Each guest chose his favorite food from among the different dishes, and regaled his friends with it, presents being carried by slaves from one end of the table to the other. More wines, in sealed and dusty amphoræ, were brought up from the cellars, and overflowed the festal goblets. Wine from Chios, rare and costly, mingled with those from Cæcubum, from Falerno, and from Massico, in Italy, and those from Laurona and from the Saguntine domain. To the bouquet of these liquids was added the aroma of the sauces, into which entered, following the complicated recipes of the Grecian cuisine, silphium, parsley, sesame, fennel, cumin, and garlic.
Sónnica barely touched her food; she neglected the successive plates, heaped with presents from her guests, to smile at Actæon.
"I love you," she whispered. "I feel as if a Thessalian magus had cast a spell over me. My whole being responds to the throb of love. Do you see these fishes? I am afraid to eat them; I feel that I would be committing a sacrilege, because roses and fishes are dedicated to Venus, the mother of our joy. I only wish to drink—to drink profoundly. I feel within me a fire which caresses, yet consumes me."
The guests gormandized, rendering tribute to Sónnica's cook, an Asiatic, purchased in Athens by one of her navigators. He had cost her almost the price of a villa; but they considered the money well spent, and they admired the art with which his meditations in a corner of the kitchen produced these astonishing combinations, afterward executed by the other slaves—above all that happy invention of a mild sauce of dates and honey for the roasts. With such a slave it were possible to enjoy one's food throughout the whole of life and to ward off death for many years.
The second course had ended. The guests were lying surfeited on their couches, loosening their garments. The slaves served them with wine in horn-shaped flagons of alabaster, which permitted a slender stream to gurgle from its spout, so that they need not lift themselves to drink. The purple drapery of the couches was stained with wine. The great lampadaries in the corners, with their tapers of perfumed oil, seemed to glow more faintly in the dense atmosphere charged with vapor from the steaming viands. The garlands of roses hanging in festoons from the lamps wilted in the heavy atmosphere. Through the open door the guests caught glimpses of the columns of the peristyle, and of a strip of dark blue sky in which twinkled many stars.
The pacific Alcon rising up in his couch, smiled with the amiability of mild intoxication, gazing at the splendor of the firmament.
"I drink to the beauty of our city!" he said, raising the horn filled with wine.
"To the Grecian Zacynthus!" shouted Lachares.
"Yes, let Saguntum be Greek!" answered his friends.
The conversation turned upon the great festival which, at Sónnica's initiative, the Greeks of Saguntum would celebrate in honor of Minerva on gathering the harvest. The Panathenaic festivals should end with a procession like that which took place in Athens, and which Phidias had immortalized in marble in his famous friezes. The young men spoke with enthusiasm of the horses they would ride, and of the contests for which they were training by persistent exercise. Sónnica patronized the festivals with her immense wealth, and she wished to make these as famous as that one which Athens celebrated on the dedication of the Parthenon.