The fairy-land of Cocagne is said to derive its name from the Latin, coquere, “to cook.” Duchat says, that its flocks and herds present themselves perfectly cooked, and that the larks descend from the skies ready roasted. For it is there alone—
“Where so ready all nature its cookery yields,
Maccaroni au parmesan grows in the fields;
Little birds fly about with the true pheasant taint,
And the geese are all born with a liver complaint.”
The Utopian banquets, which are described by More, present an imaginary view of society in another extreme. The learned Chancellor, amid much invented nonsense, pictures the manners of the citizens of Amaurat after the fashion of those of Crete and Lacedæmonia, especially with regard to their common halls for their repasts,—a fashion, by the way, which was partially followed in the club-rooms of Attica. Others of the author’s ideas have been realized since he wrote; and, in this respect, his Utopia may be said to have done good service; but there is a woful residue of nonsense, nevertheless, which is neither amusing nor useful.
Sir Thomas describes the citizens of Amaurat as possessing provision markets abundantly supplied with herbs, fruits, bread, fowl, and cattle. The latter were previously slain in extra-mural slaughter-houses, well-furnished with running water, for washing away the filth after killing. The butchers were slaves, (for serfdom “was a peculiar institution” of this happy republic,) the free citizens not being permitted to kill animals, lest such pursuit should harden their singularly tender characters. “In every street,” we are told by the author, “there are great halls that lie at an equal distance from one another, and are marked by peculiar names. The Syphogrants dwell in those, that are set over thirty families, fifteen lying on one side of it, and as many on the other. In these they do all meet and eat. The stewards of every one of them come to the market-place at an appointed hour, and, according to the number of those that belong to their hall, they carry home provisions. But they take more care of their sick than of any others.... After the steward of the hospitals has taken for them whatever the physician does prescribe for them, at the market-place, then the best things that remain are distributed equally among the halls, in proportion to their numbers; only, in the first place, they serve the Prince, the Chief Priest, the Tranibors, and Ambassadors, and strangers, if there are any, which, indeed, falls out but seldom, and for whom there are houses well-furnished, particularly appointed, when they come among them. At the hours of dinner and supper, the Syphogranty, being called together by sound of trumpet, meets and eats together, except only such as are in the hospitals, or lie sick at home. Yet, after the halls are served, no man is hindered to carry provisions home from the market-place, for they know none does that but for some good reason; for, though any that will may eat at home, yet none does it willingly, since it is both an indecent and foolish thing for any to give themselves the trouble to make ready an ill dinner at home, when there is a much more plentiful one made ready for him so near at hand. All the uneasy and sordid services about these halls are done by their slaves; but the dressing and cooking of their meat, and ordering of their tables, belong only to the women, which goes round all the women of every family by turns. They sit at three or more tables, according to their numbers; the men sit towards the wall, and the women sit on the other side, that if any of them fall suddenly ill, which is ordinary to those expecting to be mothers, she may, without disturbing the rest, rise and go to the nurses’ room, who are there with the suckling children, where there is always fire and clean water at hand, and some cradles in which they may lay the young children,” &c. But, to return from this public nursery to the public dining hall, “all the children under five years of age dined with the nurses: the rest of the younger sort of both sexes, till they are fit for marriage, do either serve those that sit at table; or, if they are not strong enough for that, they stand by them in great silence, and eat that which is given them by those that sit at table, nor have they any other formality of dining.” The whole formality was bad enough, and that last-mentioned was a Doric custom prevailing in Crete. As to the personal arrangements at these Utopian tables, the infelicitous guests stood much upon their order of precedence: the syphogrant and his wife, the gnädige Frau Syphograntinn, presided at the centre of the cross-table, at the upper end of the hall. After the Magistrates and their mates, came the Priests and their ladies,—for More placed the Church below the State, and hinted that celibacy in the Clergy was not to be commended. Below these, groups of the young and gay were placed, between flanking companies of the aged and grave, to spoil their mirth, and improve their manners; and this Spartan custom was occasionally imitated at Athenian feasts, albeit the Athenians looked with something like contempt upon the institutions of old Laconia. The best dishes were placed before the oldest men, and the latter gave of the dainty bits to the young, if these merited such favour by their behaviour; if not, they took their chance of what the older gourmands might leave, or were obliged to be content with the plainer fare allotted to them.
During this delectable process, the young could not have offended by their gaiety, nor the old have improved them by conversation, seeing that a reader was appointed, to assist digestion by reading aloud an Essay on Morality. The Romans had the same office performed at some of their meals by learned slaves. More expressly says that the Utopian lecture was so short, that it was neither tedious nor uneasy to those that heard it; and that after it, the elders not only wagged their beards by “pleasant enlargements,” but encouraged the young to follow them in the same track. This must have been after the supper, when it was the law of Utopia, not to “run a mile,” but to “rest awhile.” The dinners were dispatched quickly, because work awaited the diners, while the supper-eaters had nothing to do afterwards but sleep. This must have been all terribly dreary, if it had ever been realized. The only pleasant feature in More’s Utopian banquets is, that wherein he says that there was always music at supper, and fruit served up after meat, (which, by the way, was a cruel trial for the digestive powers,) and that as the repast proceeded, “some burn perfumes, and sprinkle about sweet ointments, and sweet waters; and they are wanting in nothing that may cheer up their spirits; for they give themselves a large allowance in that way, and indulge themselves in all such pleasures as are attended with no inconvenience. Thus,” he adds, “do they that are in towns eat together; but in the country, where they live at a greater distance, every one eats at home, and no family wants any necessary sort of provision; for it is from them that provisions are sent in to them that live in the towns.”
I have noticed above the slave-readers at Roman dinners. These were seldom born slaves; indeed, of born slaves, among the Greeks or Romans, the numbers were fewer than might be reasonably imagined. Those who became authors or teachers, were the distinguished and illustrious of their class; and it was they who relieved the tedium of a Roman repast by reading livelier sallies than Essays on Morality, like the Utopians. If their rank in humanity was low, their ability secured for them many privileges which even freedmen did not enjoy. Of this rank of reading slaves was Andronicus, the inventor of dramatic poetry. Plautus, the witty, but coarse, play-writer, miller, and Jack of all trades, was a slave. Terence was also a dramatist, and not only a slave, but a Negro slave. Æsop the fabulist, Phædrus, his imitator, and the moral philosopher Epictetus, were slaves. The latter, who was as low in condition among bondsmen as he was exalted in his character of teacher of mankind, was the slave of one who had been a slave,—a depth of degradation than which there can be none deeper. But his mission was a great one; for he appears to me to have been an instrument employed to prepare men’s minds for a change from the vices of Paganism to the virtues of Christianity. His writings are as stepping-stones across the dark and rapid stream dividing error from truth. They are admirably calculated to enable men to go forward; not only to induce them to make the first step out of infidelity; but, having made it, rather to make a second in advance towards Christ, than go backward again in the direction of the dazzling unintelligibilities of the Capitoline Jove.
From slavery, if we turn our eyes towards mere poverty, the next condition to it, we shall see that the poor men characteristically paid their addresses to poetry;—and they were the “lions” at the dinners and assemblies of Rome. Such was Horace, who, if he were not in want, was of inferior descent, his father having been a slave, and subsequently, on being enfranchised, a tax-gatherer. Virgil was of equally mean descent on the paternal side; but he derived some portion of nobility from his mother. Juvenal, too, was not only poor and a poet,—a condition that could draw upon it only a serf’s contempt,—but he was, moreover, an exceedingly angry poet. In equal proportion as he was poor, angry, and satirical in poetry, was Lucian poor, angry, and satirical in prose.