But Trimalchio turning to us with a pleasanter look, asked if the wine pleased us, “If not,” said he, “I’ll have it changed, and if it does, let me see it by your drinking:  I thank the gods I do not buy it, but have everything that may get an appetite growing on my own grounds without the city, which no man that I know but my self has; and yet it has been taken for Tarracino and Taranto.  I have a project to joyn Sicily to my lands on the continent, that when I have a mind to go into Africa, I may sail by my own coasts.  But prithee Agamemnon tell me what moot-point was it you argued to day; for tho’ I plead no causes my self, yet I have had a share of letters in my time; and that you may not think me sick of them now, have three libraries, the one Greek, the other two Latin; therefore as you love me tell me what was the state of the question:”  “The poor and the rich are enemies,” said Agamemnon:  “And what is poor,” answered Trimalchio?  “Spoke like a gentleman,” replyed Agamemnon.  But making nothing of the matter, “If it be so,” said Trimalchio, “where lies the dispute?  And if it be not so, ’tis nothing.”

While we all humm’d this and the like stuff, “I beseech ye,” said he, “my dear Agamemnon, do you remember the twelve labours of Hercules, or the story of Ulysses, how a Cyclop put his thumb out of joint with a mawkin?  I read such things in Homer when I was a boy; nay, saw my self the Sybil of Curna hanging in a glass bottle:  And when the boys asked her, ‘Sybil, what wouldst thou?’ She answered, ‘I would die.’”

He had not yet run to the end of the rope, when an over-grown hog was brought to the table.  We all wondered at the quickness of the thing, and swore a capon could not be dress’d in the time; and that the more, because the hog seemed larger than was the boar, we had a little before:  When Trimalchio looking more intent upon him, “What, what,” said he, “are not his guts taken out?  No, (so help me Hercules) they are not!  Bring hither, bring hither this rogue of a cook.”  And when he stood hanging his head before us, and said, he was so much in haste he forgot it.  “How, forgot it,” cry’d out Trimalchio!  “Do ye think he has given it no reasoning of pepper and cummin?  Strip him:”  When in a trice ’twas done, and himself set between two tormentors:  However, we all interceded for him, as a fault that might now and then happen, and therefore beg’d his pardon; but if he ever did the like, there was no one would speak for him; tho’ for my part, I think he deserved what he got:  And so turning to Agamemnon’s ear, “This fellow,” said I, “must be a naughty knave; could any one forget to bowel a hog?  I would not (so help me Hercules) have forgiven him if he had served me so with a single fish.”  But Trimalchio it seems, had somewhat else in his head; for falling a laughing, “You,” said he, “that have so short a memory, let’s see if you can do it now.”  On which, the cook having gotten his coat again, took up a knife, and with a feigned trembling, ripp’d up the hog’s belly long and thwart, when immediately its own weight tumbled out a heap of hogs-puddings and sausages.