209); the gourmand had appeared long before
the age of Cicero and had been already satirised by Lucilius and
Varro.[448] Splendid dinner-services might take the place of the
old simple ware, and luxurious drapery and rugs covered the couches
instead of the skins of animals, as in the old time.[449] Vulgarity
and ostentation, such as Horace satirised, were doubtless too often to
be met with. Those who lived for feasting and enjoyment would invite
their company quite early in the day (tempestativum convivium) and
carry on the revelry till midnight.[450] And lastly, the practice of
drinking wine after dinner (_comissatio_), simply for the sake of
drinking, under fixed rules according to the Greek fashion, familiar
to us all in the _Odes_ of Horace, had undoubtedly begun some time
before the end of the Public. In the Actio prima of his Verrine
orations Cicero gives a graphic picture of a convivium beginning
early, where the proposal was made and agreed to that the drinking
should be "more graeco."[451]
But it would be a great mistake to suppose that this kind of
self-indulgence was characteristic of the average Roman life of this
age.
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