The Satyricon of Petronius Arbiter/Chapter 69
CHAPTER THE SIXTY-NINTH. “Yes,” Scintilla broke in, “and you’ve not mentioned all of his accomplishments either; he’s a pimp too, and I’m going to see that he’s branded,” she snapped. Trimalchio laughed. ‘“There’s where the Cappadocian comes out,” he said: “never cheats himself out of anything and I admire him for it, so help me Hercules, I do. No one can show a dead man a good time. Don’t be jealous, Scintilla; we’re next to you women, too, believe me. As sure as you see me here safe and sound, I used to play at thrust and parry with Mammeza, my mistress, and finally even my master got suspicious and sent me back to a stewardship; but keep quiet, tongue, and I’ll give you a cake.” Taking all this as praise, the wretched slave pulled a small earthen lamp from a fold in his garment, and impersonated a trumpeter for half an hour or more, while Habinnas hummed with him, holding his finger pressed to his lips. Finally, the slave stepped out into the middle of the floor and waved his pipes in imitation of a flute-player; then, with a whip and a smock, he enacted the part of a mule-driver. At last Habinnas called him over and kissed him and said, as he poured a drink for him, “You get better all the time, Massa. I’m going to give you a pair of shoes.’ Had not the dessert been brought in, we would never have gotten to the end of these stupidities. Thrushes made of pastry and stuffed with nuts and raisins, quinces with spines sticking out so that they looked like sea-urchins. All this would have been endurable enough had it not been for the last dish that was served; so revolting was this, that we would rather have died of starvation than to have even touched it. We thought that a fat goose, flanked with fish and all kinds of birds, had been served, until Trimalchio spoke up. “Everything you see here, my friends,” said he, “was made from the same stuff.” With my usual keen insight, I jumped to the conclusion that I knew what that stuff was and, turning to Agamemnon, I said, “I shall be greatly surprised, if all those things are not made out of excrement, or out of mud, at the very least: I saw a like artifice practiced at Rome during the Saturnalia.”