Wine of Falernum is yours."

It must have been a lineal descendant of one of the parasites of Plautus
who wrote:[75]

"A barbarian he is to me
At whose house I'm not asked to dine."

Here is a sentiment which sounds very modern:

"The common opinion is this:
That property should be divided."[76]

This touch of modernity reminds one of another group of verses which
brings antiquity into the closest possible touch with some present-day
practices. The Romans, like ourselves, were great travellers and
sightseers, and the marvels of Egypt in particular appealed to them, as
they do to us, with irresistible force. Above all, the great statue of
Memnon, which gave forth a strange sound when it was struck by the first
rays of the rising sun, drew travellers from far and near. Those of us who
know the Mammoth Cave, Niagara Falls, the Garden of the Gods, or some
other of our natural wonders, will recall how fond a certain class of
visitors are of immortalizing themselves by scratching their names or a
sentiment on the walls or the rocks which form these marvels. Such
inscriptions We find on the temple walls in Egypt--three of them appear
on the statue of Memnon, recording in verse the fact that the writers had
visited the statue and heard the voice of the god at sunrise. One of these
Egyptian travellers, a certain Roman lady journeying up the Nile, has
scratched these verses on a wall of the temple at Memphis:[77]