Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 18, 2025
One must not expect a Roman noble to deign always to remember the names of humble persons sometimes he actually did not and therefore a slave, known as the "name-caller," announces each client in turn. The client says, "Good morning, Sir," and Silius replies, "Good morning, So-and-So," or "Good morning, Sir," or simply "Good morning."
We are, however, dealing with two persons entirely beyond exception, namely Quintus Silius Bassus and Marcia Sabina. A match has been made between these parties, perhaps several years before the actual marriage can take place, and while the intended bride is a mere child of ten: even the future groom may be but a boy.
The former are greatly superior to those of Lucan or Silius. They have not the hideous combination of horrors of the one, nor the shadowy unreality of the other. Though hatched in the closet and not on the battle-field, a defect they share with all poets from Virgil downwards, they have sufficient verisimilitude to interest, and not sufficient reality to shock us.
The fish presented to Silius and his "brother" noble might be a choice turbot, and the bird might be pheasant, while Proculus the client must be content with pike from the Tiber and the common barndoor fowl. On the other hand there were, of course, patrons who made no such distinctions.
Publius Silius, we may suppose, passes up each step of the ladder, or what was called the "career of honours," and becomes senatorial governor of no less important a province than "Asia" that nearer portion of Asia Minor which contained flourishing cities like Smyrna, Ephesus, and Rhodes.
He will further see that the name of Quintus Silius Bassus is registered in the death-roll in the temple of "Juno the Death-Goddess," and that the registration fee is paid. The name will also appear in the next issue of the "Daily News."
If a man of study and eloquence, he may have consented to act as pleader taking no fee, because he is merely performing a patron's duty. Noblesse oblige. If he is not to plead, Silius may at any rate have been requested to lend moral support by seating himself beside the favoured party and perhaps appearing as a witness to character.
Silius will also wear at least one large signet-ring as well as his plain ring of gold, but he will leave it to the dandies to load their fingers with half-a-dozen and to keep separate sets for winter and summer.
Silius is now carried home, and as it is approaching four o'clock, he dresses, or is dressed, for dinner. His toga and senatorial walking-shoes are thrown off, and he puts on light slippers or house-shoes, and dons what is called a "confection" of light and easy material such as a kind of half-silk and of bright and festive colours.
Before our goal can be reached it is necessary for us to cross the broad willow-fringed stream of the Sele, the Silarus of antiquity, which according to the testimony of Silius Italicus once possessed the property of petrifying wood.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking