Within these two first hours of daylight the busy man had to find time for a morning meal; the idle man, who slept later, might postpone it.  This early breakfast, called ientaculum[422], answered to the “coffee and roll” which is usual at the present day in all European countries except our own, and which is fully capable of supporting even a hard-working man for several hours.  It is, indeed, quite possible to do work before this breakfast; Antiochus, the great doctor, is said by Galen to have visited such of his patients as lived near him before his breakfast and on foot[423].  But as a rule the meal was taken before a busy man went out to his work, and consisted of bread, either dipped in wine or eaten with honey, olives, or cheese.  The breakfast of Antiochus consisted, for example, of bread and Attic honey.

The meal over, the man of politics or business would leave his house, outside which his clients and friends or other hangers-on would be waiting for him, and proceed to the Forum,—­the centre, as we have seen, of all his activity—­accompanied by these people in a kind of procession.  Some would go before to make room for him, while others followed him; if bent on election business, he would have experienced helpers,[424] either volunteers or in his pay, to save him from making blunders as to names and personalities, and in fact to serve him in conducting himself towards the populace with the indispensable blanditia.[425] Every Roman of importance liked to have, and usually had, a train of followers or friends in descending to the Forum of a morning from his house, or in going about other public business; what Q. Cicero urges on his brother in canvassing for the consulship may hold good in principle for all the public appearances of a public man,—­“I press this strongly on you, always to be with a multitude."[426] It may perhaps be paralleled with the love of the Roman for processions, e.g. the lustrations of farm, city, and army,[427] and with his instinctive desire for aid and counsel in all important matters both of public and private life, shown in the consilium of the paterfamilias and of the magistrate.  Examples are easy to find in the literature of this period; an excellent one is the graphic picture of Gaius Gracchus and his train of followers, which Plutarch has preserved from a contemporary writer.  “The people looked with admiration on him, seeing him attended by crowds of building-contractors, artificers, ambassadors, magistrates, soldiers, and learned men, to all of whom he was easy of access; while he maintained his dignity, he was gracious to all, and suited his behaviour to the condition of every individual; thus he proved the falsehood of those who called him tyrannical or arrogant."[428]