134 Pliny's natural history. [Book XXXIII. 



CHAP. 51. — AT WHAT PERIOD SILVER WAS FIRST USED AS AJf 

 ORNAMENT FOR COUCHES. 



For this long time past, however, it has been the fashion to 

 plate the couches of our women, as well as some of our ban- 

 quetting-couches,^^ entirely with silver. Carvilius Pollio,*^ a 

 Roman of equestrian rank, was the first, it is said, to adorn 

 these last with silver ; not, I mean, to plate them all over, nor 

 yet to make them after the Delian pattern ; the Punic^^ fashion 

 being the one he adopted. It was after this last pattern too, 

 that he had them ornamented with gold as well : and it was 

 not long after his time that silver couches came into fashion, 

 in imitation of the couches of Delos. All this extravagance, 

 however, was fully expiated by the civil wars of Sulla. 



CHAP. 52. AT WHAT PERIOD SILVER CHARGERS OF ENORMOUS 



SIZE WERE FIRST MADE. VTHEN SILVER WAS FIRST USED AS 

 A MATERIAL FOR SIDEBOARDS. WHEN THE SIDEBOARDS CALLED 

 TYMPANA WERE FIRST INTRODUCED. 



In fact, it was but very shortly before that period that these 

 couches were invented, as well as chargers*^ of silver, one 

 hundred pounds in weight : of which last, it is a well-known 

 fact, that there were then upwards of one hundred and fifty in 

 Rome, and that many persons were proscribed through the 

 devices of others who were desirous to gain possession thereof. 

 Well may our Annals be put to the blush for having to impute 

 those civil wars to the existence of such vices as these ! 



Our own age, however, has waxed even stronger in this 

 respect. In tlie reign of Claudius, his slave Drusillanus, 

 surnamed Rotundus, who acted as his steward^' in Nearer 

 Spain, possessed a silver charger weighing five hundred 

 pounds, for the manufacture of which a workshop had had to be 

 expressly built. This charger was accompanied also by eight 

 other dishes, each two hundred and fifty pounds in weight. 

 How many of his fellow-slaves,*^ pray, would it have taken to 

 introduce these dishes, or who*' were to be the guests served 

 therefrom ? 



43 << Triclinia." The couches on which they reclined when at table. 

 ** See B. ix. c. 13. 



*5 This pattern, whatever it may have heen, is also spoken of by Cicero, 

 pro Murena, and by Valerius Maximus, B. vii. c. 1. 

 *6 " Lances," ^7 u Dispensator." *8 " Conservi "—said in keen irony. 

 *9 Giants, at least, one would think. 



