BOOK XXXIII. xLviii. 138-L. 141 



hrated." As for the national contrihiition of one- 

 sixth of an as per head for the funeral of Menenius 491 b.c. 

 Agrippa, I should consider this as a mark of respect 

 and also a measure rendered necessary by Agrippa's 

 povertv, and not a matter of lavish generosity. 



XLIX. Fashions in silver plate undergo marvel- siiver piate, 

 lous variations o\nng to the vagaries of human taste, ^^' 

 no kind of workmanship rcmaining long in favour. 

 At one time Furnian plate is in demand, at another 

 Clodian, at another Gratian ^ — for we make even 

 the factories feel at home at our tables — at 

 another time the demand is for embossed plate and 

 rough surfaces, where the metal has been cut out 

 along the painted lines of the designs, while now we 

 even fit removable shelves on our sideboards to carry 

 the ^'iands, and other pieces of plate we decorate 

 with filigree, so that the file may have wasted as 

 much silver as possible. The orator Calvus complain- 82-c. 47b.o. 

 ingly cries that cooking-pots are made of silver; 

 but it is we who invented decoratino; carriacres with 

 chased silver, and it was in our day that the emperor 

 Nero's wife Poppaea had the idea of even ha^dng her 

 favourite mules shod with gold. 



L. The younger Africanus «^ left his heir thirty- 129 b.c. 

 two pounds weight of silver, and the same person 

 paraded 4370 pounds of silver in his triumphal 

 procession after the conquest of Carthage. This i46 b.c. 

 was the amount of silver owned by the whole of 

 Carthage, Rome's rival for the empire of the world, 

 yet subsequently beaten in the show of plate on how 

 many dinner-tables ! Indeed after totally destroying 

 Numantia the same Africanus at his triumph gave a 133-2 b.c. 

 largess of seven denarii a head to his troops — • 

 warriors not unworthy of such a general who were 



105 



