[38] The Romans rode in carriages on a journey, but rarely for amusement, and never within the city. Even beyond the wall it was considered disreputable to hold the reins one’s self, such being the occupation of the slave or hired driver. Juvenal ranks the consul, who creeps out at night to drive his own chariot, with the most degraded of characters: that he should venture to drive by daylight, while still in office, is an excess of turpitude transcending the imagination of the most sarcastic painter of manners as they were. And this was a hundred years later than the age of Augustus. See Juvenal, VIII, 145.
[39] The leges Juliæ allowed two hundred sesterces for a repast on ordinary days, three hundred on holidays, one thousand for special occasions, such as a wedding, etc. Gellius[d] II, 24.
[40] The structor or carver was an important officer at the sideboard. Carving was even taught as an art, which, as the ancients had no forks (χειρονομᾶν, to manipulate, was the Greek term for it), must have required grace as well as dexterity. Moreau de Jonnès observes, with some reason, that the invention of the fork, apparently so simple, deserves to be considered difficult and recondite. The Chinese, with their ancient and elaborate civilisation, have failed to attain to it.
CHAPTER XXXIX. A HALF CENTURY OF DECLINE: COMMODUS TO ALEXANDER SEVERUS
The day of the death of Marcus Aurelius may be taken as the decisive moment in which the ruin of the old civilisation was determined.
Now after the great effort of reason in high places, after Nerva, Trajan, Hadrian, Antoninus, Marcus Aurelius, the reign of evil begins again, and is worse than ever. Farewell to goodness, farewell to reason! Now, all hail, folly! All hail, absurdity! All hail to the Syrian and his questionable gods! Genuine physicians have been able to do nothing; the sick man is more sick than ever: send for the charlatans.—Renan.
[161-183 A.D.]