Avenienus says that the sister of Faustus, the son of Sylla, had two lovers—­one of them, Fulvius, the son of a fuller; the other Pomponius, nick-named Spot.  “I wonder,” he said, “that my sister should have a spot, when she has a fuller.”

The remaining guests speak more at length, and their discourses occupy a considerable portion of the book.

The example set by Martial gradually led to a considerable development of epigrammatic literature.  A humorous epigram survives, written by Trajan on a man with a large nose: 

  “By placing your nose and gaping mouth opposite the sun
   You will tell wayfarers the hour.”

Justinian in the sixth century is supposed to have assisted Paul the Silentiary—­a sort of master of the ceremonies—­in his compositions; but it may be hoped that the Emperor was not an accomplice in producing the impurities with which they are disfigured.  Here and there, however, a few sweet flowers are found in his poisonous garland.  We may hope that he often received such a cool welcome as that he commemorates in his “Drenched Lover.”

Hierocles and Philagrius are supposed to have lived in the fifth century, but the jests and stories which bear their names seem to be much later.  They are based upon violations of the primary laws of nature and mind, but have not the subtlety of the syllogistic quibbles, which were the work of learned grammarians or the logicians of a better period.  Being little more than Bulls, they excite scarcely any emotion and no laughter, although evincing a certain cleverness.  The hero is generally a “Scholastic,” who is represented as a sort of fool.  A friend of Scholasticus going abroad asks him to buy him some books.  Scholasticus forgets all about it, and when he meets his friend on his return, says, “By the way, I never received that letter you wrote about the books.”  A man meeting Scholasticus says, “The slave you sold me died.”  “Did he?  By the gods,” replied the other, “he never played me that trick.”  Scholasticus meeting a friend exclaims, “Why, I heard you were dead!” The other replies, “Well, I tell you that I’m alive.”  “Yes,” persists Scholasticus, “but the man who told me so was more veracious than you!” A promising son apostrophizes his father, “Base varlet! don’t you see how you have wronged me?  If you had never been born and stood in the way I should have come into all my grandfather’s money.”

The humour which has come to us from classic times, brings the life of ancient Greece and Rome near to our own firesides.  It is not that of a primitive or decaying civilization, but of one advanced and matured, resembling our own, in which density of population has brought a clashing of interests, and enlarged knowledge has produced a variety of thought upon a great multiplicity of home and foreign subjects.  We can thus bridge over two thousand years, and obtain, as it were, a grasp of the Past, in which we find men so very like ourselves, not only in their strong emotions, but in their little conceits and vanities, and their opinions of each other.