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With Lucullus and Apicius: Trimalchio

Nor were the affluent nobles and business men far behind the triumvirs, consuls, and emperors in their ruinous manner of living. Autocracy set the pace, and her wealthy vassals were not slow to follow. Trimalchio, the moneyed landholder, was accustomed to serve a wild boar whole, with a number of live fieldfares inside, ready to fly out as soon as they were given their liberty by Carpus, his professional carver. These, as they fluttered about the room, were caught by fowlers with reeds tipped with bird-lime.

The minute account of one of Trimalchio's dinners, given by the licentious Latin classicist Petronius Arbiter, descriptive of the viands, beverages, service, and table customs of the day, may be advantageously consulted by those whose powers of digestion are strong enough to enable them to consider a representative feast during the reign of Nero at the home of this ostentatious host. The elaborate first course is described as terminating with the appearance of a servant bearing a silver skeleton so artfully constructed that its joints and backbone turned in all directions; when, having cast it several times upon the table and causing it to assume various postures, Trimalchio cried out, "Of such are we let us live while we may!"

The first course finished, the second was presented in the form of a large circular tray with the twelve signs of the zodiac surrounding it, upon each of which the arranger had placed an appropriate dish on 4 Aries, ram's-head pies; on Taurus, a piece of roasted beef; on Gemini, kidneys and lamb's fry; on Cancer, a crown; on Leo, African figs; on Virgo, a young sow's haslet; on Libra, a pair of scales, in one of which were tarts, in the other cheese-cakes; on Scorpio, a little sea-fish of the same name; on Sagittarius, a hare; on Capricorn, a lobster; on Aquarius, a goose; on Piscis, two mullets, while in the centre spread a green turf on which lay a honeycomb. It will be readily apparent that the modern French chef does not stand alone in his skill of producing a pièce-montée. Meanwhile, an Egyptian slave carried bread in a silver portable oven, singing a song in praise of wine flavoured with laserpitium. Whereupon four attendants came dancing in to the sound of music, and, removing the upper part of the tray, there was revealed on a second tray beneath stuffed fowls, a sow's paps, and in the middle a hare fitted with wings to resemble Pegasus. At the several corners stood four figures of Marsyas spouting a highly seasoned sauce on a school of fish.

At the third course a very large hog was brought in, much larger even than the wild boar that had been previously served. This was followed by a young calf, boiled whole, with more wine, perfumes, fruits, and sweetmeats-thrushes in pastry, stuffed with nuts and raisins, and quinces stuck over with prickles to resemble sea-urchins. "Only command him," exclaimed the host, "and my cook will make you a fish out of a pig's chitterlings, a wood-pigeon out of the lard, a turtle-dove out of the gammon, and a hen out of the shoulder!"

Apparently, the artist of Trimalchio was no less fertile in resources and liberal ideas of expenditure than the chef of the Prince of Soubise, who, on being taken to task by his employer for including fifty hams for a single supper, replied: "Only one will appear upon the table, monseigneur; the rest are not the less necessary for my espagnole, my blonds, my garnitures, my-" "Bertrand, you are plundering me." "Oh, monseigneur," replied the conjurer, "you do not understand our resources; say the word, and these fifty hams which confound you-I will put them all into a glass bottle no bigger than your thumb!"

To be sure, the accounts given by Petronius Arbiter, Juvenal, Martial, and other satirists must be taken with some limitation. Yet, making all due allowance for exaggeration, it is hardly to be wondered at that many of the olden rulers and opulent personages, armed with unbounded power and possessed of unlimited riches, should have yielded so abjectly to luxury and vice as to have fully warranted the stricture of Juvenal: "The baffled sons must feel the same desires, And act the same mad follies as their sires.

Vice has attained its zenith. وو These accounts, moreover, attested as they are by serious annalists, may not be dismissed as largely imaginative or grossly exaggerated. The strictures on the besetting vices that occur in the contemporary works of historians, moralists, philosophers, and poets are far too vehement and voluminous to leave any doubt of the inordinate abuse of the table among the ancients, particularly among the Romans, when their wealthy capital, as Propertius records, "was beset all round in its own victories." It was the period of insatiable voracity and the peacock's plume. Even Martial was careful to state that it was vices, not personages, to which his scourge was applied. His caustic and highly seasoned epigrams deal largely with the dinner-table, and from these one may derive a most realistic idea of the bill of fare of his contemporaries, as well as of the varied and luxurious character of the presents made to the guests at feasts. The excesses of eating and drinking are roundly denounced by him at every turn, while his picture of the crapulous Santra in the Seventh Book is only equalled by the "Portrait of a Gourmand" of Carle Vernet, or Spenser's etching of "Gluttony" in the "Faerie Queene."