Saturnalia

Priest Dear me, now! and I accounted for your kindness to slaves and prisoners from the story again; I thought that, as you were a slave yourself, you were paying slaves a compliment in memory of your own fetters.

Cronus Cease your ribald jests.

Priest Quite so; I will. But here is another question, please. Used mortals to play draughts in your time?

Cronus Surely; but not for hundreds or thousands of pounds like you; nuts were their highest stake; a man might lose without a sigh or a tear, when losing could not mean starvation.

Priest Wise men! though, as they were solid gold themselves, they were out of temptation. It occurred to me when you

mentioned that—suppose any one were to import one of your solid gold men into our age and exhibit him, what sort of a reception would the poor thing get? They would tear him to pieces, not a doubt of it. I see them rushing at him like the Maenads at Pentheus, the Thracian women at Orpheus, or his hounds at Actaeon, trying which could get the biggest bit of him; even in the holidays they do not forget their avarice; most of them regard the holy season as a sort of harvest. In which persuasion some of them loot their friends’ tables, others complain, quite unreasonably, of you, or smash their innocent dice in revenge for losses due to their own folly.