he tells us that we should overlook the vices of our friends.  His teaching, both in spirit and range, was broader than that of his predecessors; his shafts were directed against classes rather than individuals, and wherever he is more pointed, his object is not to gratify personal spite, but to make his warning more forcible by illustration.  Moreover, his names are generally unreal.  In this way he attacks Nasidienus on the excessive luxury of the table, and his advice was applicable not only to the rich and great, but to more ordinary men.  Thus, he shows the bad tendencies of avarice and love-intrigues, and the meanness of sycophantism and legacy-hunting.  Many of the faults he condemns are rather errors in taste than serious moral delinquencies.  Sometimes he criticises merely trivial matters, such as a costume or a scent.  “Rufillus smells all perfumes, Gorgonius like a goat,” and the most humorous of his pieces is that in which he ridicules the ignorance and impudence of a manoeuvring chatterer.  But in this line he is not very successful, and his contests of rival jesters are as much beneath the notice of any good writer of the present day, as his account is of Porcius, the jack-pudding “swallowing cakes whole.”

Horace says that men are more impervious to slashing reproach than to fine ridicule, and he was unusually adroit in hitting foibles without inflicting pain.  He was not a man who held strong opinions on subjects.  This is especially evident where he speaks of his own fickleness; and while he reiterates his dislike of Rome, with its noise and bustle, he makes his slave say that this is but affectation, and when an invitation comes from Mecaenas, “Mulvius and the ‘scurrae’ are turned out,” from which we learn that parasites had their parasites, and that Horace in the country played the patron to the rustic wits.

Although the Romans generally have no claim to be called a humorous people, many of them became celebrated for their talent in repartee.  Scipio Africanus AEmilianus above mentioned, was remarkable in this way, as was Crassus, Granius, Vargula, and others.  There was a good old joke that Nasica having called at the house of the poet Ennius, and the maid-servant having told him that Ennius was not at home, he perceived she had said so by her master’s order; and when, a few days afterwards, Ennius called at Nasica’s house, and inquired for him, Nasica cried out that he was “not at home.”  “What!” says Ennius, “do I not know your voice?” “You are an impudent fellow,” replied Nasica, “I believed your servant when she said you were not at home, and you will not believe me.”