The really interesting part of their adventure is the dinner at the house of Trimalchio, a rich freedman, to which these rascals were invited. Trimalchio is probably in many traits drawn from life, but the picture of himself, of his wife and his associates, is a work of genius worthy of Fielding or Smollett or Le Sage. Petronius, it is clear, enjoyed his work, and, in spite of his contempt for the vulgar ambition and the coarseness and commonness of Trimalchio’s class, he has a liking for a certain simplicity and honest good nature in Trimalchio. The freedman tells the story of his own career(762) without reserve, and with a certain pride in the virtue and frugality, according to his standards, which have made him what he is. He also exults in his shrewdness and business capacity. His motto has always been, “You are worth just what you have.” “Buy cheap and sell dear.” Coming as a little slave boy from Asia, probably in the reign of Augustus,(763) he became the favourite of his master, and more than the favourite of his mistress. He found himself in the end the real master of the household, and, on his patron’s death, he was left joint-heir to his property with the emperor. But he had ambitions beyond even such a fortune. He became a ship-owner on a great scale. He lost a quarter of a million in a single storm, and at once proceeded to build more and larger ships. Money poured in; all his ventures prospered. He bought estates in Italy, Sicily, and Africa. Some of his purchases he had never seen.(764) He built himself a stately house, with marble porticoes, four great banqueting-halls, and twenty sleeping-rooms.(765) Everything to satisfy human wants was produced upon his lands. He was a man of infinite enterprise. He had improved the breed of his flocks by importing rams from Tarentum. He had bees from Hymettus in his hives. He sent to India for mushroom spawn.(766) A gazette was regularly brought out, full of statistics, and all the daily incidents on his estates;(767) the number of slave births and deaths; a slave crucified for blaspheming the genius of the master; a fire in the bailiff’s house; the divorce of a watchman’s wife, who had been caught in adultery with the bathman; a sum of HS.100,000 paid into the chest, and waiting for investment—these are some of the items of news. Trimalchio, who bears now, after the fashion of his class, the good Roman name of Caius Pompeius, has risen to the dignity of Sevir Augustalis in his municipality;(768) he is one of the foremost persons in it, with an overwhelming sense of the dignity of wealth, and with a ridiculous affectation of artistic and literary culture, which he parades with a delightful unconsciousness of his blunders.