We find the orator Calvus complaining that the saucepans are made of silver; but it has been left for us to invent a plan of covering our very carriages[1084] with chased silver, and it was in our own age that Poppæa, the wife of the Emperor Nero, ordered her favourite mules to be shod even with gold!
CHAP. 50.—INSTANCES OF THE FRUGALITY OF THE ANCIENTS IN REFERENCE TO SILVER PLATE.
The younger Scipio Africanus left to his heir thirty-two pounds’ weight of silver; the same person who, on his triumph over the Carthaginians, displayed four thousand three hundred and seventy pounds’ weight of that metal. Such was the sum total of the silver possessed by the whole of the inhabitants of Carthage, that rival of Rome for the empire of the world! How many a Roman since then has surpassed her in his display of plate for a single table! After the destruction of Numantia, the same Africanus gave to his soldiers, on the day of his triumph, a largess of seven denarii each—and right worthy were they of such a general, when satisfied with such a sum! His brother, Scipio Allobrogicus,[1085] was the very first who possessed one thousand pounds’ weight of silver, but Drusus Livius, when he was tribune of the people, possessed ten thousand. As to the fact that an ancient warrior,[1086] a man, too, who had enjoyed a triumph, should have incurred the notice of the censor for being in possession of five pounds’ weight of silver, it is a thing that would appear quite fabulous at the present day.[1087] The same, too, with the instance of Catus Ælius,[1088] who, when consul, after being found by the Ætolian ambassadors taking his morning meal[1089] off of common earthenware, refused to receive the silver vessels which they sent him; and, indeed, was never in possession, to the last day of his life, of any silver at all, with the exception of two drinking-cups, which had been presented to him as the reward of his valour, by L. Paulus,[1090] his father-in-law, on the conquest of King Perseus.
We read, too, that the Carthaginian ambassadors declared that no people lived on more amicable terms among themselves than the Romans, for that wherever they had dined they had always met with the same[1091] silver plate. And yet, by Hercules! to my own knowledge, Pompeius Paulinus, son of a Roman of equestrian rank at Arelate,[1092] a member, too, of a family, on the paternal side, that was graced with the fur,[1093] had with him, when serving with the army, and that, too, in a war against the most savage nations, a service of silver plate that weighed twelve thousand pounds!
CHAP. 51.—AT WHAT PERIOD SILVER WAS FIRST USED AS AN ORNAMENT FOR COUCHES.
For this long time past, however, it has been the fashion to plate the couches of our women, as well as some of our banquetting-couches,[1094] entirely with silver. Carvilius Pollio,[1095] a Roman of equestrian rank, was the first, it is said, to adorn these last with silver; not, I mean, to plate them all over, nor yet to make them after the Delian pattern; the Punic[1096] fashion being the one he adopted. It was after this last pattern too, that he had them ornamented with gold as well: and it was not long after his time that silver couches came into fashion, in imitation of the couches of Delos. All this extravagance, however, was fully expiated by the civil wars of Sulla.
CHAP. 52.—AT WHAT PERIOD SILVER CHARGERS OF ENORMOUS SIZE WERE FIRST MADE. WHEN SILVER WAS FIRST USED AS A MATERIAL FOR SIDEBOARDS. WHEN THE SIDEBOARDS CALLED TYMPANA WERE FIRST INTRODUCED.
In fact, it was but very shortly before that period that these couches were invented, as well as chargers[1097] of silver, one hundred pounds in weight: of which last, it is a well-known fact, that there were then upwards of one hundred and fifty in Rome, and that many persons were proscribed through the devices of others who were desirous to gain possession thereof. Well may our Annals be put to the blush for having to impute those civil wars to the existence of such vices as these!
Our own age, however, has waxed even stronger in this respect. In the reign of Claudius, his slave Drusillanus, surnamed Rotundus, who acted as his steward[1098] in Nearer Spain, possessed a silver charger weighing five hundred pounds, for the manufacture of which a workshop had had to be expressly built. This charger was accompanied also by eight other dishes, each two hundred and fifty pounds in weight. How many of his fellow-slaves,[1099] pray, would it have taken to introduce these dishes, or who[1100] were to be the guests served therefrom?