his entry
into Rome, with other striking incidents of his illustrious career, while
Fortune empties her flowing horn, and the Fates spin the golden thread of
his destiny.(770) The banquet begins; Alexandrian boys bring iced water
and delicately attend to the guests’ feet, singing all the while.(771)
Indeed, the whole service is accompanied by singing, and the blare of
instruments. To a great, deafening burst of music, the host is at last
borne in buried in cushions, his bare shaven head protruding from a
scarlet cloak, with a stole around his neck, and lappets falling on each
side; his hands and arms loaded with rings.(772) Not being just then quite
ready for dinner, he, with a kindly apology, has a game of draughts, until
he feels inclined to eat, the pieces on the terebinthine board being,
appropriately to such a player, gold and silver coins.(773) The dinner is
a long series of surprises, on the artistic ingenuity of which Trimalchio
plumes himself vastly. One course represents the twelve signs of the
Zodiac, of which the host expounds at length the fateful
significance.(774) Another dish was a large boar, with baskets of
sweetmeats hanging from its tusks. A huge bearded hunter pierced its sides
with a hunting knife, and forthwith from the wound there issued a flight
of thrushes which were dexterously captured in nets as they flew about the
room.(775) Towards the end of the meal the guests were startled by strange