"But, seigneur, you were alone—"
"It is precisely when I happen to be alone that you require to pay especial attention to the dinner; at such times you must remember that Lucullus dines with Lucullus."
The great dining-room of Claudius, termed "Mercury," was constructed on an equally magnificent scale. But this was eclipsed by Nero's marvellous Domus aurea, which, through a circular movement of its sides and ceiling, counterfeited the changes of the skies and represented the different seasons of the year, while at intervals during the repast flowers and essences were showered down upon the guests.
The gluttonous feasts of Verres, Claudius, Nero, Vitellius, Domitian, and the rest of the Roman potentates are familiar to the student of ancient history. Claudius, who had usually six hundred guests at his feasts, died of an indigestion of mushrooms, facilitated, it is said, by a poisoned feather applied to his throat. Tiberius is also said to have met his death through an asphyxia of poisonous mushrooms, seconded by suffocation on the part of his favourite Macro, who in turn was put to death by Caligula. Caligula was noted for the fabulous sums spent upon his suppers, while Cæsar is credited with a four months' supper bill of more than five millions sterling. The present of this monarch, during one of his table debauches, of a sum equivalent to eighty thousand dollars to his charioteer Eutychus is the largest table present recorded of the Romans. Seneca states that one of his suppers cost nearly half a million, and he also it was who gave his charger Incitatus barley mixed with wine in a vase of gold. Vitellius spent not less than fifteen thousand dollars for each of his repasts, the composition of his favourite dishes requiring that vessels should constantly ply between the Gulf of Venice and the Straits of Cadiz. The flocks of flamingos placidly feeding in the Pontine marshes dreaded his fowlers—he had dishes made of their tongues. Later on, their haunts were invaded by Heliogabalus, who preferred their brains.[7] The life and reign of Vitellius were a continuous orgy, and his name was bequeathed to a multitude of dishes. According to Suetonius, Tiberius, who was inordinately fond of fig-peckers and mushrooms, presented Sabinus the author with eight thousand dollars for having composed a dialogue in which the fig-pecker, mushroom, oyster, and thrush were the dramatis personæ. As the author and the poet are proverbially scantily remunerated, it is easy to imagine the wealth that a competent chef could command in the days when the haughty mistress of the world, sated with conquest and exultant with victory, lapsed into luxury and sensuality, while a constant stream of riches flowed into her treasury from tributary rulers and oppressed and spoliated nations.
The truffle and the snail were well known to the ancients. The speckled trout, of which there appears to be no mention by the recorders, seems to have been a neglected dainty. How Lucullus would have rejoiced at the sight of the pompano—that ruby of the salt-sea wave—and Apicius have been transported at the apparition of a puff-paste pâté of oyster-crabs! The brilliant iridescent hues of the rainbow-trout would have held a Roman epicure spellbound, while a dish of terrapin or a celery-fed Chesapeake canvasback might have decided the destinies of an empire. What a burst of applause a platter of roast ruffed-grouse would have commanded from a senate! Were the soft-shell crab a denizen of Baiæ, or the whitefish, as he attains supreme perfection in Lake Ontario, a habitant of an Italian tarn, one can fancy how a feast of Heliogabalus would have been prolonged. That there are still as good fish in the sea as ever were caught seems an anomaly, in view of the voracity of the old Latins for this form of food.
History has recorded less of the excesses of the table during the reigns of Trajan, Hadrian, Marcus Aurelius, Septimius Severus, and even during the dissolute monarchies of Commodus and Caracalla. It would be wrong, however, to assume that these excesses were renounced, even where the rulers did not themselves set the example, or that they did not continue in a flagrant form. The unbridled lust and gluttony of Commodus were scarcely equalled save by Heliogabalus. Septimius Severus, unable to endure the tortures he experienced in all his members, especially in his feet, in place of the poison that was refused him eagerly devoured a quantity of rich viands and died of indigestion. Gout and kindred maladies were notoriously common with both men and women, and upon this subject Seneca has descanted at length: "Is it necessary to enumerate the multitude of maladies that are the punishment of our luxury? The multiplicity of viands has produced a multiplicity of maladies. The greatest of physicians, the founder of medicine, has said that women do not become bald or subject to gout. Now they are both bald and gouty. Woman has not changed since in her nature, but in her mode of life, and, imitating man in his excesses, she shares his infirmities. Where is the lake, the sea, the forest, the spot of land that is not ransacked to gratify our palates? Our infirmities are the price of the pleasures to which we have abandoned ourselves beyond all measure and restraint. Are you astounded at the innumerable diseases?—count the number of our cooks!"
The favourite garum of the old Romans of itself were enough to have invited all the diseases that indigestion is heir to. This was a liquid, and was thus prepared: The insides of large fish and a variety of smaller fish were placed in a vessel and well salted, and then exposed to the sun till they became putrid. In a short time a liquor was produced, which, being strained off, was the garum or liquamen.
With the advent of Heliogabalus upon the throne, gluttony and extravagance reigned supreme. By this youthful monarch, during his brief reign of four years, the tyranny of Nero, and Caligula, the lust of Claudius and Commodus, the prodigality of Vitellius, the saturnalia and riotous living of Verres and Domitian were trebly exceeded. Entering Rome from Syria in a chariot drawn by naked women, surrounded with eunuchs, courtesans, and buffoons, wearing the tiara of the priests of the sun-god, dressed as a female in stuffs of silk and gold, and accompanied by a historiographer whose sole function it was to describe his orgies, he at once eclipsed all his predecessors. The Sardanapalus of Rome, his daily feasts are said to have consisted of over twoscore courses, and to have cost not less than ten thousand dollars each.
As related by Lampridius, his table-couches were stuffed with hares' down or partridges' feathers, his beds adorned with coverlets of gold, and in his kitchens none but richly chased utensils of silver were employed. The invention of a new sauce was royally rewarded by him, but if it was not relished the inventor was confined, to partake of nothing else until he had produced another more agreeable to the imperial palate. The liver of the priceless mullet seeming too paltry to Heliogabalus, he was served with large dishes completely filled with the gills. He brought the soft roe of the rare sea-eel into disrepute by maintaining a fleet of fishing craft for their capture, and ordering that the peasants of the Mediterranean should be gorged with them. Resides countless dishes, each of which was worth the price of a king's ransom, he was the inventor of coloured decorations at table. "In the summer," says Lampridius, "Heliogabalus gave feasts at which the service was composed of different colours, constantly varied throughout the season." The brains of partridges and ostriches were among his favourite dainties. Frequently the brains of six hundred ostriches were served at a single repast, as well as the heads of innumerable parrots, pheasants, and peacocks. He had cockscombs served in pâtés, and was therefore the inventor of vol au vent à la financière. The tongues of nightingales and thrushes he had likewise served in pâtés, and hearing that a strange bird, the phœnix, existed in Lydia, he offered two hundred pieces of gold to him who would procure it. In the course of his reign of four years he had depleted the treasury of an empire largely through gluttony, and died, anticipating the assassination of his soldiers, by his own hand.
It were superfluous to follow the subject to the decadence of the Empire, when, with wars and contentions and invasions of conquering hordes, came the decline of cookery, literature, and the arts. Nor does history record a resumption of gastronomy until towards the Renaissance—when Dante and Petrarch had touched their lyres, and Donatello and Robbia wrought their bassi-rilievi; when the Medici and the Este became the patrons of art; when Leonardo, Raffaello, Titian, and Guido stamped their genius upon the canvas; when Michelangelo created his "David," and Cellini his "Perseus"; when Giorgio fashioned his gorgeous lustres, and Orazio his glorious vasques.