BANQUETS— VITELLIUS— VENUS— Sf/B ROSA 207 



God of Love to the God of Silence, to intimate that hence- 

 forth all things said or done at the feast were to be kept, 

 inviolable and sub rosa, under which flower by the rain of 

 myriads of petals all the guests literally soon were." ^ 



The amount of money spent on suppers and entertainments 

 at Rome staggers conception. The figures recorded by even 

 serious historians seem beyond all belief : for instance, the 

 ordinary expense of LucuUus for a supper in the Hall of Apollo 

 is given at 50,000 drachmce, or ^1600. 



At one of the suppers to which it was the custom of Nero 

 to invite himself — his meals, Suetonius {Nero, 27) tells us, 

 were prolonged from midday to midnight or vice-versa — no 

 less than ;^32,ooo was expended on chaplets, and at another 

 still more on roses alone. But it must be remembered that 

 the ItaHan rose bloomed only for one day — witness the lines, 

 " Una dies aperit, conficit una dies," and " Quam longa una 

 dies, aetas tam longa rosarum." 2 The cost of an entertain- 

 ment by his brother in honour of the Emperor VitelUus on his 

 entrance to Rome was nearly ;^8o,ooo ! 



But of Vitellius himself let Suetonius 3 speak : "He was 

 chiefly addicted to the vices of luxury and cruelty. He always 



^ Sammonicus Serenus, a savant of the early third century a.d., states 

 that the acipenser was brought to table to the accompaniment of flutes by 

 servants crowned with flowers. Cf. Macrob. III. i6, 7 f. Cf. Athen. VII. 44, and 

 >Elian, VIII. 28. 



In describing this imaginary Attic supper, Badham certainly lets himself 

 go. The allusion to " the present of the God of Love " he may have taken 

 from an anonymous epigram in Burmann's Anihologia (1773), Bk. V. 217. 



" Est rosa flos Veneris ; cuius quo furta laterent 

 Harpocrati matris dona dicavit Amor. 

 Inde rosam mensis hospes suspendit amicis, 

 Convivae ut sub ea dicta tacenda sciant." 



These lines, of which several variants exist (notably that of the Rose Cellar in 

 the Rathskeller of Bremen), are founded on the legend that Cupid bribed the 

 God of Silence with his mother's flower not to divulge the amours of Venus. 

 Hence a host hung a rose over his table as a sign that nothing there said was 

 to be repeated. A quaint and touching legend runs that in the beginning all 

 roses were white, but when Venus walking one day among the flowers was 

 pricked by one of their thorns, these roses " drew their colour from the blood 

 of the goddess," and remained encarmined for ever. Cf. Natal. Com. 

 MythoL, V. 13. See also A. de Gubernatis, La Myihologie des Plantes (Paris, 

 1882), II. 323, and R. Folkard, P/a«^ Lore, Legends, and Lyrics (London, 1884), 

 516 If. 



* Cf. Ausonius, Id., XIV. 39, and 43. 



3 Suet., VHeU. 13. 



