at these entertainments by the amount of bodily pleasure more than by the intercourse and conversation of friends. In this feeling, our ancestors fitly called the festive meeting of friends at table, as implying union in life, a convivial meeting,—a much better name than that of the Greeks, who call such an occasion sometimes a compotation, sometimes a social supper,[1] evidently attaching the chief importance to that which is of the least moment in an entertainment.
XIV. I, indeed, for the pleasure of conversation, enjoy festive entertainments, even when they begin early and end late,[2] and that, not only in the company of my coevals, of whom very few remain, but with those of your age and with you; and I am heartily thankful to my advanced years for increasing my appetency for conversation, and diminishing my craving for food and drink. But if any one takes delight in the mere pleasures of the table, lest I may seem utterly hostile to appetites which
- ↑ The following is a more literal rendering of this passage: "Our ancestors appropriately named the reclining together of frends at a banquet convivium [cum and vivo, living together], because it implied a community of life. Better they than the Greeks, who called the same thing sometimes compotatio [cum and poto, drinking together], and sometimes concoenatio [con and coeno, supping together]." Compotatio and concoenatio are both Latin words. The corresponding Greek words are συμπόσιον (whence symposium) and σύνδειπνον.
- ↑ Latin, tempestivis conviviis. Tempestivus originally meant seasonable, thence over early. It is often used to designate at the same time the over early and the over late.
