CHAPTER THE FORTY-FOURTH.

CHAPTER THE FORTY-FOURTH.

Phileros had his say and Ganymedes exclaimed, “You gabble away about things that don’t concern heaven or earth: and none of you cares how the price of grain pinches. I couldn’t even get a mouthful of bread today, by Hercules, I couldn’t. How the drought does hang on! We’ve had famine for a year. If the damned AEdiles would only get what’s coming to them. They graft with the bakers, scratch-my-arse-and-I’ll-scratch-yours! That’s the way it always is, the poor devils are out of luck, but the jaws of the capitalists are always keeping the Saturnalia. If only we had such lion-hearted sports as we had when I first came from Asia! That was the life! If the flour was not the very best, they would beat up those belly-robbing grafters till they looked like Jupiter had been at them. How well I remember Safinius; he lived near the old arch, when I was a boy. For a man, he was one hot proposition! Wherever he went, the ground smoked! But he was square, dependable, a friend to a friend, you could safely play mora with him, in the dark. But how he did peel them in the town hall: he spoke no parables, not he! He did everything straight from the shoulder and his voice roared like a trumpet in the forum. He never sweat nor spat. I don’t know, but I think he had a strain of the Asiatic in him. And how civil and friendly-like he was, in returning everyone’s greeting; called us all by name, just like he was one of us! And so provisions were cheap as dirt in those days. The loaf you got for an as, you couldn’t eat, not even if someone helped you, but you see them no bigger than a bull’s eye now, and the hell of it is that things are getting worse every day; this colony grows backwards like a calf’s tall! Why do we have to put up with an AEdile here, who’s not worth three Caunian figs and who thinks more of an as than of our lives? He has a good time at home, and his daily income’s more than another man’s fortune. I happen to know where he got a thousand gold pieces. If we had any nuts, he’d not be so damned well pleased with himself! Nowadays, men are lions at home and foxes abroad. What gets me is, that I’ve already eaten my old clothes, and if this high cost of living keeps on, I’ll have to sell my cottages! What’s going to happen to this town, if neither gods nor men take pity on it? May I never have any luck if I don’t believe all this comes from the gods! For no one believes that heaven is heaven, no one keeps a fast, no one cares a hang about Jupiter: they all shut their eyes and count up their own profits. In the old days, the married women, in their stolas, climbed the hill in their bare feet, pure in heart, and with their hair unbound, and prayed to Jupiter for rain! And it would pour down in bucketfuls then or never, and they’d all come home, wet as drowned rats. But the gods all have the gout now, because we are not religious; and so our fields are burning up!”