CLEOPATRA— PTOLEMY— APICIUS 209 



the Nile and the Red Sea figured conspicuously), pales before 

 that of a supper given in honour of Xerxes and his captains 

 by Antipater of Thasos, i.e. 400 (presumably Attic) talents 

 or some ^^loo.ooo ! No wonder Herodotus mournfully adds, 

 " Wherever Xerxes took two meals, dinner and supper, that 

 city was utterly ruined ! " ^ 



Nor at the feasts, which the invader of Media made " for 

 a great multitude every day," was it a case of taking up of the 

 fragments that remained but twelve basketsful, because, as 

 Posidonius (in the 14th book of his History) continues, " be- 

 sides the food that was consumed and the heaps of fragments 

 which were left, every guest carried away with him entire 

 joints of beasts, and birds, and fishes, which had never been 

 carved, all ready dressed, 2 in sufficient quantities to fill a 

 waggon. And after this they were presented with a quantity 

 of sweatmeats," etc. 



The prize, however, for mad lavishness must be adjudged 

 even in a race of such strenuous competitors, to " that most 

 admirable of all monarchs," Ptolemy Philadelphus. It is 

 " Eclipse first, the rest nowhere," if the description of the 

 coronation feast given by Callixenus in his History of Alexandria 

 be faithfully rendered by Athena^us.^ 



The imagination of the average reader before reaching the 

 last chapters will have been fatigued and appalled by the 

 picture of overwhelming wealth and magnificence, but as 

 Ptolemy, after a reign of grandiose and continuous expenditure, 

 left at his death ;^200,ooo,ooo in the treasury, the cost of the 

 whole entertainment must have been as nought compared with 

 his revenue. 



M. Gavius Apicius, after squandering half a million sterUng 

 on the indulging his passion for creating new dishes and new 

 combinations of food from materials collected in Europe, 

 Asia, and Africa, one day balanced his accounts. Finding 



1 Herodot., VII. 118-120, Athen., IV. 27. 



* See AthenaBus (V. 46), who is so struck that he quotes the passage twice ! 

 The culinary accommodations must have been " prodeegeous ! " At the 

 birthday feast of a mere Persian grandee, an ox and an ass, and other animals 

 that were his, even a horse and a camel, were roasted whole in stoves {or ovens). 

 Herodot., I. 133. 



' V. 25-35. 



