Page:Juvenal and Persius by G. G. Ramsay.djvu/145

 To-day I shall tell of a less heinous deed, though had any other man done the like, he would fall under the censor's lash; for what would be shameful in good men like Seius or Teius sat gracefully on Crispinus. What can you do when the man himself is more foul and monstrous than any charge you can bring against him? Crispinus bought a mullet for six thousand sesterces—one thousand sesterces for every pound of fish, as those would say who make big things bigger in the telling of them. I could commend the man's cunning if by such a lordly gift he secured the first place in the will of some childless old man, or, better still, sent it to some great lady who rides in a close, broad-windowed litter. But nothing of the sort; he bought it for himself: we see many a thing done nowadays which poor niggardly Apicius never did. What? Did you, Crispinus—you who once wore a strip of your native papyrus round your loins—give that price for a fish? A price bigger than you need have paid for the fisherman himself, a price tor which you might buy a whole estate in some province, or a still larger one in Apulia. What kind of feasts are we to suppose were guzzled by our Emperor himself when all those thousands of sesterces—forming a small fraction, a mere side-dish of a modest entertainment—were belched up by a purple-clad parasite of the august Palace—one who is now Chief of the Knights, and who once used to hawk, at the top of his voice, a broken lot of his fellow-countrymen the sprats? Begin, Calliope! let us take our seats. This is no mere fable, but a true tale that is being told; tell it forth, ye maidens of Pieria, and let it profit me that I have called you maids! 59