Juvenal

“ Is a dinner worth all the insults with which you have to pay for it? Is your hunger so importunate, when it might, with greater dignity, be shivering where you are, and munching dirty scraps of dog's bread?
12First of all be sure of this—that when bidden to dinner, you receive payment in full for all your past services. A meal is the return which your grand friendship yields you; the great man scores it against you, and though it come but seldom, he scores it against you all the same. ”

“ Nevertheless, if you wish to be yourself a great man, and a great man's lord, let there be no little Aeneas playing about your halls, nor yet a little daughter, more sweet than he; nothing will so endear you to your friend as a barren wife. [17] But as things now are, though your Mycale pour into your paternal bosom three boys at a birth, Virro will be charmed with the chattering brood, and will order little green jackets to be given them, and little nuts, and pennies too if they be asked for, when the little parasites present themselves at his table. ”

“ His one object, let me tell you, is to compel you to pour out your wrath in tears, and to keep gnashing your molars against each other. You think yourself a free man, and guest of a grandee; he thinks—and he is not far wrong—that you have been captured by the savoury odours of his kitchen. ”

“ Before mine host stands the very pink of Asia, a youth bought for a sum bigger than the entire fortune of the warlike Tullus or Ancus, more valuable, in short, than all the chattels of all the kings of Rome. That being so, when you are thirsty look to your swarthy Ganymede. The page who has cost so many thousands cannot mix a drink for a poor man ”

“ Aurelia sells the fish she has received as a present from Laenas. ↑ The word civiliter, from which our word "civil" comes, meant "as a citizen and an equal." ↑ The Aetolian hero who slew the Calydonian boar. ↑ Thunder was supposed to be favourable to the growth of truffles. ↑ i.e. as if you were a free-born Roman with the three necessary names—the praenomen, the nomen, and the cognomen. ”