Whether in the camp or the city, the early Romans had probably but one meal in a day.  That is true of many a man amongst ourselves by choice; it is true also, to our knowledge, of some horse regiments in our service, and may be of all.  This meal was called coena, or dinner in the city—­prandium in camps.  In the city it would always be tending to one fixed hour.  In the camp innumerable accidents of war would make it very uncertain.  On this account it would be an established rule to celebrate the daily meal at noon, if nothing hindered; not that a later hour would not have been preferred had the choice been free; but it was better to have a certainty at a bad hour, than by waiting for a better hour to make it an uncertainty.  For it was a camp proverb—­Pransus, paratus; armed with his daily meal, the soldier is ready for service.  It was not, however, that all meals, as Isidore imagined, were indiscriminately called prandium; but that the one sole meal of the day, by accidents of war, might, and did, revolve through all hours of the day.

The first introduction of this military meal into Rome itself, would be through the honorable pedantry of old centurions, &c., delighting (like the Trunnions, &c., of our navy) to keep up in peaceful life some image or memorial of their past experience, so wild, so full of peril, excitement, and romance, as Roman warfare must have been in those ages.  Many non-military people for health’s sake, many as an excuse for eating early, many by way of interposing some refreshment between the stages of forensic business, would adopt this hurried and informal meal.  Many would wish to see their sons adopting such a meal as a training for foreign service in particular, and for temperance in general.  It would also be maintained by a solemn and very interesting commemoration of this camp repast in Rome.

This commemoration, because it has been grossly misunderstood by Salmasius, (whose error arose from not marking the true point of a particular antithesis,) and still more, because it is a distinct confirmation of all we have said as to the military nature of prandium, we shall detach from the series of our illustrations, by placing it in a separate paragraph.

On a set day the officers of the army were invited by Caesar to a banquet; it was a circumstance expressly noticed in the invitation, by the proper officers of the palace, that the banquet was not a “coena,” but a “prandium.”  What followed, in consequence?  Why, that all the guests sate down in full military accoutrement; whereas, observes the historian, had it been a coena, the officers would have unbelted their swords; for, he adds, even in Caesar’s presence the officers lay aside their swords.  The word prandium, in short, converted the palace into the imperial tent; and Caesar was no longer a civil emperor and princeps senatus, but became a commander-in-chief amongst a council of his staff, all belted and plumed, and in full military fig.