erhaps pass an hour or two in reading, or in listening to the slave
who was his professional "reader." If he was himself an author, as an
astonishing number of his contemporaries actually were, he might spend
the time in preparing a speech, composing some non-committal epic or
drama, jotting down memoranda for a history, or concocting an epigram
or satire to embody his humorous fancies or to relieve his
exasperation. If, as was often the case, he kept in the house a
salaried Greek philosopher--in a large measure the analogue of the
domestic chaplain of the later seventeenth century--he might enjoy his
conversation and pick his brains; or, if a man of real earnestness of
purpose, discuss with him the tenets of his particular philosophy,
Stoic, Epicurean, or Eclectic. This was the nearest approach which the
ancient Roman made to what we should call theological or religious
argument.

On other days a patron would naturally entertain a number of his
clients at dinner, and on no occasion would he be better able to show
how much or how little he was a gentleman in the modern sense of the
term. It is not merely from the satirist that we learn how
discourteous the Roman grandee might be at his own table if he chose.
It was no uncommon thing for a patron to set before these humbler
guests dishes or portions of dishes markedly inferior to those which
were offered to himself and to any aristocrat whom he had placed near
him. In this sense the client was often made to feel very distinctly
that he was "sitting below the salt." While the mellowest Setine or
Falernian wine was poured into the patron's own jewelled goblet of
gold or silver or crystal, his client might be drinking from thick
glass or earthenware the poorer stuff grown on the Sabine Hills. The
fish presented to Silius and his "brother" noble might be a choice
turbot, and the bird might be pheasant, while Proculus the client must
be content with pike from the Tiber and the common barndoor fowl. The
later satirist Juvenal presents us with inimitable pictures of the
hungry dependants at the table of their "king," waiting "bread in
hand" (like the sword drawn for the fray) to see what fortune would
send them. On the other hand there were, of course, patrons who made
no such distinctions. The younger Pliny, who was himself a gentleman
almost in the modern sense--if we overlook a too frequent tendency to
contemplate his own undeniable virtues--writes a letter to a young
frien