but who was very wealthy. Of all this in a few days there was
nothing left. What Charybdis was ever so voracious? Charybdis,
do I say? Charybdis, if she existed at all, was only one animal.
The ocean, I swear most solemnly, appears scarcely capable of
having swallowed up such numbers of things so widely scattered, and
distributed in such different places, with such rapidity. Nothing
was shut up, nothing sealed up, no list was made of anything. Whole
storehouses were abandoned to the most worthless of men. Actors seized
on this, actresses on that, the house was crowded with gamblers, and
full of drunken men, people were drinking all day, and that too in
many places, there were added to all this expense (for this fellow was
not invariably fortunate) heavy gambling losses. You might see in
the cellars of the slaves, couches covered with the most richly
embroidered counterpanes of Cnaeus Pompeius. Wonder not, then, that all
these things were so soon consumed. Such profligacy as that could have
devoured not only the patrimony of one individual, however ample it
might have been, (as indeed his was) but whole cities and kingdoms.

And then his houses and gardens! Oh the cruel audacity! Did you dare
to enter into that house? Did you dare to cross that most sacred
threshold? and to show your most profligate countenance to the
household gods who protect that abode? A house which for a long time
no one could behold, no one could pass by without tears! Are you not
ashamed to dwell so long in that house? one in which, stupid and
ignorant as you are, still you can see nothing which is not painful to
you.

XXVIII. When you behold those beaks of ships in the vestibule, and
those warlike trophies, do you fancy that you are entering into a
house which belongs to you? It is impossible. Although you are devoid