his hands. It's
easy enough when everything squares up and runs on schedule. How old
would you think he was? Seventy and over, but he was as tough as horn,
carried his age well, and was as black as a crow. I knew the fellow for
years and years, and he was a lecher to the very last. I don't believe
that even the dog in his house escaped his attentions, by Hercules, I
don't; and what a boy-lover he was! Saw a virgin in every one he met!
Not that I blame him though, for it's all he could take with him."

CHAPTER THE FORTY-FOURTH.

Phileros had his say and Ganymedes exclaimed, "You gabble away about
things that don't concern heaven or earth: and none of you cares how the
price of grain pinches. I couldn't even get a mouthful of bread today,
by Hercules, I couldn't. How the drought does hang on! We've had famine
for a year. If the damned AEdiles would only get what's coming to them.
They graft with the bakers, scratch-my-arse-and-I'll-scratch-yours!
That's the way it always is, the poor devils are out of luck, but the
jaws of the capitalists are always keeping the Saturnalia. If only we
had such lion-hearted sports as we had when I first came from Asia! That
was the life! If the flour was not the very best, they would beat up
those belly-robbing grafters till they looked like Jupiter had been at
them. How well I remember Safinius; he lived near the old arch, when I
was a boy. For a man, he was one hot proposition! Wherever he went, the
ground smoked! But he was square, dependable, a friend to a friend, you
could safely play mora with him, in the dark. But how he did peel them
in the town hall: he spoke no parables, not he! He did everything
straight from the shoulder and his voice roared like a trumpet in the
forum. He never sweat nor spat. I don't know, but I think he had a
strain of the Asiatic in him. And how civil and friendly-like he was,
in returning everyone's greeting; called us all by name, just like he was
one of us! And so provisions were cheap as dirt in those days. The loaf
you got for an as, you couldn't eat, not even if someone helped you, but
you see them no bigger than a bull's eye now, and the hell of it is that
things are getting worse every day; this colony grows backwards like a
calf's tall! Why do we have to put up with an AEdile here, who's not
worth three Caunian figs and who thinks more of an as than of our lives?
He has a good time at home, and his daily income's more