2o8 FISH MANIA— VITELLIUS—APICIUS— COOKS 



made three meals a day, sometimes four — breakfast, dinner, 

 supper, and a drunken revel afterwards. This load of food 

 he bore well enough, from a custom to which he had inured 

 himself, of frequently vomiting ! " No wonder Seneca lashes 

 the gluttons of Rome with " Vomunt ut edant, edunt ut 

 vomant ! " ^ For each of these meals he would make different 

 appointments at the houses of his friends for the same day. 

 None ever entertained him at less expense than 400,000 

 sesterces (or ^3200). But the most famous entertainment- 

 given in his honour by his brother — commandeered no less 

 than 2,000 choice fishes, and 7000 birds. 



Yet even this supper he himself outdid at a feast to cele- 

 brate the first use of a dish fashioned expressly for him, and 

 from its extraordinary size yclept " The Shield of Minerva." 

 In this dish 2 costing ;^ioo,ooo and capable of feeding one 

 hundred and thirty guests " were tossed together the livers of 

 charfish, the brains of pheasants and peacocks, the tongues of 

 flamingos, and the entrails (or rather the milt) of lampreys, 

 brought in ships of war from the Carpathian Sea, or the Spanish 

 Straits." 3 



In order " satiare inexplebiles libidines," etc., Vitellius is 

 believed to have squandered in a few months * no less than 

 seven million two hundred and sixty-five thousand pounds 



No wonder that Caligula, perhaps the biggest spendthrift 

 of the Caesars, laid down the maxim that " a man ought to be 

 either an economist, or an Emperor ! " 



The fabulous sums spent on entertainments by the Greeks 

 and Romans were equalled, even surpassed by the Persians, 

 the Sybarites, the Egyptians, and other nations. But the 

 cost, though prodigious, of Cleopatra's four-day entertainment 

 to Antony and his captains (in the menu of which fishes from 



^ For Vitellius's habit, see Dion., 65. 2. 



* Adrian had the good taste to melt it down. 



' Thomson's translation. The mania for expensive bowls obtained in 

 either nation : the philosopher Aristotle owned 70, while ^sop, the tragic 

 actor, paid ^8000 for a single ewer. The histrionic, as iEsop and Roscius 

 show, was a most lucrative profession. Cf. Pliny, XXXV. 46. 



* According to Dion., 65. 4, and Tacitus, Hist., II. 95. 



* Tac, loc. cit., " noviens milies sestertium paucissimis mensibus intervertisse 

 creditur sagina." 



