his night of debauch into his day of business, turning with heavy wits
and an aching head to that round of formal duties which consumed the
life of a Roman gentleman.

So it was with Emilius Flaccus that March morning. He and his fellow
senator, Caius Balbus, had passed the night in one of those gloomy
drinking bouts to which the Emperor Domitian summoned his chosen friends
at the high palace on the Palatine. Now, having reached the portals of
the house of Flaccus, they stood together under the pomegranate-fringed
portico which fronted the peristyle and, confident in each other's tried
discretion, made up by the freedom of their criticism for their long
self-suppression of that melancholy feast.

"If he would but feed his guests," said Balbus, a little red-faced,
choleric nobleman with yellow-shot angry eyes. "What had we? Upon my
life, I have forgotten. Plovers' eggs, a mess of fish, some bird or
other, and then his eternal apples."

"Of which," said Flaccus, "he ate only the apples. Do him the justice
to confess that he takes even less than he gives. At least they cannot
say of him as of Vitellius, that his teeth beggared the empire."

"No, nor his thirst either, great as it is. That fiery Sabine wine of
his could be had for a few sesterces the amphora. It is the common
drink of the carters at every wine-house on the country roads. I longed
for a glass of my own rich Falernian or the mellow Coan that was bottled
in the year that Titus took Jerusalem. Is it even now too late?
Could we not wash this rasping stuff from our palates?"

"Nay, better come in with me now and take a bitter draught ere you go