letters-patent, to be "very pleasant
companions, and friends fit for all occasions." He made an appointment
to sup with Sestius Gallus, a lewd and prodigal old fellow, who had been
disgraced by Augustus, and reprimanded by himself but a few days before
in the senate-house; upon condition that he should not recede in the
least from his usual method of entertainment, and that they should be
attended at table by naked girls. He preferred a very obscure candidate
for the quaestorship, before the most noble competitors, only for taking
off, in pledging him at table, an amphora of wine at a draught [343]. He
presented Asellius Sabinus with two hundred thousand sesterces, for
writing a dialogue, in the way of dispute, betwixt the truffle and the
fig-pecker, the oyster and the thrush. He likewise instituted a new
office to administer to his voluptuousness, to which he appointed Titus
Caesonius Priscus, a Roman knight.

XLIII. In his retreat at Capri [344], he also contrived an apartment
containing couches, and adapted to the secret practice of abominable
lewdness, where he entertained companies of girls and catamites, and
assembled from all quarters inventors of unnatural copulations, whom he
called Spintriae, who defiled one another in his presence, to inflame by
the exhibition the languid appetite. He had several chambers set round
with pictures and statues in the most lascivious attitudes, and furnished
with the books of Elephantis, that none might want a pattern for the
execution of any lewd project that was prescribed him. He likewise
contrived recesses in woods and groves for the gratification of lust,
where young persons of both sexes prostituted themselves in caves and
hollow rocks, in the disguise of little Pans and Nymphs [345]. So that
he was publicly and commonly called, by an abuse of the name of the
island, Caprineus. [346]

XLIV. But he was still more infamous, if possible, for an (220)
abomination not fit to be mentioned or heard, much less credited. [347]
------------------When a picture, painted by Parrhasius, in which the
artist had represented Atalanta in the act of submitting to Meleager's
lust in a most unnatural way, was bequeathed to him, with this proviso,
that if the subject was offensive to him, he might receive in lieu of it
a million of sesterces, he not only chose the picture, but hung it up in
his bed-chamber. It is also reported that, during a sacrifice, he was so
captivated with the f