commonly selected, will necessarily incline to the belief that novelistic historians have too often been taking what was exceptional, eccentric, and strongly disapproved by contemporaries, for the usual and the normal.  If we read about Romans swallowing emetics after gorging themselves, so that they might begin eating afresh, we may feel both disgust and pity, but we must not imagine such a practice to have been a national habit.

The dinner regularly consisted of three divisions:  a preliminary course of hors d’oeuvres, the dinner proper, and a sort of enlarged dessert.  It might or might not be accompanied or followed by various entertainments, and closed by a protracted course of wine-drinking.  All would depend upon the tastes of the host and the nature of the company.  The meal, it may be mentioned, begins with an invocation corresponding to our grace.  The hors d’oeuvres are taken in the shape of shell-fish, such as oysters and mussels, snails with piquant sauce, lettuce, radishes and the like, eggs, and a taste of wine tempered with honey.

Next comes the dinner proper, commonly divided into three services, comprising a considerable choice of fish (particularly turbot, flounder, mullet, and lampreys), poultry and game (from chicken, duck, pigeon, and peacock, to partridges, pheasants, ortolans, and fieldfares), hare, joints of the ordinary meats, as well as of wild boar and venison, a kind of haggis, a variety of the vegetables most familiar to modern use, mushrooms, and truffles.  There is abundant, and to our taste excessive, use of seasonings, not only of salt, vinegar, and pepper, but of oil, thyme, mint, ginger, and the like, The piece de resistance—­a wild boar, or whatever it may be—­regularly arrives as the middle of the three services.  The substantial meal ends with a small offering to the household deities.  After this follows the dessert, consisting of fresh and dried fruits, and of cakes and sweet-meats artistically composed.

During the dinner a special feature is made of the artistic arrangement of the various viands upon the large trays or stands from which the guest makes his choice, for the several dishes belonging to one course were not brought separately to table.  In full view of the guests the professional carver exhibits his dexterity with much demonstration of grace and rapidity, and well-dressed and neat-fingered slaves render the necessary service.  Of plates and dishes of various shapes and purposes, silver and silver-gilt, there is great profusion.

The conversation meanwhile depends upon the company.  Sometimes it turns upon the chariot-races and the chances of the “Red” or “Green”; sometimes it is social gossip and scandal.  If the guests are of a graver cast of mind, it may be concerned with questions of art and literature, or even philosophy.  The Roman particularly affected encyclopaedic information, and frequently posted himself with such miscellaneous matter derived from a salaried