And their banquets? I swear, I can't call these leisure time when I see how anxiously they arrange their silverware. They fuss over how their servants' uniforms are tied. They hold their breath watching the cook prepare the wild boar. When the signal comes, slave boys sprint to their tasks. Birds must be carved to exact specifications. Miserable young servants carefully clean up when drunk guests spit. Through all this, these hosts want people to think they have good taste and live grandly. Their obsession with appearances follows them everywhere — they can't even eat or drink without worrying about how it looks.
As for their banquets, by Hercules, I cannot reckon them among their unoccupied times when I see with what anxious care they set out their plate, how laboriously they arrange the girdles of their waiters' tunics, how breathlessly they watch to see how the cook dishes up the wild boar, with what speed, when the signal is given, the slave-boys run to perform their duties, how skilfully birds are carved into pieces of the right size, how painstakingly wretched youths wipe up the spittings of drunken men. By these means men seek credit for taste and grandeur, and their vices follow them so far into their privacy that they can neither eat nor drink without a view to effect.