to say that a fire had recently broken out in the _Gardens of Pompey_, when
he is interrupted by Trimalchio asking when the _Gardens of Pompey_
had been purchased for him, and is informed that they had been in his
possession for a year.[7] So it appears that Trimalchio, in whom Petronius
has personified the pride, the greed, and the vices of the rich men of his
time, did not know that he was the possessor of a magnificent domain. In
another place Petronius causes Trimalchio to say that everything which
could appeal to the appetite of his companions is raised upon one of
his farms which he has not yet visited and which is situated in the
neighborhood of Terracina and Tarentum, towns[8] which are separated by a
distance of 300 miles. Finally, led on by his immoderate desire to augment
his riches and increase his possessions, the hero of Petronius asks but one
thing before he dies, i.e., to add Apulia[9] to his domains; he, however,
admits that he would not take it amiss to join Sicily to some lands which
he owned in that locality or to be able, should envy not check him, to pass
into Africa[10] without departing from his own possessions. All this has
a basis of fact. Trimalchio would never have been created, had not the
favorite freedmen of Nero crushed the people by their luxury, debauches,
and scandals.

But the condition of society pictured by Seneca and Petronius is that of
the first century of the Christian era and might not be taken to represent
the condition of affairs in the second century B.C., had we not some data
which go to prove the concentration of property, the disparity between
classes, and the depopulation of Italy within the same century as the
Gracchi. Cicero was not considered one of the richest men in Rome, yet he
possessed many villas, and he has himself told us that one of them cost
him 3,500,000 sesterces, about $147,000.[11] Cornelia, the mother of the
Gracchi, had a country residence in the vicinity of Micenum which cost[12]
75,000 drachmae ($14,000); Lucullus some years afterwards bought it for