stay in our parts, and bring
Pilia with you, for that is but fair, and Tullia wishes it much. Upon my
word you have bought a very fine place. I hear that your gladiators fight
capitally. If you had cared to hire them out, you might have cleared
your expenses at these two last public shows. But we can talk about this
hereafter. Be sure to come; and do your best about the clerks, if you love
me".

The Roman gentleman of elegant and accomplished tastes, keeping a troop of
private gladiators, and thinking of hiring them out, to our notions, is a
curious combination of character; but the taste was not essentially more
brutal than the prize-ring and the cock-fights of the last century.

II. PAETUS.

Another of Cicero's favourite correspondents was Papirius Paetus, who
seems to have lived at home at ease, and taken little part in the
political tumults of his day. Like Atticus, he was an Epicurean, and
thought more of the pleasures of life than of its cares and duties. Yet
Cicero evidently took great pleasure in his society, and his letters to
him are written in the same familiar and genial tone as those to his old
school-fellow. Some of them throw a pleasant light upon the social
habits of the day. Cicero had had some friends staying with him at his
country-seat at Tusculum, to whom, he says, he had been giving lessons in
oratory. Dolabella, his son-in-law, and Hirtius, the future consul, were
among them. "They are my scholars in declamation, and I am theirs in
dinner-eating; for I conclude you have heard (you seem to hear everything)
that they come to me to declaim, and I go to them for dinners. 'Tis all
very well for you to swear that you cannot entertain me in such grand
fashion as I am used to, but it is of use.... Better be victimised by your
friend than by your debtors, as you have been. After all, I don't require
such a banquet as leaves a great waste behind it; a little will do, only
handsomely served and well cooked. I remember your telling me about a
dinner of Phamea's--well, it need not be such a late affair as that, nor
so grand in other respects; nay, if you persist in giving me one of your
mother's old family dinners, I can stand even that. My new reputation
for good living has reached you, I find, before my arrival, and you are
alarmed at it; but, pray, put no trust in your ante-courses--I have given
up that altogether. I used to spoil my appetite, I remember, upon your oil
and sliced sausages.... One expens