, he has once invited.

18. Some of them, if they have gone any distance to see their estates in
the country, or to hunt at a meeting collected for their amusement by
others, think they have equalled the marches of Alexander the Great, or
of Caesar; or if they have gone in some painted boats from Lake Avernus
to Pozzuoli or Cajeta, especially if they have ventured on such an
exploit in warm weather. Where if, amid their golden fans, a fly should
perch on the silken fringes, or if a slender ray of the sun should have
pierced through a hole in their awning, they complain that they were not
born among the Cimmerians.

19. Then, when they come from the bath of Silvanus, or the waters of
Mamaea, which are so good for the health, after they come out of the
water, and have wiped themselves with cloths of the finest linen, they
open the presses, and take out of them robes so delicate as to be
transparent, selecting them with care, till they have got enough to
clothe eleven persons; and at length, after they have picked out all
they choose, they wrap themselves up in them, and take the rings which
they had given to their attendants to hold, that they might not be
injured by the damp; and then they depart when their fingers are
properly cooled.

20. Again, if any one having lately quitted the military service of the
emperor, has retired to his home.[169] ...

21. Some of them, though not many, wish to avoid the name of gamblers,
and prefer to be called dice-players; the difference being much the same
as that between a thief and a robber. But this must be confessed that,
while all friendships at Rome are rather cool, those alone which are
engendered by dice are sociable and intimate, as if they had been formed
amid glorious exertions, and were firmly cemented by exceeding
affection; to which it is owing that some of this class of gamblers live
in such harmony that you might think them the brothers Quintilii.[170]
And so you may sometimes see a man of base extraction, who knows all the
secrets of the dice, as grave as Porcius Cato when he met with a repulse
which he had never expected nor dreamt of, when a candidate for the
praetorship, with affected solemnity and a serious face, because at some
grand entertainment or assembly some man of proconsular rank has been
preferred to himself.

22. Some lay siege to wealthy men, whether old or young, childless or
unmarried, or even with wives and children (for with such an object no