u will never be questioned about your absence any more
than if you had been dead, and you will waste your whole life in
submitting to court the humours of this blockhead.

14. But when those long and unwholesome banquets, which are indulged in
at certain intervals, begin to be prepared, or the distribution of the
usual dole-baskets takes place, then it is discussed with anxious
deliberation whether when those to whom a return is due are to be
entertained, it is proper to invite also a stranger; and if, after the
matter has been thoroughly sifted, it is determined that it may be done,
that person is preferred who waits all night before the houses of
charioteers, or who professes a skill in dice, or pretends to be
acquainted with some peculiar secrets.

15. For such entertainers avoid all learned and sober men as
unprofitable and useless; with this addition, that the nomenclators[8]
also, who are accustomed to make a market of these invitations and of
similar favours, selling them for bribes, do for gain thrust in mean and
obscure men at these dinners.

16. The whirlpools of banquets, and the various allurements of luxury, I
omit, that I may not be too prolix, and with the object of passing on to
this fact, that some people, hastening on without fear of danger, drive
their horses, as if they were post-horses, with a regular licence, as
the saying is, through the wide streets of the city, over the roads
paved with flint, dragging behind them large bodies of slaves like bands
of robbers; not leaving at home even Sannio,[9] as the comic poet says.

17. And many matrons, imitating these men, gallop over every quarter of
the city with their heads covered, and in close carriages. And as
skilful conductors of battles place in the van their densest and
strongest battalions, then their light-armed troops, behind them the
darters, and in the extreme rear troops of reserve, ready to join in the
attack if necessity should arise; so, according to the careful
arrangements of the stewards of these city households, who are
conspicuous by wands fastened to their right hands, as if a regular
watchword had been issued from the camp, first of all, near the front
of the carriage march all the slaves concerned in spinning and working;
next to them come the blackened crew employed in the kitchen; then the
whole body of slaves promiscuously mixed up with a gang of idle
plebeians from the neighbourhood; last of all, the multitude of eunuchs,