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L We were seated as ordered and, initiated by a wonderful appetizer, were drenched in even more Falernian a famous, high-quality wine from the Falernian region wine. We were served several courses, and as we began to drift into sleep, Quartilla said, "Is it like this? Do you even have sleep on your mind, when you know that a vigil is owed to the genius of Priapus the god of fertility and gardens?"
5 As Ascyltos, weighed down by so many troubles, drifted off to sleep, 22 the maid who had been driven away by the injury Likely referring to a previous conflict or insult. rubbed his entire face with thick soot and painted his lips and shoulders while he was unaware, as if he were sleeping.
By now I, too, exhausted by so many evils, had taken a tiny taste, as it were, of sleep. The whole household, both inside and out, had done the same, and some lay scattered around the feet of those reclining, others clung to the walls, and some remained on the very threshold with their heads together. The lamps, too, exhausted of oil, were casting a faint and final light, when two Syrians entered the dining room to loot [a wine jar], and while they fought greedily over the silver, they broke the open wine jar. The table also fell along with the silver, and a cup, which happened to have been shaken from a reclining couch, struck the head of a girl who was nodding off. At this blow, she cried out, and at the same time, she exposed the thieves and roused a portion of the drunks. Those Syrians who had come for the plunder, after they realized they were discovered, collapsed together alongside the couch, so that you would think this had been prearranged, and they began to snore as if they had been sleeping for a long time.
By now, the dining-hall manager tricliniarches the steward in charge of the dining room had also woken up and poured oil into the dying lamps, and the boys had wiped their eyes for a moment and returned to their service, when a cymbal player entered and, clashing her cymbals, woke everyone up. The feast was thus restored, and Quartilla again called us to drink. The cymbal player helped the merriment of the carousing guests.
A man enters, described as a cinaedus, a man kept for pederastic purposes.
A cinaedus a man kept for pederasty enters, the most insipid man of all and clearly worthy of that house, who, as he groaned with broken-wristed affectation, poured forth verses of this kind:
30 "Come here, come here quickly now, you flamboyant perverts spatalocinaedi effeminate and lewd men,
stretch your feet, add to the pace, fly together with your soles,
with supple hips, agile buttocks, and shameless hands,
soft, ancient ones, cut by the hand of a Deliacus a slave-boy from Delos, often trained for service."
Having used up his verses, he spat upon me with the foulest kiss. Soon he also came onto the couch and with all his might uncovered me as I resisted. He ground away at my groin for a long time and to no avail. Streams of sweating perfume acacia a sweet-smelling resin/perfume flowed down my forehead, and there was so much white lead creta a cosmetic powder used for whitening the skin between the wrinkles of his cheeks that you would think a wall exposed to the rain was deteriorating.