Here in tempting array was every variety of vegetable reared on Greek or Egyptian soil; here speckless fruits of every size and hue were set out, and there ready baked, shining, golden-brown pasties were displayed.  Those containing meat, fish or the mussels of Canopus were prepared in Alexandria itself, but others containing fruit or the leaves of flowers were brought from Arsinoe on the shores of Lake Moeris, for in that neighborhood the cultivation of fruit and horticulture generally were pursued with the greatest success.  Meat of all sorts lay or hung in suitable places; there were juicy hams from Cyrene, Italian sausages and uncooked joints of various slaughtered beasts.  By them lay or hung game and poultry in select abundance, and a large part of the court was taken up by a tank in which the choicest of the scaly tribes of the Nile, and of the lakes of Northern Egypt, were swimming about as well as the Muraena and other fish of Italian breed.  Alexandrian crabs and the mussels, oysters, and cray-fish of Canopus and Klysma were kept alive in buckets or jars.  The smoked meats of Mendes and the neighborhood of Lake Moeris hung on metal pegs, and in a covered but well-aired room, sheltered from the sun lay freshly-imported fish from the Mediterranean and Red Sea.  Every guest at the ‘Olympian table’ was allowed here to select the meat, fruit, asparagus, fish, or pasty which he desired to have cooked for him.  The host, Lykortas, pointed out to Hadrian an old gentleman who was busy in the court that was so prettily decorated with still-life, engaged in choosing the raw materials of a banquet he wished to give some friends in the evening of this very day.

“It is all very nice and extremely good,” said Hadrian, “but the gnats and flies which are attracted by all those good things are unendurable, and the strong smell of food spoils my appetite.”

“It is better in the side-rooms,” said the host.  “In the one kept for you the company is now preparing to depart.  In behind here the sophists Demetrius and Pancrates are entertaining a few great men from Rome, rhetoricians or philosophers or something of the kind.  Now they are bringing in the fine lamps and they have been sitting and talking at that table ever since breakfast.  There come the guests out of the side room.  Will you take it?”

“Yes,” said Hadrian.  “And when a tall young man comes to ask for the architect Claudius Venato, from Rome, bring him in to me.”

“An architect then, and not a sophist or a rhetorician,” said mine host, looking keenly at the Emperor.

“Silenus,—­a philosopher!”

“Oh the two vociferous friends there go about even on other days naked and with ragged cloaks thrown over their lean shoulders.  To-day they are feeding at the expense of rich Josephus.”

“Josephus! he must be a Jew and yet he is making a large hole in the ham.”

“There would be more swine in Cyrene if there were no Jews; they are Greeks like ourselves, and eat everything that is good.”