It certainly cannot, I am sure, be as pleasant to have your fill by yourselves, as they say lions and lone wolves do, as to mix with clever fellows and those who try in every way to please. In the first place they will not allow your banquet to be deaf and dumb. No, their company means convivial stories, harmless jests, and all sorts of expressions of friendship; these are the pleasantest sorts of pastimes, dear to Dionysus and Aphrodite, dear too to the Graces. Then they will talk to everyone next day of your sociability and get you liked. And this is rightly worth a great deal.
I will ask you something. Let us suppose the poor went about with their eyes shut; wouldn’t you be cross when you had no one to show your purple clothes, your thronging attendants, the size of your rings? I leave aside the plots, the hatred you must stir up in the poor against you if you choose to enjoy your luxury alone. Terrible are the curses they threaten to utter against you. May they never be constrained to utter them! For then you will taste neither sausages nor cakes, except what the dog may have left, your lentil-soup will have salt-fish dissolved in it, your boar and deer while they’re being roasted will plan escape from the oven to the hills, and your birds, wingless though they be,—shoo there!—they will be flying at full stretch to the homes of the selfsame poor. And worst of all, the prettiest of your wine-servers will turn bald all at once, and that after breaking your jar.
