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218 DARKNESS AND DAWN
quence that he not only saved his life but rose into high
favour. But it is time for him to leave off
making speeches.
Whenever he attempts a great oration now, half his hearers
laugh and the other half blush.'
'
And the young man near him ? '
'
King,' said Gallio, ' I shall begin to think that you are a
physiognomist, and are picking out some of the worst persons
present. That is another informer ;
his name is M. Aquillius
Eegulus. He is a fortune-hunter as well as an informer. He
has earned by infamy a fortune of sixty million sesterces. I
had better tell you at once that there are several of them
nearly as bad. That brazen-faced man is Suilius Neruliuus,
who helped Messalina to ruin Valerius Asiaticus. He was
convicted of taking bribes as a judge even in the reign of
Tiberius. And, worst of the w r hole company, there is Eprius
Marcellus, a splendid orator, but a man, as you see, of savage
countenance, whose eyes flash their fiercest flame, and whose
voice rolls its loudest thunder, when he is
denouncing any
person of special virtue.'
'
Well,' said Agrippa, ' unless I am tiring your courtesy 1
will turn to another table. Who is that extremely stout
personage with a red face, bushy eyebrows, and apoplectic
neck, who is
devouring his dainties with such brutal
voracity ?'
'
He is a very distinguished person named Vitellius, chiefly
distinguished, however, for eating and drinking. He is descended
from a cobbler and a cook. He began his childhood
with Tiberius at Caprese. His father set up golden statues of
the freedmen Narcissus and Pallas among his household gods,
by which merit he won a statue on the rostra. Our friend
then turned charioteer to please Gains, gambler to please
Claudius, and has now curried favour with Nero by urging
him to sing. His domestic history is not amiable. He had
by his first wife a son named Petroniauus, to whom she left
her wealth. Vitellius made him drink a cup of poison, which
he says that the youth had prepared for him'
'
I shall begin to believe,' said Agrippa, ' that the Greek
sage was right when he " said, Most men are bad." Why,
Berytus would not show more dubious characters nor even
Jerusalem.'
' '
But there are some honest men,' said Gallio, as well as