“It may be hours yet ere he will see us! Look at this wretched crowd of parasites and flatterers! They will follow the patron to his bath! They will besiege him in his very bed! Oh, my friend! Rome is no longer the place for an honest man.”
To which Oarses replied, in subdued and humble tones—
“The flies gather round the honey, though it is only for what they can get. But the sincerest gratitude and affection draw you and me, my dear companion, to the side of the illustrious tribune.”
“You speak truth,” returned Damasippus. “It is sad to see how few clients are uninfluenced by mean and sordid thoughts. An honest man is becoming as rare at Rome as at Athens. It was not so in the days of the republic—in the golden age—in the good old times!”
“Oh for the good old times!” exclaimed Oarses, still in the same low and unmoved voice.
“Oh for the good old times!” echoed Damasippus; and the two knaves, with their arms on each other’s shoulders, fell to pacing the extremity of the hall, and exchanging spiteful remarks on the concourse with which it was filled.
The tribune’s house was the most perfect of its kind in the whole city. Standing apart and surrounded by a wall and garden of its own, it combined the luxurious splendour of a palace with the comfort and seclusion of a private residence. Everything of ornament that was most costly and gorgeous, had been procured by Placidus to decorate his mansion. Everything of art that was most conspicuous and effective hung on his walls, stood in picturesque groups about his apartments, or lay scattered in rich profusion on his floor. The hangings that veiled his own sleeping‐ room from the public eye, were of embroidered crimson silk, woven in the looms of Asia, and probably taken by the strong hand of the successful soldier as spoils of war. The very pavement of the hall was of the richest mosaic, traced in fanciful patterns and inlaid with gold. As the morning drew on, it was trodden by a multitude of feet. No one of his rank held so numerous a levée as Julius Placidus. In the concourse that thronged it now, might be seen men of all countries, classes, characters, professions, and denominations. Unlike Licinius, who, indeed, owed his influence solely to the firm consistency and unbending rectitude of his character, the tribune let no opportunity pass of binding an additional partisan to his cause by the ties of self‐interest and expectation. They were crowding in now through the wide open doors; and while the spacious hall was nearly filled, the approach to it, and the street itself outside, were choked with applicants, who had one and all, directly or indirectly, something to get, or ask, or hope for, from the tribune. Here, an artist brought his picture carefully draped in the remains of an old garment; yet not so entirely concealed but that a varnished corner might be visible, and the painter, nothing loth, might be prevailed on by earnest solicitations to reveal, bit by bit, all the beauties of his production. There, a sculptor was diligently preserving the outlines of his model, wrapped in its wet cloth, from collision with the bystanders, and assuming credit for the mysterious beauties of a work, which, perhaps, if uncovered, would have grievously disappointed the eyes that scanned it so curiously. In one corner stood a jeweller, holding in his hand a gorgeous collar of pearls and rubies, prepared by the patrician’s orders, and testifying at once to the ingenuity of the tradesman, and the munificence of his employer. In another, waited a common‐looking slave, with a downcast eye and a bloated unwholesome face; who, nevertheless, assumed an important air that seemed to say he was sure of an early audience, as, indeed, was more than probable in consideration of his tidings, a message from venal beauty to the admirer who paid his welcome tribute in gold. Parasites and flatterers elbowed their way insolently in the midst, as though they had a right to be there, whilst honest men, brown with toil, and sighing wistfully for the fresh breezes of Tibur or Præneste, kept aloof, abashed and shrinking, though they had but come to ask for their due. Nearest the hangings that concealed the bedroom, stood a dirty slave, bespattered with the filth of the fish‐market, and exhaling an odour of garlic that cleared for him an ample breathing‐space even in a Roman crowd; but the knave knew the value of his intelligence, and how it would obtain him favour in the tribune’s eyes. No less important a communication than this, that a mullet had been taken the night before of nearly six pounds weight, and that so lavish a patron as Placidus should have the first offer to purchase at a thousand sesterces(7) a pound.