Yet even this supper he himself outdid at a feast to celebrate the first use of a dish fashioned expressly for him, and from its extraordinary size yclept “The Shield of Minerva.” In this dish[482] costing £100,000 and capable of feeding one hundred and thirty guests “were tossed together the livers of charfish, the brains of pheasants and peacocks, the tongues of flamingos, and the entrails (or rather the milt) of lampreys, brought in ships of war from the Carpathian Sea, or the Spanish Straits.”[483]
In order “satiare inexplebiles libidines,” etc., Vitellius is believed to have squandered in a few months[484] no less than seven million two hundred and sixty-five thousand pounds (£7,265,000)![485]
No wonder that Caligula, perhaps the biggest spendthrift of the Cæsars, laid down the maxim that “a man ought to be either an economist, or an Emperor!”
The fabulous sums spent on entertainments by the Greeks and Romans were equalled, even surpassed by the Persians, the Sybarites, the Egyptians, and other nations. But the cost, though prodigious, of Cleopatra’s four-day entertainment to Antony and his captains (in the menu of which fishes from the Nile and the Red Sea figured conspicuously), pales before that of a supper given in honour of Xerxes and his captains by Antipater of Thasos, i.e. 400 (presumably Attic) talents or some £100,000! No wonder Herodotus mournfully adds, “Wherever Xerxes took two meals, dinner and supper, that city was utterly ruined!”[486]
Nor at the feasts, which the invader of Media made “for a great multitude every day,” was it a case of taking up of the fragments that remained but twelve basketsful, because, as Posidonius (in the 14th book of his History) continues, “besides the food that was consumed and the heaps of fragments which were left, every guest carried away with him entire joints of beasts, and birds, and fishes, which had never been carved, all ready dressed,[487] in sufficient quantities to fill a waggon. And after this they were presented with a quantity of sweetmeats,” etc.
The prize, however, for mad lavishness must be adjudged even in a race of such strenuous competitors, to “that most admirable of all monarchs,” Ptolemy Philadelphus. It is “Eclipse first, the rest nowhere,” if the description of the coronation feast given by Callixenus in his History of Alexandria be faithfully rendered by Athenæus.[488]
The imagination of the average reader before reaching the last chapters will have been fatigued and appalled by the picture of overwhelming wealth and magnificence, but as Ptolemy, after a reign of grandiose and continuous expenditure, left at his death £200,000,000 in the treasury, the cost of the whole entertainment must have been as nought compared with his revenue.
M. Gavius Apicius, after squandering half a million sterling on the indulging his passion for creating new dishes and new combinations of food from materials collected in Europe, Asia, and Africa, one day balanced his accounts. Finding that but barely £80,000 remained, and despairing of being able to satisfy the cravings of his hunger from such a miserable pittance he poisoned himself. He is possibly the author of a Treatise (in ten books!) of recipes for new dishes and new sauces for fish; for one of the latter more than twenty-five ingredients were necessary.[489]
The importance attached to cooks and cooking finds a cloud of witnesses in Greek and Roman writers. Athenæus in especial recites their triumphs and their bombastic boasts. So high was the chef’s position and so excellent was the cuisine in Greece that we find the Roman ambassadors, who in the sixth century b.c. were sent to investigate the working of Solon’s Laws, bringing home a special report on Cooking!
To these Attic cordons bleus in succeeding generations not only Italy but Persia were glad to send pupils, and pay exorbitant fees for tuition. The Attic cook gave himself the same airs of superiority over his Roman brother, as the French chef over the Anglican—him “of a hundred sects but only one sauce.” Carême, the chef of Talleyrand (the author of this mot), never abated his claim that to the success of the Congress of Vienna he contributed no less than his master.[490] His salary, however, does not begin to compare with that of Antony’s cook, £3000 a year and “perquisites” galore.