At their banquets they spread embroidered carpets,
purple coverings, gold and silver plate. Sulla had one hundred and
fifty dishes of silver; the plate of Marcus Drusus weighed 10,000
pounds. While the common people continued to sit at table in
accordance with old Italian custom, the rich adopted the oriental
usage of reclining on couches at their meals. At the same time was
introduced the affected and costly cookery of the East--exotic fishes,
brains of peacocks, and tongues of birds.
From the second century the extravagance was such that a consul who
died in 152 could say in his will: "As true glory does not consist in
vain pomp but in the merits of the dead and of one's ancestors, I bid
my children not to spend on my funeral ceremonies more than a million
as" ($10,000).
=Greek Humanity.=--In Greece the Romans saw the monuments, the
statues, and the pictures which had crowded their cities for
centuries; they came to know their learned people and the
philosophers. Some of the Romans acquired a taste for the beautiful
and for the life of the spirit. The Scipios surrounded themselves with
cultivated Greeks.
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