Marcus, here sitting before thee is virtue incarnate in Caius Petronius! If Aristides were living, it would be his duty to come to me and offer a hundred minae for a short treatise on virtue." But Vinicius, as a man more concerned with reality than with treatises on virtue, replied,--"To-morrow I shall see Lygia, and then have her in my house daily, always, and till death." "Thou wilt have Lygia, and I shall have Aulus on my head.

He will summon the vengeance of all the infernal gods against me.

And if the beast would take at least a preliminary lesson in good declamation! He will blame me, however, as my former doorkeeper blamed my clients but him I sent to prison in the country." "Aulus has been at my house.

I promised to give him news of Lygia." "Write to him that the will of the 'divine' Caesar is the highest law, and that thy first son will bear the name Aulus.

It is necessary that the old man should have some consolation.