On other days a patron would naturally entertain a number of his clients at dinner, and on no occasion would he be better able to show how much or how little he was a gentleman in the modern sense of the term.  It is not merely from the satirist that we learn how discourteous the Roman grandee might be at his own table if he chose.  It was no uncommon thing for a patron to set before these humbler guests dishes or portions of dishes markedly inferior to those which were offered to himself and to any aristocrat whom he had placed near him.  In this sense the client was often made to feel very distinctly that he was “sitting below the salt.”  While the mellowest Setine or Falernian wine was poured into the patron’s own jewelled goblet of gold or silver or crystal, his client might be drinking from thick glass or earthenware the poorer stuff grown on the Sabine Hills.  The fish presented to Silius and his “brother” noble might be a choice turbot, and the bird might be pheasant, while Proculus the client must be content with pike from the Tiber and the common barndoor fowl.  The later satirist Juvenal presents us with inimitable pictures of the hungry dependants at the table of their “king,” waiting “bread in hand” (like the sword drawn for the fray) to see what fortune would send them.  On the other hand there were, of course, patrons who made no such distinctions.  The younger Pliny, who was himself a gentleman almost in the modern sense—­if we overlook a too frequent tendency to contemplate his own undeniable virtues—­writes a letter to a young friend in the following terms:  “I need not go into details as to how I came to be dining with a person with whom I am by no means intimate.  In his own eyes he combined elegance with economy; in mine he combined meanness with extravagance.  The dishes set before himself and a few others were of the choicest; those supplied to the rest were poor scraps.  There was the same difference in his wine, which was of three kinds.  The intention was not to offer a choice, but to prevent the right of refusing.  One kind was for himself and us; another for his less important friends (for his friends are graded); another for his and our freedmen.  My next neighbour noticed this, and asked me if I approved of it.  I said ‘No!’ ‘Well,’ said he, ’what is your own practice?’ ’I treat every one alike, for I invite people to a dinner, not to an insult, and when they share my table I let them share everything.’  ‘Your freedmen as well?’ ’Yes, at such times I regard them as guests, not as freedmen.’  At this he said, ’It costs you a good deal?’ ‘Not at all.’  ‘How can that be?’ ’Because it is not a case of their drinking the same wine as I do, but of my drinking the same wine as they do.’” The letter is perhaps nearly half a century later than our chosen period, but there is no reason to think that manners had undergone any great change in the interval.

CHAPTER XIV