Cicero replied to Vibius Curius, who was telling a falsehood about his age: "Then when we declaimed at the schools together, you were not born;" and to Fabia, Dolabella's wife, who said she was thirty, "No doubt, for I have heard you say so twenty years." When he saw Lentulus, his cousin—a little man girt with a big sword: "Who," he asked, "has fastened my cousin to that sword?" and on being shown a colossal bust of his brother, who was also small, he exclaimed, "The half of my brother is greater than the whole." One day Cicero had supped with Damasippus, and his host had said—putting some inferior wine before him—"Drink this Falernian, it is forty years old!" "It bears its age well," replied Cicero.
We have a most interesting collection of good sayings in "The Orator," which although not spoken by Cicero himself, were those which he had from time to time noticed, and probably jotted down. Here is one of Cæsar's (Strabo). A Sicilian, when a friend made lamentation to him that his wife had hanged herself upon a fig tree: "I beseech you," he said, "give me some shoots of that tree that I may plant them." Some one asked Crassus whether he should be troublesome if he came to him before it was light. Crassus said, "You will not." The other rejoined, "You will order yourself to be awakened then." To which Crassus replied, "Surely, I said that you would not be troublesome."
To return to the Cæsars. The humorous vein which we have traced in the family descended to Augustus—the great nephew of Julius. Some of his sayings, which have survived, show him to have been as pleasant in his wit as he was proverbially happy in his fortunes.
When the inhabitants of Tarraco made him a fulsome speech, telling him that they had raised an altar to him as their presiding deity, and that, marvellous to relate, a splendid palm tree had grown up on it: "That shows," replied the Emperor, "how often you kindle a fire there." To Galba, a hunchback orator, who was pleading before him, and frequently saying, "Set me right, if I am wrong," he replied, "I can easily correct you, but I cannot set you right."
The following will give a slight idea of the variety of his humour.
When he heard that, among the children under two years old whom Herod had ordered to be slain, his own son had been killed, he said, "It is better to be Herod's pig than his son." Being entertained on one occasion with a very poor dinner, and without any ceremony, as he was passing out he whispered in the ear of his host, "I did not know that I was such a friend of yours." A Roman knight having died enormously in debt, Augustus ordered them to buy him his bed-pillow at the auction, observing: "The pillow of a man who could sleep when he owed so much must be truly soporific." A man who had been removed from a cavalry command and asked for an allowance, "not from any mercenary motive, but that I may seem to have resigned upon obtaining the grant from you," he dismissed with the words: "Tell everybody you have received it. I will not deny it."
Augustus kept a jester, Gabba, and patronised mimes, and among other diversions with which he amused himself and his friends, was that of giving presents by lottery; each drew a ticket upon which something was named, but on applying for the article a totally different thing was received, answering to a second meaning of the name. This occasioned great merriment, a man who thought he was to get a grand present was given a little sponge, or rake, or a pair of pincers; another who seemed to have no claim whatever, obtained something very valuable. The humour was not great, but a little refreshing distraction was thus obtained from the cares of state. There is no loss in light literature so much to be deplored as that of the correspondence between Augustus and Mecænas. The latter prided himself upon his skill in poetry and humour, and we may be sure that he sent some of his choicest productions to Augustus, who in turn exerted himself to send something worthy of the eye of so celebrated a critic. It is not impossible that the Emperor showed himself equal, if not superior to the friend of Horace.
Those who succeeded to the imperial purple proved very different from their illustrious predecessor, and in Persius the severity of Roman satire re-appears. We could scarcely expect a man who lived under Nero, and after the reigns of Tiberius, Caligula, and Claudius to write with the mild placidity of the Augustan poet. Moreover, the satires of Persius were written at an early age—twenty-eight, and youth always feels acutely, and expresses strongly. Some of his attacks are evidently aimed at Nero, but his principal object is to denounce the vices of the times. Hence, indolence and prurient literature are stigmatised. He ridicules the extremes of extravagance, and of that parsimony by which it is usually accompanied. "Am I on a festive day to have a nettle dressed for me, and a smoked pig's cheek with a hole in its ear, in order that that grandson of yours may be surfeited with goose liver, and indulge in patrician amours. Am I to be a living anatomy that his pope's stomach may shake with fat."[23] Alluding to the absurdity of the prayers generally offered up, he uses language worthy of a Christian. "You ask for vigour, but rich dishes and fat sausages prevent the gods from granting your behest. You ask what your fleshly mind suggests. What avails gold in sacrifice? Offer justice to God and man—generous honour, and a soul free from pollution."
In Persius we miss the light geniality of Horace and the pure language of the Augustan age, but we mark the complexity and finesse of a later date, a form of thought bespeaking a comprehensive grasp, and suitable to subtle minds. But as regards his humour it depends much on exaggeration, and is proportionably weak, and beyond this we have little but the coining of some words,[24] the using others in unaccustomed senses, and a large seasoning of severity. He evidently aimed rather at being corrective than amusing, and his covert attacks upon Nero were, no doubt, well understood. Humour of a poor kind was evidently fashionable at the day—the Emperor himself wrote Satires and was so fond of comic performances that he first encouraged and rewarded a celebrated pantomimic actor named Paris, and then put him to death for being his rival in the mimetic art. Even Seneca could not resist the example of his contemporaries, and we find the sedate philosopher attacking his enemy with severe ridicule. Claudius had him sent into exile for eight years to the picturesque but lonely Island of Corsica; and Seneca who liked something more social and luxurious, held him up in a satire bordering upon lampoon. The fanciful production was called the Apolokokyntosis of Claudius; that is his apotheosis, except that, instead of the Emperor being deified, he is supposed to be "gourdified," changed not into a god, but into a pumpkin. Seneca, after deriding Claudius' bodily defects, accuses him of committing many atrocities, and finally sends him down from heaven to the nether world, where a new punishment is invented for him—he is to be always trying to throw dice out of an empty box.
One of the most remarkable characters in the reign of Nero was Titus Petronius Arbiter. He was a great favourite with the Emperor, and held some official appointment—the duties of which he is said to have discharged with ability. In his writings he is supposed to condemn immorality, but he enlarges so much upon what he disapproves that we doubt whether he does not promote the vice he pretends to condemn.[25] His "Satyricon" is not intended to be a satire, but an imitation of one of those old Greek comedies which treated of the doings of Satyrs and grotesque country deities. It is the first comic prose work, for in early times verse was thought as necessary to humour as to poetry. The whole work is enveloped in a voluptuous atmosphere; it is written in a gay roystering style, but although the indelicacy is great the humour is small. Occasionally it is interesting, as giving an insight into private life in the days of Nero. Here we find Trimalchio, a rich man, providing for the amusement of his guests, as well as for their sumptuous entertainment. One dish was a wild boar, which was placed on the table with a cap of liberty on its head. Petronius asked the meaning of this. "Why," said he, "your servant could explain that, it is no riddle. This boar escaped from yesterday's dinner where it was dismissed by the guests, and he now returns to table as a freedman." Afterwards a much larger hog was brought in. "What!" cried Trimalchio, looking closely at it, "is not his inside taken out? No! it is not; call the cook, call the cook." The cook being brought in, excused himself saying that he forgot. "Forgot!" cried Trimalchio, "why, he talks as if it were only a pinch of pepper omitted. Strip him." In a moment the cook was stripped to be flogged. All interceded for him, but Petronius felt somewhat indignant at such an oversight, and said he must be a careless rascal to forget to disembowel a hog. Trimalchio with a pleasant look said, "Come, you with the short