CHAPTER THE TWENTY-NINTH.
CHAPTER THE TWENTY-NINTH.
I almost fell backwards and broke my legs while staring at all this, for to the left, as we entered, not far from the porter's alcove, an enormous dog upon a chain was painted upon the wall, and above him this inscription, in capitals:
BEWARE THE DOG.
My companions laughed, but I plucked up my courage and did not hesitate,
but went on and examined the entire wall. There was a scene in a slave
market, the tablets hanging from the slaves' necks, and Trimalchio
himself, wearing his hair long, holding a caduceus in his hand, entering
Rome, led by the hand of Minerva. Then again the painstaking artist had
depicted him casting up accounts, and still again, being appointed
steward; everything being explained by inscriptions. Where the walls
gave way to the portico, Mercury was shown lifting him up by the chin,
to a tribunal placed on high. Near by stood Fortune with her horn of
plenty, and the three Fates, spinning golden flax. I also took note of a
group of runners, in the portico, taking their exercise under the eye of
an instructor, and in one corner was a large cabinet, in which was a very
small shrine containing silver Lares, a marble Venus, and a golden casket
by no means small, which held, so they told us, the first shavings of
Trimalchio's beard. I asked the hall-porter what pictures were in the
middle hall. "The Iliad and the Odyssey," he replied, "and the
gladiatorial games given under Laenas." There was no time in which to
examine them all.