In what strange ways has the gossip of the inquisitive medical student been transmitted through Lampryas and his grandchild to furnish an arabesque for Shakespeare’s tapestry! And, when we know its history, what a realistic touch does this anecdote lend to Mecaenas’ badinage, though Shakespeare has raised the profuse to the sublime by transferring the banquet from the evening to the morning, suppressing the fact of the relays, and insinuating that this was nothing out of the common!
Mecaenas. Eight wild boars roasted whole at a breakfast,
and but twelve persons there: is this true?
Enobarbus. This was but as a fly by an eagle: we had
much more monstrous matter of feast, which worthily
deserved noting.
(II. ii. 183.)
Or again we are told of Cleopatra’s precautions after Actium.
Now to make proofe of those poysons which made men dye with least paine, she tried it upon condemned men in prison. For when she saw the poysons that were sodaine and vehement, and brought speedy death with grievous torments: and in contrary manner, that suche as were more milde and gentle, had not that quicke speede and force to make one dye sodainly: she afterwardes went about to prove the stinging of snakes and adders, and made some to be applied unto men in her sight, some in one sorte, and some in an other. So when she had dayly made divers and sundrie proofes, she found none of all them she had proved so fit as the biting of an Aspicke, the which only causeth a heavines of the head, without swounding or complaining, and bringeth a great desire also to sleepe, with a little swet on the face, and so by little and little taketh away the sences and vitall powers, no living creature perceiving that the pacientes feele any paine. For they are so sorie when any bodie waketh them, and taketh them up; as those that being taken out of a sound sleepe, are very heavy and desirous to sleepe.
This leaves a trace only in three lines of Caesar’s reply when the guard detects the aspic’s trail; but these lines gain in significance if we remember the fuller statement.