Cornelius Nepos says that before the victory gained[1101] by Sylla, there were but two banquetting couches adorned with silver at Rome, and that in his own recollection, silver was first used for adorning sideboards. Fenestella, who died at the end of the reign of Tiberius Cæsar, informs us that at that period sideboards, inlaid even with tortoiseshell,[1102] had come into fashion; whereas, a little before his time, they had been made of solid wood, of a round shape, and not much larger than our tables. He says, however, that when he was quite a boy, they had begun to make the sideboards square, and of different[1103] pieces of wood, or else veneered with maple or citrus:[1104] and that at a later period the fashion was introduced of overlaying the corners and the seams at the joinings with silver. The name given to them in his youth, he says, was “tympana;”[1105] and it was at this period, too, that the chargers which had been known as “magides” by the ancients, first received the name of “lances,” from their resemblance[1106] to the scales of a balance.
CHAP. 53.—THE ENORMOUS PRICE OF SILVER PLATE.
It is not, however, only for vast quantities of plate that there is such a rage among mankind, but even more so, if possible, for the plate of peculiar artists: and this too, to the exculpation of our own age, has long been the case. C. Gracchus possessed some silver dolphins, for which he paid five thousand sesterces per pound. Lucius Crassus, the orator, paid for two goblets chased by the hand of the artist Mentor,[1107] one hundred thousand sesterces: but he confessed that for very shame he never dared use them, as also that he had other articles of plate in his possession, for which he had paid at the rate of six thousand sesterces per pound. It was the conquest of Asia[1108] that first introduced luxury into Italy; for we find that Lucius Scipio, in his triumphal procession, exhibited one thousand four hundred pounds’ weight of chased silver, with golden vessels, the weight of which amounted to one thousand five hundred pounds. This[1109] took place in the year from the foundation of the City, 565. But that which inflicted a still more severe blow upon the Roman morals, was the legacy of Asia,[1110] which King Attalus[1111] left to the state at his decease, a legacy which was even more disadvantageous than the victory of Scipio,[1112] in its results. For, upon this occasion, all scruple was entirely removed, by the eagerness which existed at Rome, for making purchases at the auction of the king’s effects. This took place in the year of the City, 622, the people having learned, during the fifty-seven years that had intervened, not only to admire, but to covet even, the opulence of foreign nations. The tastes of the Roman people had received, too, an immense impulse from the conquest of Achaia,[1113] which, during this interval, in the year of the City, 608, that nothing might be wanting, had introduced both statues and pictures. The same epoch, too, that saw the birth of luxury, witnessed the downfall of Carthage; so that, by a fatal coincidence, the Roman people, at the same moment, both acquired a taste for vice and obtained a license for gratifying it.
Some, too, of the ancients sought to recommend themselves by this love of excess; for Caius Marius, after his victory over the Cimbri, drank from a cantharus,[1114] it is said, in imitation of Father Liber;[1115] Marius, that ploughman[1116] of Arpinum, a general who had risen from the ranks![1117]
CHAP. 54. (12.)—STATUES OF SILVER.
It is generally believed, but erroneously, that silver was first employed for making statues of the deified Emperor Augustus, at a period when adulation was all the fashion: for I find it stated, that in the triumph celebrated by Pompeius Magnus there was a silver statue exhibited of Pharnaces, the first[1118] king of Pontus, as also one of Mithridates Eupator,[1119] besides chariots of gold and silver.
Silver, too, has in some instances even supplanted gold; for the luxurious tastes of the female plebeians having gone so far as to adopt the use of shoe-buckles of gold,[1120] it is considered old-fashioned to wear them made of that metal.[1121] I myself, too, have seen Arellius Fuscus[1122]—the person whose name was erased from the equestrian order on a singularly calumnious charge,[1123] when his school was so thronged by our youth, attracted thither by his celebrity—wearing rings made of silver. But of what use is it to collect all these instances, when our very soldiers, holding ivory even in contempt, have the hilts of their swords made of chased silver? when, too, their scabbards are heard to jingle with their silver chains, and their belts with the plates of silver with which they are inlaid?
At the present day, too, the continence of our very pages is secured by the aid of silver:[1124] our women, when bathing, quite despise any sitting-bath that is not made of silver: while for serving up food at table, as well as for the most unseemly purposes, the same metal must be equally employed! Would that Fabricius could behold these instances of luxuriousness, the baths of our women—bathing as they do in company with the men—paved with silver to such an extent that there is not room left for the sole of the foot even! Fabricius, I say, who would allow of no general of an army having any other plate than a patera and a salt-cellar of silver.—Oh that he could see how that the rewards of valour in our day are either composed of these objects of luxury, or else are broken up to make them![1125] Alas for the morals of our age! Fabricius puts us to the blush.