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!”