Saturnalia

Ah, Cronus, there is the sting that rankles beyond endurance —that one should loll on cloth of finest purple, overload his stomach with all delicacies, and keep perpetual feast with guests to wish him joy, while I and my like dream over the problematic acquisition of a sixpence to provide us a loaf white or

Further let them entertain us by fours and fives, and not as they now do, but more on principles of equality; let us all share alike. The way now is for one to gorge himself on some dainty, keeping the servant waiting about him till he is pleased to have done; but when it reaches us, as we are in the act of helping ourselves it is whisked off, and we have but that fleeting glimpse of the entrée or fag-end of a sweet. Or in comes a sucking-pig; half of it, including the head, falls to the host; the rest of us share the bones, slightly disguised. And pray charge the butlers not to make us call unto seven times, but bring us our wine when we ask for it first; and let it be a fullsized cup and a bumper, as it is for their masters. And the same wine, please, for every one at table; where is the legal authority for my host’s growing mellow on the choicest bouquet while my stomach is turned with mere must?

These things if you correct and reform, you will have made life life, and your feast a feast. If not, we will leave the feasting to them, and just kneel down and pray that as they come from the bath the slave may knock down and spill their wine, the cook smoke their sauce and absent-mindedly pour the pea-soup over the caviare, the dog steal in while the scullions are busy and make away with the whole of the sausage and most of the pastry. Boar and buck and sucking-pigs, may they rival in their roasting Homer’s oxen of the Sun! only let them not

But we can touch them more closely than that. May Indian gold-ants[*](Herodotus, iii. 102. ‘And in this desert and sandy tract’ (in North India) ‘are produced ants, which are in size smaller than dogs but larger than foxes... These ants there make their dwelling under ground and carry up the sand just in the same manner as the ants found in the land of the Hellenes ... and the sand which is brought up coatains gold.’—Macaulay’s translation.) come by night, unearth their hoards and convey them to their own state treasury! May their wardrobekeepers be negligent, and our good friends the mice make sievework of their raiment, fit for nothing but tunny-nets! May every pretty curled minion, every Hyacinth and Achilles and Narcissus they keep, turn bald as he hands the cup! let his hair fall off and his chin grow bristly, till he is like the peak-bearded fellows on the comic stage, hairy and prickly on cheek and temple, and on the top smooth and bare! These are specimens of the petitions we will send up, if they will not moderate their selfishness, acknowledge themselves trustees for the public, and let us have our fair share.

Cronus to his well-beloved me, Greeting.

My good man, why this absurdity of writing to me about the state of the world, and advising redistribution of property? It is none of my business; the present ruler must see to that. It is an odd thing you should be the only person unaware that

Speaking generally, however, I must tell you that you are all in error; it is quite a misconception to imagine the rich in perfect bliss; they have no monopoly of life’s pleasures because they can eat expensive food, drink too much good wine, revel in beauty, and go in soft raiment. You have no idea of how it works out. The resulting anxieties are very considerable. A ceaseless watch must be kept, or stewards will be lazy and dishonest, wine go sour, and grain be weeviled; the burglar will be off with the rich man’s plate; agitators will persuade the people that he is meditating a coup d'état. And these are but a minute fraction of their troubles; if you could know their apprehensions and cares, you would think riches a thing to be avoided at all costs.

Why, look at me; if wealth and dominion were good things, do you suppose I should have been fool enough to relinquish them, make room for others, and sit down like a common man content with a subordinate position? No, it was because I knew all the conditions the rich and powerful cannot escape that I had the sense to abdicate.

You made a great fuss in your letter about their gorging on boar’s head and pastry while your festival consists of a mouthful of cress or thyme or onion. Now, what are the facts? As to the immediate sensation, on the palate, there is little to choose between the two diets—not much to complain of in either; but with the after effects it is quite otherwise. You get up next morning without either the headache the rich man’s wine leaves behind, or the disgusting queasiness that results from his surfeit of food. To these effects he adds those of nights given to lust and debauchery, and as likely as not reaps the fruit of his luxury in consumption, pneumonia, or dropsy. It is quite a difficult matter to find a rich man whois not deathly pale; most of them by the time they are old men use eight legs belonging to other people instead of their own two; they are gold without and rags within, like the stage hero’s robes. No fish dinners for you, I admit; you hardly know what fish tastes like; but then observe, no gout or pneumonia either, nor other ailments due to other excesses. Apart from that, though, the rich themselves do not enjoy their daily over-indulgence in these things; you may see them as eager, and more, for a dinner of herbs as ever you are for game.

I say nothing of their other vexations—one has a disreputable son, another a wife who prefers his slave to himself, another realizes that his minion yields to necessity what he would not to affection; there are numberless things, in fact, that you know nothing about; you only see their gold and purple, or catch sight of them behind their high-steppers, and open your mouths and abase yourselves before them. If you left them severely alone, if you did not turn to stare at their silver-plated carriages, if you did not while they were talking eye their emerald rings, or finger their clothes and admire the fineness of the texture, if you let them keep their riches to_themselves, in short, I can assure you they would seek you out and implore

You will find that most of their acquisitions are made for you; they are not for their own use, but for your astonishment. I am one that knows both lives, and I write this for your consolation, You should keep the feast with the thought in your minds that both parties will soon leave this earthly scene, they resigning their wealth, and you your poverty. However, I will write to them as I promised, and am confident that they will not disregard what I say.

Cronus to the Rich, Greeting.

I lately received a letter from the poor, complaining that you give them no share of your prosperity. They petitioned me in general terms to institute community of goods and let each have his part: it was only right that equality should be established, instead of one’s having a superfluity while another was cut off from pleasure altogether. I told them that had better be left to Zeus; but their particular festival grievances I considered to belong to my own jurisdiction, and so I undertook to write to you. These demands of theirs are moderate enough, it seems to me. How can we possibly keep the feast (they ask), when we are numb with frost and pinched with hunger? if I meant them to participate, I must compel you to bestow on them any clothes that you do not require, or find too heavy for your own use, and also to vouchsafe them just a slight sprinkling of gold. If you do this, they engage not to dispute your right to your property any further in the court of Zeus, Otherwise they will demand redistribution the next time he takes his seat

They also requested me to mention the subject of dinners; you were to ask them to dinner, instead of closing your doors and living daintily by yourselves. When you do entertain a few of them at long intervals, they say you make it rather a humiliation than an enjoyment; everything is done to degrade them—that monstrous piece of snobbishness, for instance, the giving different people different wines. It is really a little discreditable to them that they do not get up and walk out in such a case, leaving you in sole possession. But that is not all; they tell me there is not enough to drink either; your butlers’ ears are as impervious as those of Odysseus’s crew. Other vulgarities I can hardly bring myself to name. The helpings and the waiters are complained of; the latter linger about you till you are full to repletion, but post by your poor guests at a run—with other meannesses hardly conceivable in the house of a gentleman. For mirth and good-fellowship it is essential that all the company be on the same footing; if your carver does not secure equality, better not have one, but a general scramble.

It rests with you to obviate these complaints and secure honour and affection; a liberality that costs you nothing appreciable will impress itself permanently by its timeliness on the memory of recipients. Why, your cities would not be habitable, if you had not poor fellow citizens to make their numberless contributions to your well-being; you would have no admirers of your wealth if you lived alone with it in the obscurity of isolation, Let there be plenty to see it and to marvel at your silver and your exquisite tables; let them drink to your health, and as they drink examine the goblet, feel and guess at its weight, enjoy its storied workmanship enhanced by

It is surely not so agreeable to gorge yourself alone, like a lion or an old wolf that has deserted the pack, as to have the company of well-bred people who do their best to make things pleasant. In the first place they banish dull silence from your table, and are ready with a good story, a harmless jest, or some other contribution to entertainment; that is the way to please the Gods of wine and love and beauty. And secondly they win you love by spreading abroad next morning your hospitable fame. These are things that would be cheap at a considerable price.

For I put it to you whether, if blindness were a regular concomitant of poverty (fancy is free), you would be indifferent to the want of any one to impress with your purple clothes and attendant crowds and massive rings. I will not dwell on the certainty that plots and ill-feeling will be excited against you by your exclusiveness; suffice it to say that the curses they threaten to imprecate upon you are positively horrible; God forbid they should really be driven to it! You would never taste sausage or pastry more; if the dog’s depredations stopped short of completeness, you would still find a fishy flavour in your soup, the boar and the buck would effect an escape to the mountains from off the very roasting-jack, and your birds (no matter for their being plucked) would be off with a whiz and a whirr to the poor men’s tables. Worst of all, your pretty cup-bearers would turn bald in a twinkling—the wine, by the way, having

IV

The Rich to Cronus, Greeting.

Do you really suppose, Sire, that these letters of the poor have gone exclusively to your address? Zeus is quite deaf with their clamour, their appeals for redistribution, their complaints of Destiny for her unfairness and of us for refusing them relief. But Zeus is Zeus; be knows where the fault lies, and consequently pays them very little attention. However, as the authority is at present with you, to you we will address our defence. Having before our eyes all that you have laid down on the beauty of assisting out of our abundance those who are in want, and the delight of associating and making merry with the poor, we adopted the principle of treating them on such equal terms that a guest could not possibly have anything to complain of.

On their side, they started with professions of wanting very little indeed; but that was only the thin edge of the wedge. Now, if their demands are not instantly and literally satisfied, there is bad temper and offence and talk; their tales may be as false as they will, every one believes them: they have been there; they must know! Our only choice was between a refusal that meant detestation, and a total surrender that meant speedy ruin and transfer to the begging class for ourselves.

But the worst is tocome, At table that filling of the stomach (of which we have by no means the monopoly) does not so

For these among other reasons we determined to protect ourselves by giving them the entrée no longer. But if they engage under your guarantee to make only the moderate demands they now profess, and to abstain from outraging their hosts’ feelings, what is ours shall be theirs; we shall be only too glad of their company. We will comply with your suggestions about the clothes and, as far as may be, about the gold, and in fact will do our duty. We ask them on their side to give up trading on our hospitality, and to be our friends instead of our toadies and parasites. If only they will behave themselves, you shall have no reason to complain of us.