Vitelius rolled under the table.

Nigidia, stripping herself to the waist, dropped her drunken childlike head on the breast of Lucan, who, drunk in like degree, fell to blowing the golden powder from her hair, and raising his eyes with immense delight.

Vestinius, with the stubbornness of intoxication, repeated for the tenth time the answer of Mopsus to the sealed letter of the proconsul.

Tullius, who reviled the gods, said, with a drawling voice broken by hiccoughs,--"If the spheros of Xenophanes is round, then consider, such a god might be pushed along before one with the foot, like a barrel." But Domitius Afer, a hardened criminal and informer, was indignant at the discourse, and through indignation spilled Falernian over his whole tunic.

He had always believed in the gods.