726 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



of those entertainments, to which the above-named potentates had an 

 unpleasant habit of inviting themselves. 



The symposia of Apicius lasted from twenty to thirty hours, and 

 his semi-annual state dinners even two days, during which host and 

 guests were restricted to recesses of ten minutes, and etiquette required 

 them to partake of every dish and drink, the quantity being optional, 

 except in regard to certain spiced wines, of which a good-sized jug was 

 de rigueiir — a rule w^hich could only be circumvented by liberal libations 

 to the gods. Yet even excess itself was exceeded by the mania of Vi- 

 tellius, who wasted the yearly revenue of a province on a single ban- 

 quet, gorged himself for hour after hour without intermission, and, in 

 the words of Tacitus, " unadmonished by the eruptive protests of na- 

 ture, never thought of yielding while he could see and hear " ! He and 

 some of his successors on the throne of gluttony probably owed their 

 immunity to the virtues of a long lineage of frugal ancestors. Italy, 

 truly, is the land of contrasts, of extremes in virtue as well as in vice. 

 The resources wasted on a single day at one of those saturnalia of in- 

 temperance would probably have fed a village for a century of the early 

 republican era, and for at least twenty years in our present time of 

 poverty-born frugality. Frugal, in its original sense, meant literally 

 subsisting on fruit in distinction to carnivorous habits, which were 

 thought extravagant. Cyrus, King of Persia, according to Xenophon, 

 was brought up on a diet of water, bread, and cresses, till up to his 

 fifteenth year, when honey and raisins were added ; and the family 

 names of the Fabii and Lentuli were derived from their customary and 

 possibly exclusive diet. Eggs and apples, with a little bread, were for 

 centuries the alpha and omega of a Roman dinner ; and, in earlier times, 

 even bread and turnips, if not turnips alone, which the patriot Cincin- 

 natus thought sufficient for his wants. It is singular that our temper- 

 ance societies direct their eiforts only against the fluid part of our vi- 

 cious diet ; a league of temperate eaters would certainly find a large field 

 for reform. But in Italy the thing was attempted by Luigi de Cornaro, 

 a Venetian nobleman of the fifteenth century, who restricted himself 

 to a daily allowance of ten ounces of solid food and six ounces of wine, 

 and prolonged his life to one hundred and two years. Though he did 

 not organize his followers into a sect, his example and his voluminous 

 writings influenced the manners of his country for many years. Cor- 

 naro would not have gained many converts in Russia and Germany ; but 

 throughout southern Europe frugality, in the truest old Latin sense, is 

 by no means rare. Lacour, a Marseilles 'longshoreman, earned from ten 

 to twenty francs a day, loaned money on interest and gave alms, but 

 slept at night in his basket, and subsisted on fourteen onions a day, 

 which preserved him in excellent health and humor, but got him the 

 nickname of quatorze oignons. 



A pound of bread with six ounces of poor cheese, and such berries 

 as the roadside may offer, constitute the daily ration of the Turkish 



