perhaps spring from a natural impulse, I would not have it understood that old age is not susceptible of them. I indeed enjoy the ancestral fashion of appointing a master of ceremonies for the feast,[1] and the rules for drinking announced from the head of the table, and cups, as in Xenophon's Symposium,[2] not over large, and slowly drunk, and the cool breeze for the dining-hall in summer, and the winter's sun or fire.[3] Even on my Sabine farm I keep up these customs, and daily fill my table with my neighbors, prolonging our varied talk to the latest possible hour. But it is said that old men have less intensity of sensual enjoyment. So I believe; but there is no craving for it. You do not miss what you do not want. Sophocles very aptly replied, when
- ↑ The Roman arrangements for a festive occasion were not unlike our own. A presiding officer—the host, or some one appointed by him, or chosen by the throw of dice—called upon the guests in turn, that on subjects of conversation no opinion might be lost, and no guest slighted. He also, in the fashion maintained in England among convivialists till a comparatively recent time, announced the rules to be observed in drinking, and closed his speech with the words, Aut bibe, aut abi, "Either drink or go."
- ↑ Συμπόσιον, a dialogue specially designed to bring out the leading traits in the character of Socrates, who is the chief speaker, and of value, also, as grouping the interlocutors at a banquet, and thus incidentally presenting a picture of the etiquette and arrangements of an Athenian supper-table.
- ↑ It was not uncommon for rich Romans to have both summer and winter banqueting-rooms,—the winter room, if possible, open to the full heating power of the sun, which in that climate supersedes the necessity of artificial heat.
