But his passion for dancing was interrupted at this stage by a
stenographer who read aloud, as if he were reading the public records,
"On the seventh of the Kalends of July, on Trimalchio's estates near
Cumae, were born thirty boys and forty girls: five hundred pecks of wheat
were taken from the threshing floors and stored in the granaries: five
hundred oxen were put to yoke: the slave Mithridates was crucified on the
same date for cursing the genius of our master, Gaius: on said date ten
million sesterces were returned to the vaults as no sound investment
could be found: on said date, a fire broke out in the gardens at Pompeii,
said fire originating in the house of Nasta, the bailiff." "What's
that?" demanded Trimalchio. "When were the gardens at Pompeii bought for
me?" "Why, last year," answered the stenographer, "for that reason the
item has not appeared in the accounts." Trimalchio flew into a rage at
this. "If I'm not told within six months of any real estate that's
bought for me," he shouted, "I forbid it's being carried to my account at
all!" Next, the edicts of his aediles were read aloud, and the wills of
some of his foresters in which Trimalchio was disinherited by a codicil,
then the names of his bailiffs, and that of a freedwoman who had been
repudiated by a night watchman, after she had been caught in bed with a
bath attendant, that of a porter banished to Baioe, a steward who was
standing trial, and lastly the report of a decision rendered in the
matter of a lawsuit, between some valets. When this was over with, some
rope dancers came in and a very boresome fool stood holding a ladder,
ordering his boy to dance from rung to rung, and finally at the top, all
this to the music of popular airs; then the boy was compelled to jump
through blazing hoops while grasping a huge wine jar with his teeth.
Trimalchio was the only one who was much impressed by these tricks,
remarking that it was a thankless calling and adding that in all the
world there were just two things which could give him acute pleasure,
rope-dancers and horn blowers; all other entertainments were nothing
but nonsense. "I bought a company of comedians," he went on, "but I
preferred for them to put on Atellane farces, and I ordered my
flute-player to play Latin airs only."