This text is part of:
Search the Perseus Catalog for:
[66]
“Ah,” said Trimalchio, “but what did you have for dinner?”
“I will tell you if I can,” he said, “but my memory is in such a
fine way that I often forget my own name. Well, first we had a pig crowned with
a wine-cup, garnished with honey cakes, and liver very well done, and beetroot
of course, and pure wholemeal bread, which I prefer to white myself; it puts
strength into you, and is good for the bowels. The next dish was a cold tart,
with excellent Spanish wine poured over warm honey. Indeed I ate a lot of the
tart, and gave myself such a soaking of honey. Pease and lupines were handed, a
choice of nuts and an apple each. I took two myself, and I have got them here
tied up in my napkin: for if I do not bring some present back for my pet
slave-boy there will be trouble. Oh! yes, my wife reminds me. There was a piece
of bear on a side dish. Scintilla was rash[p. 127] enough to taste it,
and nearly brought up her own inside. I ate over a pound myself, for it tasted
like proper wild boar. What I say is this, since bears eat up us poor men, how
much better right has a poor man to eat up a bear? To finish up with we had
cheese mellowed in new wine, and snails all round, and pieces of tripe, and
liver in little dishes, and eggs in caps, and turnip, and mustard, and a dish of
forcemeat. But hold hard, Palamedes.1
Pickled olives were brought round in a dish too, and some greedy creatures took
three handfuls. For we had let the ham go.”
1 Pax is an exclamation unconnected with the noun pax, “peace.” The meaning of its conjunction with the word Palamedes is unknown: it may be merely due to the charm of alliteration.
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.