bene cocto
  condito, sermone bono, et si quaeri, libenter.”

Even good scholars used formerly to make the mistake of supposing that Caesar, a man habitually abstemious, or at least temperate, had made up his mind to over-eat himself on this occasion, as he was intending to take an emetic afterwards.  And even now it may be as well to point out that medical treatment by a course of emetics was a perfectly well known and valued method at this time;[453] that Caesar, whose health was always delicate, and at this time severely tried, was then under this treatment, and could therefore eat his dinner comfortably, without troubling himself about what he ate and drank:  and that the apt quotation from Lucilius, and the literary conversation which (so Cicero adds) followed the dinner, prove beyond all question that this was no glutton’s meal, but one of that ordinary and rational type, in which repose and pleasant intercourse counted for more than the mere eating and drinking.

No more work seems to have been done after the cena was over and the guests had retired.  We found Cicero on one occasion going to bed soon after the meal; and, as he was up and active so early in the morning, we may suppose that he retired at a much earlier hour than we do.  But of this last act of the day he tells us nothing.

CHAPTER X

HOLIDAYS AND AMUSEMENTS

The Italian peoples, of all races, have always had a wonderful capacity for enjoying themselves out of doors.  The Italian festa of to-day, usually, as in ancient times, linked to some religious festival, is a scene of gaiety, bright dresses, music, dancing, bonfires, races, and improvisation or mummery; and all that we know of the ancient rural festivals of Italy suggests that they were of much the same lively and genial character.  Tibullus gives us a good idea of them: 

  “Agricola assiduo primum satiatus aratro
  Cantavit oerto rustica verba pede;
  Et satur arenti primum est modulatus avena
  Carmen, ut ornatos diceret ante decs;
  Agricola et minio suffusus, Bacche, rubenti
  Primus inexperta duxit ab arte choros."[454]

It would be easy to multiply examples of such merry-making from the poets of the Augustan age, nearly all of whom were born and bred in the country, and shared Virgil’s tenderness for a life of honest work and play among the Italian hills and valleys.  But in this chapter we are to deal with the holidays and enjoyments of the great city, and the rural festivals are only mentioned here because almost all the characteristics of the urban holiday-making are to be found in germ there.  The Roman calendar of festivals has its origin in the regularly recurring rites of the earliest Latin husbandman.  As the city grew, these old agricultural festivities lost of course much of their native simplicity and naivete; some of them survived merely as religious or priestly performances, some became degraded into licentious enjoyment; but the music and dancing, the gay dresses, the racing, the mumming or acting, are all to be found in the city, developed in one form or another, from the earliest to the latest periods of Roman history.