Page:Juvenal and Persius by G. G. Ramsay.djvu/159

 The great man himself drinks wine bottled in the days when Consuls wore long hair; the juice which he holds in his hand was squeezed during the Social Wars, but never a glass of it will he send to a friend suffering from dyspepsia! To-morrow he will drink a vintage from the hills of Alba or Setia whose date and name have been effaced by the soot which time has gathered upon the aged jar—such wine as Thrasea and Helvidius used to drink with chaplets on their heads upon the birthdays of Cassius and the Bruti.

The cup in Virro's hands is richly crusted with amber and rough with beryl; to you no gold is entrusted; or if it is, a watcher is posted over it to count the gems and keep an eye on your sharp finger-nails. Pardon his anxiety; that fine jasper of his is much admired! For Virro, like so many others, transfers from his fingers to his cups the jewels with which the youth preferred to the jealous Iarbas used to adorn his scabbard. To you will be given a cracked cup with four nozzles that takes its name from a Beneventine cobbler, and calls for sulphur wherewith to repair its broken glass.

If my lord's stomach is fevered with food and wine, a decoction colder than Thracian hoar-frosts will be brought to him. Did I complain just now that you were given a different wine? Why, the water which you clients drink is not the same. It will be handed to you by a Gaetulian groom, or by the bony hand of a blackamoor whom you would rather not meet at midnight when driving past the monuments on the hilly Latin Way. Before mine host stands the 73