he sent to the Indies for mushroom-seed:  Nor has he so much as a mule that did not come of a wild ass.  See you all these quilts? there is not one of them whose wadding is not the finest comb’d wooll of violet or scarlet colour, dy’d in grain.  O happy man! but have a care how you put a slight on those freed men, they are rich rogues:  See you him that sits at the lower-end of the table, he has now the Lord knows what; and ’tis not long since he was not worth a groat, and carried billets and faggots at his back; it is said, but I know nothing of it myself, but as I have heard, either he got in with an old hog-grubbler, or had to do with an incubus, and found a treasure:  For my part, I envy no man, (if God gives anything it is a bit of a blow, and wills no evil to himself ) he lately set up this proclamation: 

   “C.  POMPEIUS DIOGENES HAS SOME LODGINGS
    TO LET, FOR HE HATH BOUGHT A HOUSE.”

“But what think you of him who sits in the place of a late slave? how well was he once?  I do not upbraid him:  He was once worth a hundred thousand sesterstias, but has not now a hair of his head that is not engaged; nor, so help me Hercules, is it his own fault:  There is not a better humour’d man than himself; but those rascally freed-men have cheated him of all:  For know, when the pot boyls, and a man’s estate declines, farewell friends.  And what trade do you think he drove?  He had the setting forth of grave men’s funerals; and with that eat like a prince:  He had his wild boars served up covered; pastry-meats, fowl-cooks, bakers:  More wine was thrown under his table than most men have in their cellars; a meer phantasm:  And when his estate was going, and he feared his creditors might fall upon him, he made an auction under this title: 

   “JULIUS PROCULUS WILL MAKE AN AUCTION
    OF SEVERAL GOODS HE HAS NO USE OF.”

The dish was by this time taken away, and the guests grown merry with wine, began to talk of what was done abroad, when Trimalchio broke the discourse; and leaning on his elbow, “This wine,” said he, “is worth drinking, and fish must swim; but do you think I am satisfied with that part of your supper you saw in the charger?  Is Ulysses no better known? what then; we ought to exercise our brains as well as our chaps; and shew, that we are not only lovers of learning, but understand it:  Peace rest my old tutor’s bones who made me a man amongst men:  No man can tell me any thing that is new to me; for, like him, I am master of the practicks.

“This heaven, that’s inhabited by twelve gods, turns it self into as many figures; and now ’tis Aries:  He that’s born under that sign has much cattle, much wooll, and to that a jolt-head, a brazen-face, and will be certainly a cuckold:  There are many scholars, advocates, and horned beasts, come into the world under this sign.  We praised our nativity-caster’s pleasantness, and he went on then again:  The whole Heaven is Taurus, and