They  rate  themselves  and  their  neighbours  simply  in  terms  of
cash.^  The  only  ability  they  can  understand  is  that  which
can  ''pick  money  out  of  the  dung-heap,"  and  ''turn  lead  to
gold."*  These  gross  and  infinitely  stupid  fellows  have  not
even  the  few  saving  traits  in  the  character  of  Trimalchio.  He
has,  after  all,  an  honourable,  though  futile,  ambition  to  be  a
wit,  a  connoisseur,  a  patron  of  learning.  His  luxury  is
coarse  enough,  but  he  wishes,  however  vainly,  to  redeem  it  by
some  ingenuity,  by  interspersing  the  mere  animal  feeding  with
some  broken  gleams,  or,  as  we  may  think,  faint  and  distorted
reflections,  of  that  great  world  of  which  he  had  heard,  but  the
portals  of  which  he  could  never  enter.  But  his  company  are
of  mere  clay.  Trimalchio  is  gross  enough  at  times,  but,
compared  with  his  guests,  he  seems  almost  tolerable.  And
their  dull  baseness  is  the  more  torturing  to  a  modem  reader
because  it  is  an  enduring  type.  The  neighbour  of  the  Greek
observer  warns  him  not  to  despise  his  company;'  they  are
"  warm  "  men.  That  one  at  the  end  of  the  couch,  who  began
as  a  porter,  has  his  HS.800,000.  Another,  an  undertaker,  has
had  his  glorious  days,  when  the  wine  flowed  in  rivers ;  ^  but
he  has  been  compelled  to  compound  with  his  creditors,  and  he
has  played  them  a  clever  trick.  A  certain  Seleucus,  whose
name  reveals  his  origin,  explains  his  objections  to  the  bath,
especially  on  this  particular  morning,  when  he  has  been  at  a
funeral.*  The  fate  of  the  departed  friend  unfortunately  leads
him  to  moralise  on  the  weakness  of  mortal  men,  mere
insects,  or  bubbles  on  the  stream.  As  for  medical  6dd,  it
is  an  imaginary  comfort;  it  ofbener  kills  than  cures.^     The

»  Patron.  88,  48.  »  Id.  42.
