To what an extent strange condiments, herbs, and other seasonings were employed, as well as to what a task the human stomach was subjected, will be apparent from a recipe, given by the same authority, for a thick sauce for a boiled chicken: "Put the following ingredients into a mortar: anise-seed, dried mint, and lazer-root (similar to asafœtida); cover them with vinegar; add dates; pour in garum, oil, and a small quantity of mustard-seeds; reduce all to a proper thickness with red wine warmed; and then pour this same over your chicken, which should previously be boiled in anise-seed water."
With regard to the olden wines, let us be duly grateful for the progress of viniculture, and thankful that we may read of them, rather than have to partake of them, to rue the Katzenjammer of the following morning. For if one must have a headache on rare occasions as the penalty of dining, it were assuredly less to be deplored if obtained through a grand vintage of the Marne or the Médoc than from a wine mixed with sea-water or spices, or old Falernian cloyed with honey from Mount Hymettus. By all means, if we must drink an excessively sweet wine, let it be, at most, a glass of Hermitage paille or Muscat Rivesaltes, iced to snow!
The tables, the plate, and the dinner-service corresponded with the rarity of the viands and beverages. Cicero's table of lemon-wood cost him two hundred thousand sesterces, or over seven thousand dollars. Besides being made of the most precious foreign woods, veined and spotted to imitate the tiger's and the leopard's skin, they were also wrought of ivory, silver, bronze, and tortoise-shell.
The drinking-cups of gold and glass, the nimbus and ampulla—crystal chalices, ewers, and flagons in which the luxurious were wont to mix myrrh, spikenard, and other perfumes with their wine—were equally costly. Martial extols a jewelled cup: "See how the gold, begemmed with Scythian emeralds, glistens! How many fingers does it deprive of jewels!" His lovely description of an exquisitely chased wine-cup of gold, received from Instantius Rufus, will also be recalled. Again, he praises a gold dinner-service: "Do not dishonour such large gold dishes with an insignificant mullet; it ought at least to weigh two pounds." "I see," says Seneca, "the shell of the tortoise bought for immense sums and ornamented with the most elaborate care; I see tables and pieces of wood valued at the price of a senator's estate, which are all the more precious the more knots the tree has been twisted into by disease. I see murrhine-cups, for luxury would be too cheap if men did not drink to one another out of hollow gems the wine to be afterwards thrown up again." In vain Pompey the Great and Licinius Crassus strove to cheek the riotous table extravagance, which continued despite previous and subsequent sumptuary laws for its suppression.
"To-day," says Pliny, "a cook costs as much as a triumph, a fish as much as a cook, and no mortal costs more than the slave who knows best how to ruin his master." Fabulous prices were paid for fish, notably for the famed red mullet or sea-barbel. Tiberius, who was an exception, and was not partial to this fish, on being presented with an unusually large specimen, weighing four and a half pounds, sent it to the market to be sold. "I will be greatly surprised," he observed, "if the mullet is not purchased by Apicius or Octavius." It was borne off in triumph by Octavius, who became celebrated for having paid two hundred dollars for a fish sold by the emperor and that Apicius himself had not secured.
Seneca also states that the mullet was looked upon as tainted unless it expired in the hands of the guests, who were provided with glass vessels in which to put their fish, in order the better to perceive their changes and motions in the last agony betwixt life and death. "Look how it reddens!" cries one; "there is no vermilion like it; look at those lateral veins, see how the grey brightens upon its head, and now it is at its last gasp, it pales and its inanimate body fades to a single hue." "The mullet of the ocean is certainly a meritorious fish," observes Baron Brisse, "but how greatly superior is that of the Mediterranean!"
This greatly valued fish was the European Mullus barbatus, one of the forty or more different species of the red mullet, found chiefly in the subtropical parts of the Indo-Pacific Ocean. By far the most abundant in the Mediterranean, it is nevertheless not uncommon to the coasts of England and Ireland, though nowhere does it attain so delicate a flavour as in the Mediterranean. The name is said to have reference to the scarlet colour of the sandal or shoe worn by the Roman consuls, and in later times by the emperors, which was called mullus.
Like the ruby, the mullet increased rapidly in price when it exceeded the usual size—the largest weighing scarcely three or four pounds. Suetonius is authority for the statement that this fish was so esteemed in his time that three large specimens were sold for thirty thousand sesterces, or more than a thousand dollars, which caused Tiberius to enact sumptuary laws and tax the provisions brought to market. The red mullet, although much less highly thought of than in olden days, is still in request by the modern French epicure. Francatelli cautions that it should never be drawn; it is sufficient to remove the gills only, as the liver and trail are considered the best part—an opinion held by the Romans. It is possible that, owing to this circumstance, it has been termed the "sea-woodcock."
The mullet was served by the Romans with a seasoning of pepper, rue, onions, dates, and mustard, to which was added the flesh of the sea-hedgehog reduced to a pulp and oil. When the priceless liver alone was to be eaten by an emperor or a senator, it was cooked and then seasoned with pepper, salt, or a little garum, some oil was added, and hare's or fowl's liver, and oil poured over the whole.
The turbot was another favourite supplied by the sea, and one will remember Martial's panegyric concerning it: "However great the dish that holds the turbot, the turbot is still greater than the dish." From the foam-fleeced flocks of Proteus many other fish with strange names were transferred by the wealthy Romans to their vast aquaria—the sargus, the harp-fish, the hyca, the synodon, the hespidus, the chromis, the callichithys,