wonder it e’er bore foot-ball-players, herds-men, and such as can shift for themselves.  Under Gemini are foaled coach-horses, oxen calved, great baubles, and such as can claw both sides are born.  I was born my self under Cancer, and therefore stand on many feet, as having large possessions both by sea and land.  For Cancer suits one as well as the other, and therefore I put nothing upon him, that I might not press my own geniture.  Under Leo, spendthrifts and bullies:  under Virgo, women, runagates, and such as wear iron garters:  under Libra, butchers, slipslop-makers, and men of business:  under Scorpio, empoisoners and cut-throats:  under Sagittary, such as are goggle-ey’d, herb-women, and bacon-stealers:  under Capricorn, poor helpless rascals, to whom yet Nature intended horns to defend themselves:  under Aquarius, cooks and paunch-bellies:  under Pisces, caterers and orators:  And so the world goes round like a mill, and is never without its mischief; that men be either born or perish.  But for that tuft of herbs in the middle, and the honey-comb upon it, I do nothing without just reason for it:  Our mother the earth is in the middle, made round like an egg, and has all good things in her self, like a honeycomb.”

“Most learnedly,” we all cry’d; and lifting our hands, swore, neither Hipparebus nor Aratus were to be compared to him, till at last other servants came in and spread coverlets on the beds, on which were painted nets, men in ambush with hunting-poles, and whatever appertained to hunting:  Nor could we yet tell what to make of it:  when we heard a great cry without, and a pack of beagles came and ran round the table, and after them a large trey, on which was a boar of the first magnitude, with a cap on his head, (such as slaves at their making free, had set on theirs in token of liberties) on his tusks hung two wicker baskets, the one full of dates, the other of almonds; and about him lay little pigs of marchpane, as if they were sucking:  They signified a sow had farrowed, and hang there as presents for the guests to carry away with them.

To the cutting up this boar, here came not he that had carried about the fowl as before, but a swinging fellow with a two-handed beard, buskins on his leggs, and a short embroidered coat; who drawing his wood-knife, made a large hole in the boar’s side, out of which flew a company of blackbirds:  Then fowlers stood ready with their engines and caught them in a trice as they fluttered about the room:  On which Trimalchio ordering to every man his bird, “See,” said he, “what kind of acorns this wild boar fed on:”  When presently the boys took off the baskets and distributed the dates and almonds among the guests.

In the mean time, I, who had private thoughts of my own, was much concerned, to know why the boar was brought in with a cap upon his head; and therefore having run out my tittle-tattle, I told my interpreter what troubled me:  To which he answered, “Your boy can even tell ye what it means, for there’s no riddle in it, but all as clear as day.  This boar stood the last of yester-nights supper, and dismiss’d by the guests, returns now as a free-man among us.”  I curst my dulness, and asked him no more questions, that I might not be thought to have never eaten before with men of sense.