buse of a
neighbouring and rival town--such as "bad luck to the Nucerians"--or a
pretty sentiment, such as "no one is a gentleman who has not been in
love," or an advertisement to the effect that there are "To let, from
July 1, shops with their upper floors, a flat for a gentleman, and a
house: apply to Prinus, slave of So-and-So"; or "Found wandering, a
mare with packsaddle, apply, etc."--the latter, by the way, painted on
a tomb.

[Illustration: FIG. 77.--IN A WINE-SHOP.]

For places of social resort there were the baths, the colonnades, the
semicircular public seats, the steps of public buildings, the shops,
and the eating-houses and taverns. The middle classes, in the absence
of the modern clubs, met to gossip at the barber's, the bookseller's,
or the doctor's. Those of a humbler grade would often betake
themselves to the establishments corresponding to the modern Italian
_osterie_, where were to be obtained wine with hot or cold water and
also cooked food. As they sat on their stools in these "greasy and
smoky" haunts they might be compelled, says the satirist, to mix with
"sailors, thieves, runaway slaves, and the executioner," but even men
of higher standing were often not unwilling to seek low pleasures amid
such surroundings, especially when, as was frequently the case, there
was provision for secret dicing beyond the observation of the police.

From literature, meanwhile, we may fill in their vivacious language,
the courteous terms the people apply to each other, such as "you ass,
pig, monkey, cuckoo, chump, blockhead, fungus," or, on the other side,
"my honey, my heart, my dove, my life, my sparrowkin, my dainty
cheese." But to go more fully into matters like these would carry us
too far afield.

We will end this topic with a last look at the ordinary free workman,
who wears no toga, but simply a girt-up tunic, a pair of boots, and a
conical cap, and who goes home to his plain fare of bread, porridge,
lentil soup, goats'-milk cheese, "broad" and "French" beans, beetroot,
leeks, salted or smoked bacon, sausages, and black-pudding, which he
will eat off earthenware or a wooden trencher, and wash down with
cheap but not unwholesome wine mixed with water. He has no pipe to
smoke; he has never heard of tea, coffee, or spirits. He may have been
told that certain remote barbarians drink beer, and he may know of a
thing called butter, but he would not touch it so long as he can get
olive-oil. However humble his