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[93]
"What we may have we do not care about; our minds
are bent on folly and love what is troublesome.
[p. 187]
“The bird won from Colchis where Phasis flows, and fowls from Africa, are
sweet to taste because they are not easy to win; but the white goose and the
duck with bright new feathers have a common savour. The wrasse drawn from
far-off shores, and the yield of wrinkled Syrtis is praised if first it wrecks a
boat: the mullet by now is a weariness. The mistress eclipses the wife, the rose
bows down to the cinnamon. What men must seek after seems ever best.”
“What about your promise, that you would not make a single verse
to-day?” I said. “On your honour, spare us at least: we have never
stoned you. If a single one of the people who are drinking in the same tenement
with us scents the name of a poet, he will rouse the whole neighbourhood and
ruin us all for the same reason. Spare us then, and remember the picture-gallery
or the baths.” Giton, the gentle boy, reproved me when I spoke thus, and
said that I was wrong to rebuke my elders, and forget my duty so far as to spoil
with my insults the dinner I had ordered out of kindness, with much more tolerant
and modest advice which well became his beautiful self. . .
Petronius Arbiter. Petronius. Michael Heseltine. London. William Heinemann. 1913.
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