This text is part of:
“
[76]
Then, as the Gods willed, I became the real master of the
house, and simply had his brains in my pocket. I need only add that I was joint
residuary legatee with Caesar,1
and came into an estate fit for a senator. But no one is satisfied with nothing.
I conceived a passion for business. I will not keep you a moment— I
built five ships, got a cargo of wine—which was worth its weight in
gold at the time—and sent them to Rome. You may think it was a put-up
job; every one was wrecked, truth and no fairy-tales. Neptune gulped down thirty
million in one day. Do you think I lost heart? Lord! no, I no more tasted my
loss than if nothing had happened. I built some more, bigger, better and more
expensive, so that no one could say I was not a brave man. You know, a huge ship
has a certain security about her. I got another cargo of wine, bacon, beans,
perfumes, and slaves. Fortunata did a noble thing at that time; she sold all her
jewellery and all her clothes, and put a hundred gold pieces into my hand. They
were the leaven of my fortune. What God wishes soon happens. I made[p. 153] a clear ten million on one voyage. I at once bought up all the
estates which had belonged to my patron. I built a house, and bought slaves and
cattle; whatever I touched grew like a honey-comb. When I came to have more than
the whole revenues of my own country, I threw up the game: I retired from active
work and began to finance freedmen. I was quite unwilling to go on with my work
when I was encouraged by an astrologer who happened to come to our town, a
little Greek called Serapa, who knew the secrets of the Gods. He told me things
that I had forgotten myself; explained everything from needle and thread
upwards; knew my own inside, and only fell short of telling me what I had had
for dinner the day before.”
1 It was not uncommon, and often prudent, for a rich man under the early Empire to mention the Emperor in his will.
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.