Nothing can better show the difference between the old Roman
manners and the new than the character of these parties; they are
the leisurely and comfortable rendezvous of an opulent and educated
society, in which politics, literature or philosophy could be
discussed with much self-satisfaction. That such discussion did not go
too deeply into hard questions was perhaps the result of the comfort.
There was of course another side to this picture of the evening of a
Roman gentleman. There was a coarse side to the Roman character, and
in the age when wealth, the slave trade, and idle habits encouraged
self-indulgence, meals were apt to become ends in themselves instead
of necessary aids to a wholesome life. The ordinary three parts or
courses (_mensae_) of a dinner,--the gustatio or light preliminary
course, the cena proper, with substantial dishes, and the dessert of
pastry and fruit, could be amplified and extended to an unlimited
extent by the skill of the slave-cooks brought from Greece and the
East (see above, p.
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