Zocolanti occupying that very Capitol to which Paulus Emilus led King Perseus, the descendant of Alexander, chained to his triumphal car; that temple to which the Scipios had brought the spoils of Carthage, and in which Pompey triumphed over Asia, Africa, and Europe. But even more bitter were my tears when I recalled the feast that Cæsar spread for our ancestors on twenty-two thousand tables, and when I compared the congiaria, that immense free distribution of corn, with the scanty and poor bread that you eat to-day, sold to you at so high a price by the apostolic chamber. Alas! you cannot even sow your soil without the permission of these apostles; and, indeed, what have you with which to sow it? There is not a citizen among you, save a few that live in the Trastevere quarter, who has a plough. Your God fed five thousand men, to say nothing of the women and children, with five loaves and two gudgeons, according to St. John; four thousand men, according to Matthew.[1] You, Romans, are made to swallow the gudgeon[2] without receiving any bread. The
- ↑ Matthew gives five thousand men and five loaves in chapter xiv., and four thousand men and five loaves in chapter xv. Apparently, they are two different miracles, which makes in all nine thousand men and at least nine thousand women. If you add nine thousand children, the total number of diners amounts to twenty-seven thousand—which is considerable.
- ↑ A pun of which the point is lost in English. The French phrase, to make a man "swallow the gudgeon," means to "gull" a man. Voltaire turns the "two little fishes" of the gospel into gudgeons to accommodate his joke. — J. M.
