THE CÆSARS AT TABLE.
It is a well-ascertained truth, that the Cæsars at table by no means generally conducted themselves as though they were under the influence of a Roman Chesterfield, as regarded their behaviour; or a Roman Abernethy, as regarded their moderation. Perhaps the great Julius was as much of a gentleman in both the above respects as any of his imperial successors; and even he could reform the calendar with far more ease than he could reform himself.
When he was commanding in the Roman provinces, beyond the Italian frontier, he kept two distinct tables. At one sat his inferior officers and the Greeks who were in his service. The latter do not appear to have expressed any discontent at not ranking with their Roman comrades. At the other table sat none but Romans of high state, with such native guests of quality as Cæsar chose to invite to meet them. He would watch his servants as sharply as he did the enemy; and on one occasion, having observed that his baker had put down to his guests a coarser bread than that which he had served to Cæsar, he sent the knave to prison, there to learn better manners.
Cæsar was as sober as Sir Charles Napier, who used to sign himself “Governor of Scinde, because I was always a sober man.” Cato said of Julius, that he was the only sober man who had ever attempted to subvert a government; “a cutting sarcasm on all preceding patriots.” As for sauces, the Duke of Wellington did not inspire Francatelli with more despair upon that head, than Cæsar did his cook. It was immaterial to him whether he had sauce to his meat, or not; and as to the quality, he never concerned himself about it. He ate, thankfully perhaps, but thoughtlessly, certainly. His politeness was sometimes ridiculously excessive, as when he ate up the ointment which had been served instead of sauce, at a table where he was a guest, and where he was courteously resolved to find everything excellent. But although the great Julius was, according to Cato, the only man who came sober to the subversion of his country, he had some unsoberly habits about him. Thus, when invited to a feast, he used to whet his appetite by taking an emetic. This is attested by Cicero, who says, in his letters to Atticus, (lib. xiii. p. 52,) “Unctus est; accubuit; ἐμετικήν agebat. Itaque edit et bibit ἀδεῶς et jucunde.” Suetonius agrees with Cato, that Cæsar was moderate with regard to wine:—“Vini parcissimum ne quidem inimici negaverunt.”
It is singular that a man who cared so little as he was reported to have done for his stomach, should have cared so much about the outside of his head. He could eat pomatum, and yet be ashamed of the baldness which a proper application of the unguent might perhaps have cured.
Augustus Cæsar, who visited prisoners, like Howard, and cut off heads like an Algerine Dey, was moderate in his cups, and endeavoured to make the people so. When the latter once complained that wine was not only dear, but scarce, he gravely proclaimed that his son-in-law Agrippa had been looking to the aqueducts, and there was no fear of any one dying of thirst.
There were seasons, however, when he could be more than imperially extravagant. Witness the little supper he gave to chosen guests, all of whom attended in the attire of gods and goddesses; and at which feast he presided in the character of Apollo. The wits of the day, who were not invited, denounced this supper as an orgy at which decent people would not have been present, even if asked. Such stupendous iniquity was said there to have been enacted, that the real gods who had at first looked laughingly down from Olympus, withdrew one by one behind their respective clouds. Even Jove himself, who sat gazing longest, at length hurried away from the sight of men, who were greater beasts than the privileged gods!
Like some of the extravagant and unclean banquets at Versailles, this entertainment was given when there was a famine in the city. On the following day, the people exclaimed in the streets, “It is the gods who have devoured the food.” The less fearful than these raised an altar to Augustus Phœbus, and there paid mock worship to the Emperor, under the title of Apollo the Tormentor.
It was not every one that deemed himself entitled, that could find access to the table of Cæsar Augustus. He was extremely nice with regard to his associates, but he was not so nice with respect to keeping his guests waiting for his company. It was the maxim of Sir Joshua Reynolds, that it was far less courteous on principle to allow hungry guests to be kept from table out of respect to one man, than it was to go to dinner without him. So also Augustus thought that the many should not be made to wait for one; and, accordingly, he frequently did not appear at table till the repast was half over; and sometimes departed even then, after tasting of from three to half-a-dozen dishes, before it was concluded.
He was dignified and condescending, enjoyed the jokes of those who were bold enough to make them, and encouraged the reserved to be bold and jocund too. When jests lacked from either of those parties, the master of the Roman world then laughed, as he sipped his moderate draught, at the quips and cranks of the hired jesters, whose office it was to be cheerful when the guests grew dull.
It has come down to us that he was a lover of brown bread, small fish, green cheese and green figs. He was so far intemperate that he would never let his appetite tarry till meal-time. He ate when he was hungry, and perhaps he was right. And yet it was but an unedifying sight to see him passing in his chariot through the public streets, returning the greetings of the people with one hand full of bread, the other full of dates, and his almost sacred mouth full of both. He was, in fact, wayward in his attentions to his appetite, and would occasionally fast till sunset if the caprice took him. As to what is said of him that he sometimes rose from the most sumptuous banquets, leaving the viands untouched,—this was perhaps because the edge of his appetite had been altogether destroyed by brown bread and indigestible fruit.
In the day-time he quenched his thirst by eating of bread dipped in water, by drinking water itself, or by taking a slice of cucumber, lettuce, or unripe apple. His moderation in drinking, when he did take up the goblet at the evening repast, is much spoken of, but as we hear more of the quantity than of the strength of what he drank, it is difficult to decide upon this point. Suetonius admiringly records that “he never exceeded a quart for his share, or if he did, he was sure to throw it up again.” This is but equivocal praise after all. He was a very great man, no doubt, but, demi-god as he almost was, he spelt after the “cacological” fashion of Lord Duberly; and he was more afraid of lying awake in the dark than any little baron or squire in the nurseries of Belgravia and the adjacent squares.
Tiberius, like his predecessor, treated his soldiers occasionally like schoolboys, and when they displeased him, he used to put them on a regimen of barley. Tiberius himself was not a profuse eater; he was rather moderate than otherwise, and when gastronomic extravagancy had reached a high pitch in Rome, he used to dine in public, like the kings of France, but, unlike them, upon cold meat, as a reproof to the luxury of the times. He was not, however, at all moderate in his cups, and the Roman wits, who, like those of Paris, used to make merry epigrams on the worst of their woes, punningly transformed his names of Tiberius Claudius Nero, into Biberius Caldius Mero. He had a reverence too for great draughts, and he once raised a common fellow to the office of quæstor, simply because he could drink off a measure of three pints of wine without drawing breath. Most of the Cæsars must have been very unsatisfactory people to dine with, but none more so than Tiberius, who loved discussion, but if he found himself worsted in it, he invariably ordered his opponent to retire—and commit suicide. A hot bath and a vein or two opened soon disposed of an inconvenient adversary. He used to puzzle his guests with all sorts of strange questions, such as would puzzle even the editor of Notes and Queries to answer. One of these interrogatory puzzles was “the name of the song chanted by the Syrens.” He would not speak the fashionable Greek at table, but conversed in Latin; and his favourite feat at dessert was to run his forefinger through a hard green apple.
Caligula must have been a most unpleasant person to dine with. He entertained himself and his guests with the sight of men tortured on the rack, and he got up little private executions on those occasions to enliven the scene. We read of Her Majesty’s private concerts, and how “Mrs. Anderson” presided at the piano. But the Romans only heard of their Emperor’s killing fun to frighten his guests with, and how his Divinity’s private headsman, Niger Barbatus, performed, as usual, with his well-known dexterity. His frolics were really of a frightful character. It was after a banquet, when the capital jest of slaying had failed to make him as merry as usual, that he rushed to the sacrificial altar, attired in the dress of a victim-killer, that is, with a linen apron for his sole costume. He seized the mallet as though he were about to slay the appointed victim, but he turned suddenly round on the resident official and butchered him instead. And thereat, all who had witnessed the frolicsome deed of their master, declared that “’Fore Jove, ’twas a more capital joke than the last!” His answer to the Consuls who ventured to ask the cause of a sudden burst of laughter in which he indulged at a crowded feast, is well known; “I laugh to think,” said the amiable creature, “that with one wave of my hand I can sweep all your stupid heads off!” His method of loving was equally characteristic. He would fling his terrible arm round the fair neck he professed to admire, and express his delight that he could cut it off when he pleased. There was the brilliant Cesonia; “I cannot tell,” said her imperial lover at a feast, “why it is that I am so fond of that girl. I’ll have her put on the rack for a quarter of an hour, that she may be compelled to tell me the reason.” Blue Beard was the mildest of Quaker gentlemen compared with this Caligula. A lady might as well have been wooed by a boa constrictor.
Claudius Cæsar has hardly had justice done him, as regards his general character, but as my office is only to show how he looked at table, I must be satisfied with making the remark, and pass on to Cæsar at meat. He was no hero, undoubtedly, for he contemplated suicide, for no better reason than having a pain in his stomach after a repast. In this, however, he did not show less courage than Zeno, the father of the Stoics, who having bruised his finger by a fall, went home and hung himself.
He was largely hospitable, and sometimes entertained six hundred guests at a time. He liked on these occasions to see his own children and those of the nobility seated, according to the ancient fashion, at the lower end of the table. It is to be hoped that they were out of ear-shot of what was being said at the upper end. The jokes were sometimes pleasant enough in their way. Thus a Roman nobleman having carried home with him a gold plate from the imperial table, was gently reminded of his theft when, on the next occasion of dining with Claudius, he saw a reproachfully vulgar earthenware platter put down before him.
He was a man of infinite capacity, was the divine Claudius,—that is, in gastronomic matters. He was ever ready to devour, and always did so greedily. He has been known to have suddenly jumped down from his seat in the forum, allured by the smell of roast meat issuing from the priest’s table, in the adjacent temple of Mars. And he would sit down with the reverend gentleman, without waiting for an invitation. It must have surely made the common-place spectators of the feat broadly smile, just as if the twelve judges in Westminster Hall were to leap from their benches, and racing across the churchyard, pour into the first house in the cloisters where the dinner-bell was ringing loudest, and the prandial odour was most savoury.
He ate like Baal, and drank like the beast in Fortunatus. He did both to repletion; but his attendants would then tickle his throat with a feather, and so, by exonerating his stomach, enable the imperial animal to eat and drink again. He contemplated making a decree for the benefit of guests at table, which was of a Rabelaisian indelicacy, and which probably never presented itself to the minds of any other men but Claudius and the Curé of Meudon.
Caligula had more affection for his horse than for anything human. He fed him on gilded oats, and the animal was not a more beastly consul than many who were appointed to that high office. The emperor’s dinner parties must have presented a strange aspect, when the obsequious senators stood, napkin in hand, to wait upon the guests. Fancy the peers of all politics, and the commons of every shade of opinion, all ranged behind the dinner-table at Windsor Castle, in the professional uniform of dingy white waistcoats and napless black coats, with their thumbs duly doubled up in napkins, and all offering anxious service, and “dindon à la daube” to our Sovereign Lady and her guests,—fancy this, I say, and you will have the very remotest idea possible of what the sight was like when the senators changed the plates of Cæsar. The personages and their qualities are all different, but the strangeness of one spectacle could only be matched by that of the other.
Nero (who found sport in sitting in an upper gallery at the theatre, and flinging down nuts upon the bald head of the prætor below) was a very common-place individual at table, but he assembled guests about him who were ever ready to consume his good things and applaud his good sayings. Galba, his successor, was at once gouty and gluttonous. He commenced eating at early dawn, and darkness came over him still with appetite unsatiated. He was as mean, however, as he was voracious. He did once so far whip up his liberal spirit as to compel himself to give a dinner party; but when he read the bill of fare, he fairly burst into tears at the idea of the extravagance and the expense. And yet the most costly dish he could reprovingly point to, when his steward challenged him, was a dish of boiled peas;—but perhaps they were out of season, and Galba knew he should be asked for them at least a guinea a quart! He would never have been guilty of the prodigality of the Emperor Otho, who daily wasted more bread and milk in making cosmetic poultices to lay on his own face than would have served to keep body and soul together in half-a-dozen families. The father of Vitellius more gallantly, when he wished to look well at the centre of his table, was wont to besmear himself with a mixture made up of honey and his mistress’s saliva. He of course deemed it impossible to say which was the sweeter of the two ingredients. This was even worse than Galba, who was, however, essentially greedy; the latter emperor could not eat with pleasure unless he had more before him than he could digest. When his stomach cried, “Hold, enough!” he used it as the Somersetshire lad did his. “Ah!” exclaimed the lad of Wincanton, to certain monitions,—“ye may ake, but, ’vor I ha’ done, I’ll make ye ake worser.” Galba, when no longer able to eat, lay and gazed at what he hoped to attack more successfully after digestion had been accomplished.
Otho is remembered as being the complaisant gentleman who, when Nero had determined to murder his mother, gave an exquisite little supper to both parties by way of a pleasant preliminary. But Otho could at least behave with outward decency, and of this Vitellius was incapable. If he walked through the market-place, he snatched the meat roasting at the cooks’ stalls, and greedily devoured it. He was not more reverent even in the temple; where, taking advantage of his vicinity to the altar, he would sweep the latter of the barley that was on it, consecrated to the god, and swallow the same, like the sacrilegious heathen that he was. When about to fly from the enemies who had overturned his throne, he selected only his cook and his butler to be the companions of his flight, and he took the former dear associate with him, in his own covered chair.
The chief table trait which I can call to mind as connected with Vespasian is, that once a month he went without dinner for a day. Such an observance, he said, saved at once his health and his purse. He had so much the less to pay to his purveyor; and in consequence of the fast, less also perhaps than if he had feasted, to his physician. Both the sons of Vespasian, Titus and Domitian, were modest at the banquet. The former had ceased to be a free liver before he put on the imperial mantle; and as for Domitian, he could wash down his Malian apple with a draught of water, and then address himself to sleep, as though he were a virtuous anchorite, and not the most thirsty drinker of human blood that ever disgraced his race.
The five succeeding emperors,—Nerva, Trajan, Hadrian, and the two Antonines,—Antoninus Pius, and Marcus Aurelius,—governed the world during the eighty years which are said, but questionably I think, to have been the happiest years of the human race. There is little on record as to how these potentates disported themselves at table. Trajan, indeed, is known to have been a fearful drinker; but he loved a quiet, unceremonious dinner at the house of a friend of modest degree,—for there he tippled and talked to his heart’s content, and willingly forgot that he was Cæsar. Hadrian is remembered as the first Roman emperor who wore a beard. He had warts on his throat, and he did not like that these should be seen by his guests at table. He once gave an entertainment which cost upwards of two millions sterling, (when Verus was made Cæsar,) and he was sorry for it through the remainder of his life. Many a man of far humbler degree has committed the same kind of extravagance, and experienced the same enduring repentance. Antoninus kept the table of a country gentleman; and Marcus Aurelius dined alone, while Commodus, his son, played at his knee. The board of that son resembled that of Vitellius, and he fell from it one day, full of drugged wine administered to him by a concubine, and was strangled as he lay beneath the table, drunk, and deserving of his fate.
The modest Pertinax was less happy as emperor than when, as a simple official, he had charge of the provisions of Rome. Didius Julianus was deep in the luxuries of the table, and not nearly so deep in wisdom, when he made a bid for the diadem, a few uneasy dinners in the palace, and death. Septimius Severus, cared less for the splendour of his table than the consolidation of his power, but his banquets were choice things, nevertheless. His sons, Caracalla and Geta, exemplified their fraternal unanimity by keeping different tables. They never sat down together at the same board; and there were two factions in the court, something like that of George the Second, at St. James’s, and the son whom he hated, Frederick, Prince of Wales, in Leicester Square. Macrinus was a coarse feeder, and in everything he presented a remarkable contrast with his successor Heliogabalus.
Heliogabalus lay on couches stuffed with hare’s down, or partridge feathers. Ælius Verus reclined on cushions of lily and rose-leaves. The first-named monster had his funny moments; and sometimes he would invite a certain number of bald men, or of gouty men, or grey-headed men, and he was particularly amused at a company of fat men, so crowded together that they could find room only to perspire. “One of his favourite diversions consisted in filling a leathern table-couch with air instead of wool; and while the guests were engaged in drinking, a tap, concealed under the carpet, was opened, unknown to them,—the couch sank, and the drinkers rolled pell-mell under the sigma, to the great delight of the beardless emperor.” He was the first Roman emperor who wore garments of pure, unmixed silk. He cared little for poets or philosophers; but he gave liberal premiums to the inventors of new sauces, provided these pleased his palate. If he disliked them, the inventor was condemned to eat of nothing else, until he had discovered a new condiment to win the imperial sanction. Heliogabalus and George I. had this in common, that they both liked fish a trifle stale. Thus, it is known that George never cared for oysters till their shells began spontaneously to gape; and the Oriental master of the Roman empire, who made a barber prefect of the provisions, would never eat sea-fish except at a great distance from the sea, when they acquired the taint he loved. His delight then was to distribute vast quantities of the rarest sorts, brought at an immense expense, to the peasants of the inland country. The table of his successor, Alexander Severus, was that of a gentleman. Its master was the first Roman emperor to whom that title can be incontestably given; and he loved to have around him accomplished guests of all varieties of opinion; and this is much more than can be said for that huge and hungry Goth, Maximin. The Gordians brought back some of the elegances of social life, which the uncleanness and severity of Maximin had banished; but at both the private and public, the humble and the imperial, tables of Rome, there must have been small ceremony and permanent fear during the brief and troubled reigns of the foolish men who purchased the right of dining in an imperial mantle by being speedily enveloped in a bloody shroud. Gallienus, alone, shines out upon the list as the very prince of cooks; and if Carême had possessed half the enthusiasm which he so warmly affected, he would have named his son and heir after this imperial inventor of ragoûts,—who was also the accelerator of the ruin of Rome. All the temperance of the Gothic Claudius could not restore the remnant of ancient moderation, which had been destroyed by that imperial maker of stews, the ever hungry and cruel Gallienus. Aurelian failed, like Claudius, but the emperor Tacitus was more successful, and the descendant of the great historian, even during his short reign, roused the nobles to a sense of dignity, and honoured science by inviting its disciples to his well-ordered table.
A subsequent emperor, Carus, was perhaps one of the most frugal, by habit and inclination, that ever wore the imperial sword upon his thigh. Carus was at once moderate and mirthful. He was seated on the grass, supping on dry bread and grey peas, when the Persian ambassadors came to him, suing for peace. “The matter just stands thus, gentlemen,” said the emperor, opening his mouth widely, at the same time, to insert a shovel-like spoonful of peas; “if your master does not acknowledge the superiority of Rome, I will render Persia,”—and here he took off the cap which he wore to conceal his entire baldness,—“I will render Persia as destitute of trees as my head is of hair.” Having said which, he resumed swallowing his peas, and left the delegates to digest his remark.
We are accustomed to consider Diocletian dining at Salona, on the cabbages he had reared there, as an emperor in reduced circumstances; but the truth is, that the palace, gardens, and table of the ex-emperor were all of a splendid character, and if his table was adorned by the cabbages he had tended to a prize perfection, he was far too wise an epicure to confine himself to that dish alone.
The great Constantine appears under a double aspect, and the least favourable one is offered to us in his maturer years, when he surrendered himself more unreservedly than before to good living, for which he had peculiar facilities at Byzantium, took to wearing false hair, and became altogether a ridiculous old dandy and bon vivant; the ridicule of whom, by his clever and unscrupulous nephew, Julian, I am not at all surprised at; for what is so eagerly seized upon by affectionate nephews as the foibles of their indulgent uncles? Julian was possessed just of that scampish sort of nepotism which leads the modest young relative to eat an uncle’s dinners and deride the donor. Julian’s own table would have gained the contempt of an editor of the Almanach des Gourmands. Its frugality was frigidly parsimonious in its character. The philosophic emperor was a vegetarian, and even of vegetables he ate sparingly, but swiftly, leaping up, as it were, from dining thereon, to hurry to his books or the public business, which he quitted reluctantly when the hour of supper summoned him even to a more frugal meal than the dinner, which he despatched with a celerity not at all admired by those who dined with him. Nothing disgusted him so much as a gross feeder, and probably nothing ever so greatly surprised him as when, on taking possession of Constantinople, he found one thousand cooks waiting to prepare the imperial dinner! A thousand cooks for a man who could dine on a boiled turnip! The Constantines had been accustomed to dine upon birds from the most distant climates, fish from the most remote seas; to have a dessert of fruits out of their natural seasons, and to drink foreign wines cooled in the summer snows of the lofty hills. All this was as useless to a man who needed but a crust and an apple to calm his appetite, as were the golden basins and the jewelled combs to an emperor like Julian, who seldom washed even his face, and who not only never cleaned his hair, but felt the lively luxury of leaving it undisturbed. Julian in this respect was like Anthony Pasquin, who was said to have died of a cold caught by washing his face. There was a famous Irish member of Parliament, who, unlike Julian, was a glutton at dinner, but who was remarkable for his religious abstinence from all ablution. His son was one day standing in the bow-window of White’s, when the sire was passing down the opposite side of the street. I believe it was the noble lord who, when Mr. Gunter in the hunting-field remarked that his horse was too “hot” to ride comfortably, suggested to the equestrian pastrycook that he should ice him.—I believe it was the same noble lord who, on the first occasion alluded to above, said to “Jack T——,” “Jack! what does make your father’s hands so dirty?” “Well!” said the old Colonel’s affectionate son, “I believe it arises from a bad habit he has of putting them up to his face!” And so of Julian we may say, that if his hands were innocent of water, his famous beard was dirtier than his hands, and that it was not pleasant to lie near the emperor at dinner, unless guardedly ensconced to the leeward of his sacred and dirty person.
If Gratian, who was the first Roman emperor who refused the pontifical robe, had lived but as became the master of an imperial household, his sacrifice would have had more merit; but the emperors of these times had curious ideas as to duties. Thus the second Valentinian delighted in giving splendid dinners, but at these entertainments he always, himself, fasted;—a most discouraging course for the guests,—but he thought there was merit in the work. But Theodosius was at least as good a man, and we know that he enjoyed the sensual and social pleasures of the table without excess; and the same taste was shown by that emperor Maximus, who is said to have espoused Helena, the daughter of a wealthy Caernarvonshire lord, and to have renewed the popularity of boiled leeks in Rome; and this was a better taste than that of Honorius, who took to feeding poultry and eating them, while Stilicho ruled the empire, and the eunuchs lived on the very fat of the land. It was decidedly better too than the taste which led Valentinian the third, after dining with Petronius Maximus and winning his money, to carry off his wife; a Tarquinian insult, which he paid for, however, with his life. Avitus could indulge in such freaks, however, with impunity; and he not only seduced Roman matrons, but invited their husbands to dinner, where the slaves smiled at the imperial raillery directed against them while the courses were changing! His successor, Majorianus, was a man of another stamp, and I would fain believe the pleasant anecdote which says of him that he went to Carthage in the disguise of his own ambassador, and dined with Genseric the king, who was especially chafed when he afterwards discovered that he had entertained, without knowing it, the Emperor of the Romans. Anthemius, if he be famous for little else, is at least famous for the superb wedding-dinner with which he celebrated the nuptials of his daughter with Count Ricimer, a wicked son-in-law who devoured the dinners of his “beau père,” and robbed him of his estate;—no uncommon course for sons-in-law to take. The count placed on the uneasy and vacant throne the epicurean Glycorius, who, having murdered Julius Nepos after a banquet, was made Archbishop of Milan, as one of the recompenses of the act. And then the empire fell into the delicate hands of the weak and beautiful Augustulus, who could not find wherewith in the treasury to maintain a decent table, and who was glad to accept clemency and an annuity from Odoacer, whereby he was enabled, upon six thousand pieces of gold annually, to keep such state in the Castle of Lucullus in Campania, that the surrounding gentry visited him in shoals, and ate his dinners by way of proof that they looked upon him as a man of the highest respectability.
And this was the end of the “twelve vultures,” seen by Romulus, foreshadowing the “twelve centuries,” more or less, that were to mark the duration of the dominion which he founded; a dominion commenced by a hungry adventurer, and which crumbled to nothing in the hand of that Augustulus, who was but too rejoiced to take in exchange for it, the bed, board, and six thousand a year with which he set up as a hospitable country gentleman, in his rustic villa, on the slopes of Campania.
As for the Cæsars of the Eastern Empire, they were rather Oriental despots than either Greek or Roman monarchs, just as the Byzantines were ever more Asiatics than Europeans. The sovereigns, for the most part, ate at golden tables, and were served like gods. Some of them, like Romanus, were respectable cooks, and more than one was discussing the merits of a new sauce or dish, when the Saracens were knocking at the frontier gates of the empire. The sort of merry humour indulged in by others may be judged of by a single trait of Michael the Drunkard. This amiable sovereign started up, one day, from table, ere the imperial dinner was well over, and assuming an episcopal dress, he descended into the streets followed by his courtiers. The latter bore the vinegar and mustard that had been on the monarch’s side-board, and mixing the condiments together, they stopped all passers-by, compelled them to kneel, and with horrible profanity and mock psalmody, administered the Sacrament with the above-named horribly compounded elements. Such was one of the Eastern Cæsars at and after dinner, and the easy Byzantines were not much scandalized thereat. Indeed, they troubled themselves very little about the affairs of the government, or the doings of the governors; and it would never have entered the head of a Byzantine subject to say of his son what the American citizen once remarked, touching his heir, to Mrs. Trollope, namely, that he would much sooner that his son got drunk three times a week than that he should refrain from meddling with the politics of his times.
From the palaces of the Cæsars, let us now pass into the mansions of miscellaneous majesties, and see how the first gentlemen of their respective days comported themselves “at meat.” Yes, at meat; for “la viande du Roi” was the consecrated phrase, and guards presented arms, and courtiers bowed low, as the king’s “meat” was solemnly carried to the royal table, or borne to the bed-side, where it remained under the name of an en cas, “in case” the august appetite should be lively before morning.