Next he touched upon another human comedy,
played by the people who occupy themselves with
life beyond the grave and with last wills, adding
that sons of Rome speak the truth only once in their
whole lives (meaning in their wills), in order that
they may not reap the fruits of their truthfulness!
 A famous instance is the case of Petronius, who expressed
his opinion of Nero in his will and made the emperor his
executor. 
I could not help interrupting him with laughter
when he said that they want to have their follies
buried with them and to leave their stupidity on
record, inasmuch as some of them leave instructions



 

that clothing be burned with them which they prized
in life, others that servants stay by their tombs,
and here and there another that his gravestone be
wreathed with flowers.

They remain foolish even
on their deathbeds.

 

He thought he could guess
what they had done in life when they issued such
injunctions touching the hereafter: “It is they,”
said he, “who buy expensive dainties and let wine
flow freely at dinners in an atmosphere of saffron
and perfumes, who glut themselves with roses in
midwinter, loving their rarity and unseasonableness
and despising what is seasonable and natural because
of its cheapness’; it is they who drink myrrh.” And
that was the point in which he criticised them
especially, that they do not even know how to give
play to their desires, but transgress in them and
obliterate the boundary-lines, on all sides surrendering their souls to luxury to be trodden under foot,
and as they say in tragedy and comedy, “forcing an
entrance alongside the door."
 The phrase does not occur in any of the extant plays.
As Greek houses were generally of sun-dried brick, it was
not difficult to dig through the wall, but only an inveterate
‘wall-digger’ (housebreaker) would choose that method of
entry when the door was unlocked. 
These he called
unidiomatic pleasures.

 

From the same standpoint he made a comment
exactly like that of Momus. Just as the latter found
fault with the god
 Poseidon: see Hermotimus, 20. 
who made the bull for not
putting the horns in front of the eyes, so he censured
those who wear garlands for not knowing where
they should go. “If it is the scent of their violets




 

and roses that they like,” he said, “they certainly
ought to put their garlands under their noses, as
close as may be to the intake of the breath, so as to
inhale the greatest possible amount of pleasure.”

 

Another thing, he ridiculed the men who
devote such a surprising degree of energy to dinners
in the effort to secure variety in flavours and new
effects in pastry. He said that these underwent a
great deal of inconvenience through their devotion
to a brief and temporary pleasure. Indeed, he
pointed out that all their trouble was taken for
the sake of four finger-breadths, the extent of the’
longest human throat. “Before eating,” said he,
“they get no good out of what they have bought,
_\and after eating, the sense of fulness is no more
agreeable because it derives from expensive food; it
follows, then, that it is the pleasure of swallowing
which has cost them so dear.” And he said that it
served them right for being uneducated and consequently unfamiliar with the truer pleasures, which
are all dispensed by philosophy to those who elect
a life of toil.

 

He had much to say about their behaviour
in the baths—the number of their attendants, their
offensive actions, and the fact that some of them are
carried by servants almost as if they were corpses on
their way to the graveyard. There is one practice,
however, which he appeared to detest above all
others, a wide-spread custom in the city and in the
baths. It is the duty of certain servants, going in
advance of their masters, to cry out and warn them
to mind their footing when they are about to pass
something high or low, thus reminding them, oddly
enough, that they are walking! He was indignant,


 

you see, that although they do not need the mouths
or the hands of others in eating or the ears of others
in hearing, they need the eyes of others to see their
way in spite of the soundness of their own, and
suffer themselves to be given directions fit only for
unfortunates and blind men. - “Why,” said- he,
“this is actually done in public squares at midday,
even to governors of cities!”