BOOK XXXIII. Li. 144-L11. 146 



made of gold, and not long aftenvards silver bed- 

 steads were made, in imitation of those of Delos. 

 All this extravagance however was expiated by the 83.2 b.o. 

 civil war of Sulla. 



LII. In fact it was shortly before this period that otfiersUie' 

 silver dishes were made weighing a hundred pounds, /"""^"''^- 

 and it is well-known that there were at that date over 

 150 of those at Rome, and that many people were 

 sentenced to outlawry ° because of them, by the 

 intrigues of people who coveted them. History 

 which has held vices such as these to be responsible 

 for that civil war may blush with shame, but our 

 generation has gone one better. Under the 

 Emperor Claudius his slave Drusillanus, who bore a.d. 41-54. 

 the name of Rotundus, the Emperor's steward of 

 Nearer Spain, possessed a silver dish Meighing 500 

 Ibs., for the manufacture of which a workshop had 

 first been specially built, and eight others of 250 Ibs. 

 went with it as side-dishes, so that how many of his 

 fellow-slaves, I ask, were to bring them in or who 

 Mere to dine off them ? Cornelius Nepos records 

 that before the victory won by Sulla there were 82 b.c. 

 only two silver dinner-couches at Rome, and that 

 silver began to be used for decorating sideboards 

 within his own recollection. And Fenestella who 

 died towards the end of the principate of Tiberius ^ 

 says that tortoiseshell sideboards also came into 

 fashion at that time, but a Httle before his day they 

 had been solid round structures of wood, and not 

 much larger than tables ; but that even in his boy- 

 hood they began to be made square and of planks 

 morticed together and veneered either with maple 

 or citrus wood, while later silver was laid on at the 

 corners and along the Hnes marking the joins, and 



109 



