It was to the Field of Mars that Agrippa came, to whom Rome owed the Pantheon and the demand for a law which should inhibit the private ownership of a masterpiece.  There, too, his eunuchs about him, Mecaenas lounged, companioned by Varus, by Horace and the mime Bathylle, all of whom he was accustomed to invite to that lovely villa of his which overlooked the blue Sabinian hills, and where suppers were given such as those which Petronius has described so alertly and so well.

In the hall like that of Mecaenas’, one divided against itself, the upper half containing the couches and tables, the other reserved for the service and the entertainments that follow, the ceiling was met by columns, the walls hidden by panels of gems.  On a frieze twelve pictures, surmounted by the signs of the zodiac, represented the dishes of the different months.  Beneath the bronze beds and silver tables mosaics were set in imitation of food that had fallen and had not been swept away.  And there, in white ungirdled tunics, the head and neck circled with coils of amaranth—­the perfume of which in opening the pores neutralizes the fumes of wine—­the guests lay, fanned by boys, whose curly hair they used for napkins.  Under the supervision of butlers the courses were served on platters so large that they covered the tables; sows’ breasts with Lybian truffles; dormice baked in poppies and honey, peacock-tongues flavored with cinnamon; oysters stewed in garum—­a sauce made of the intestines of fish—­sea-wolves from the Baltic; sturgeons from Rhodes; fig-peckers from Samos; African snails; pale beans in pink lard; and a yellow pig cooked after the Troan fashion, from which, when carved, hot sausages fell and live thrushes flew.  Therewith was the mulsum, a cup made of white wine, nard, roses, absinthe and honey; the delicate sweet wines of Greece; and crusty Falernian of the year six hundred and thirty-two.  As the cups circulated, choirs entered, chanting sedately the last erotic song; a clown danced on the top of a ladder, which he maintained upright as he danced, telling meanwhile untellable stories to the frieze; and host and guests, unvociferously, as good breeding dictates, chatted through the pauses of the service; discussed the disadvantages of death, the value of Noevian iambics, the disgrace of Ovid, banished because of Livia’s eyes.

Such was the Rome of Augustus.  “Caesar,” cried a mime to him one day, “do you know that it is important for you that the people should be interested in Bathylle and in myself?”

The mime was right.  The sovereign of Rome was not the Caesar, nor yet the aristocracy.  The latter was dead.  It had been banished by barbarian senators, by barbarian gods; it had died twice, at Pharsalus, at Philippi; it was the people that was sovereign, and it was important that that sovereign should be amused—­flattered, too, and fed.  For thirty years not a Roman of note had died in his bed; not one but had kept by him a slave who should