530 PEOSE HALIEUTICS. 



day's repasts closed with a supper or Selirvov, the principal 

 meal, to which invitations were mostly, and our subse- 

 quent remarks will he wholly, confined.* A favourite 

 time for giving these supper-parties was during the full 

 moon; in Sparta, because, as neither servants nor links 

 were allowed, it was unpleasant to go titubating home 

 in the dark ; and throughout Greece generally, because 

 the doctors proclaimed that the moon, whose influence 

 in softening lovers' hearts is well known, exercised the 

 same mollifying control over all flesh, and so very ma- 

 terially assisted the peptic forces of the stomach. The 

 SecTTvov, in all its splendour and uncurtailed proportions, 

 consisted first of a prooemium, or prefatory com"se of 

 good things, intended as whets to the appetite, and was 

 followed, as with us, by two courses ; the latter of which 

 included half the dessert. The prooemium was a jumble 

 of very different hors d'ceuvres — a union of most of the 

 things which at present make their appearance at the 

 two extremes of an Italian festa. Amongst these was a 



* Thougli the above-mentioned four meals are in some places 

 of Athenseus imputed to the Greeks, other passages occur which 

 reduce the number to three, or even two, per diem ; the deduction 

 from all which apparent discrepancy must be, that the number of 

 repasts and times for eating varied considerably in Greece during 

 different olympiads. But the difficulty of determining the hour 

 when a meal was taken merely from its name, may be easily seen 

 by a reference to modern customs. Take an English breakfast, 

 for instance, for the comparison: we find under this common term 

 the six o'clock snatch of the common workman, the family meal at 

 nine o'clock, the later repast of the man of fashion, and the post- 

 meridian champagne meal yclept a ' dejeuner a la fouxchette.' 

 Now should an author some centuries hence wish to define what 

 was meant by a breakfast in the days of Queen Yictoria, he would 

 find the definition exceedingly embarrassing, and be obliged to 

 admit that men broke their fasts at very different hours, though 

 they all used the same word for a meal, differing not more in the 

 viands which composed it than in the various hours at which it 

 was served. 



