Nep. Oh! I was thinking that you eat what you hadn’t got! But what is there, then?
Piso. Troublesome questioner! What they give us.
Nep. But what do they give you, then?
I. Breakfast
Piso. We have breakfast an hour and a half after we have got up.
Nep. When do you get up?
II. Lunch—Food—Drink
Piso. Almost with the sun, for he is the leader of the Muses and the Muses are gracious to the dawn. Our early breakfast is a piece of coarse bread and some butter or some fruit as the time of the year supplies. For lunch, there are cooked vegetables or pottage in pottage-vessels, and meat with relishes. Sometimes turnips, sometimes cabbages, starch-food, wheat-meal, or rice. Then on fish-days, buttermilk from butter which has been turned out in deep dishes, with some cakes of bread, and a fresh fish, if it can be bought fairly cheap in the fish-market, or if not, a salt-fish, well soaked. Then pease, or pulse, or lentils, or beans, or lupines.
Nep. How much of these does each get?
Piso. Bread as much as he wishes; of viands as much as is necessary not for satiety, but for nourishment. For elaborate feasts, you must seek elsewhere, not in the school, where the aim is to form minds to the way of virtue.