Under the supervision of butlers the
courses were served on platters so large that they covered the
tables; sows' breasts with Lybian truffles; dormice baked in
poppies and honey, peacock-tongues flavored with cinnamon; oysters
stewed in garum--a sauce made of the intestines of fish--sea-
wolves from the Baltic; sturgeons from Rhodes; fig-peckers from
Samos; African snails; pale beans in pink lard; and a yellow pig
cooked after the Troan fashion, from which, when carved, hot
sausages fell and live thrushes flew. Therewith was the mulsum, a
cup made of white wine, nard, roses, absinthe and honey; the
delicate sweet wines of Greece; and crusty Falernian of the year
six hundred and thirty-two. As the cups circulated, choirs
entered, chanting sedately the last erotic song; a clown danced on
the top of a ladder, which he maintained upright as he danced,
telling meanwhile untellable stories to the frieze; and host and
guests, unvociferously, as good breeding dictates, chatted through
the pauses of the service; discussed the disadvantages of death,
the value of Noevian iambics, the disgrace of Ovid, banished
because of Livia's eyes.
Such was the Rome of Augustus. "Caesar," cried a mime to him one
day, "do you know that it is important for you that the people
should be interested in Bathylle and in myself?"
The mime was right. The sovereign of Rome was not the Caesar, nor
yet the aristocracy.
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