We now come to the principal repast, to that which threw such brilliancy over the latter centuries of Rome, when a culinary monomania, a sort of gastronomic furor, seemed to have seized the sovereign people, who, no longer great by their conquests, betrayed a desire to become so by the number and audacity of their follies.
The Hebrews supped at the ninth hour, that is to say, about three o’clock in the afternoon.[XXIX_51] Their custom of two repasts would be sufficiently proved by the fact that, on fast days, they took food only in the evening.[XXIX_52] Hence, when they did not fast, they also eat at another hour. Their ordinary aliment was very simple; we shall have to speak of it hereafter.
In the primitive times, kings prepared their own suppers.[XXIX_53] Beef, mutton, goat’s flesh—such were the viands which then satisfied the daintiest palates.[XXIX_54] Baskets, filled with pure wheaten bread, were carried round to the guests,[XXIX_55] and heaps of salt, placed on the table, gave proof of the hospitality of those simple and unsophisticated ages.[XXIX_56]
The fierce warriors of that warlike period never forgot to invoke the gods before they satisfied their appetites: libations of wine rendered them favourable.[XXIX_57] This pious duty once fulfilled, they gave themselves up without restraint, to the joys of good cheer; and the sounds of the lyre and the buffooneries of mountebanks enlivened the banquet,[XXIX_58] which again received fresh animation from the copious healths, which persons the least versed in the forms of society never forgot.[XXIX_59]
It often happened that each one paid his share, or brought provisions with him[XXIX_60] to these joyous suppers, of which the last rays of the setting sun always gave the periodical signal.[XXIX_61] The uncertainty of these amicable meetings constituted their charm. Pic-nics, as we see, may be traced rather far back.
It was then that pleasure presided at those repasts; dulness had its turn when luxury proscribed the supper in open air, and in common,[XXIX_62] after the manner of the Jews, who assembled in gardens, or under trees,[XXIX_63] and mingled the sweet harmony of music with the less delicate seductions of their banquets.[XXIX_64]
The breakfast has always taken place after rising; dinner in the middle of the day; the collation in the course of the afternoon; and the supper in the evening. In the 14th century, people dined at ten o’clock in the morning.[XXIX_65] One or two centuries later, they dined at eleven o’clock. In the 16th century, and at the commencement of the 17th, they dined at mid-day in the best houses. Louis XIV., himself, always sat down to table at that hour.[XXIX_66] This order was not modified until the 18th century.
The Sicilian cooks taught unheard-of refinements, and were sought after with strange eagerness.[XXIX_67] The chine of beef and haunch of mutton of the Homeric epoch, gave way to sumptuous banquets, and a learned prodigality divided them into two or three acts, or courses,[XXIX_68] the order and luxurious majesty of which have been adopted in modern times.
It appears that three or four o’clock in the afternoon—the ninth hour—was the time invariably fixed for the supper of the Romans.[XXIX_69] Like the Greeks of yore, they contented themselves at first with simple aliments, and few in number; subsequently, three courses, sometimes seven,[XXIX_70] or even many more, appeared to them to be hardly sufficient to satisfy the ardent voracity of their eyes, and glut stomachs which odious precautions assimilated to the buckets of Danaus’s daughters.
These suppers, the details of which always appear to us as bearing the impress of exaggeration, notwithstanding the authority of the writers who furnish them, were insufficient for certain prodigies of extravagance and furious gluttony, who were served at midnight with a sort of “wake” (comissatio),[XXIX_71] at which some of them gave proof of renewed greed and vigour.