BANQUETS—VITELLIUS—VENUS—SUB ROSA 207 
God of Love to the God of Silence, to intimate that hence- 
forth all things said or done at the feast were to be kept, 
inviolable and sub vosa, under which flower by the rain of 
myriads of petals all the guests literally soon were.”’ ! 
The amount of money spent on suppers and entertainments 
at Rome staggers conception. The figures recorded by even 
serious historians seem beyond all belief: for instance, the 
ordinary expense of Lucullus for a supper in the Hall of Apollo 
is given at 50,000 dvachme, or £1600. 
At one of the suppers to which it was the custom of Nero 
to invite himself—his meals, Suetonius (Nevo, 27) tells us, 
were prolonged from midday to midnight or vzce-versa—no 
less than £32,000 was expended on chaplets, and at another 
still more on roses alone. But it must be remembered that 
the Italian rose bloomed only for one day—witness the lines, 
“Una dies aperit, conficit una dies,’ and “ Quam longa una 
dies, etas tam longa rosarum.’’2 The cost of an entertain- 
ment by his brother in honour of the Emperor Vitellius on his 
entrance to Rome was nearly £80,000 ! 
But of Vitellius himself let Suetonius 3 speak: ‘‘ He was 
chiefly addicted to the vices of luxury and cruelty. He always 
1 Sammonicus Serenus, a savant of the early third century a.D., states 
that the acipenser was brought to table to the accompaniment of flutes by 
servants crowned with flowers. Cf. Macrob. III.16,7f. Cf. Athen. VII. 44, and 
Elian, VIII. 28. 
In describing this imaginary Attic supper, Badham certainly lets himself 
go. The allusion to ‘‘ the present of the God of Love”’ he may have taken 
from an anonymous epigram in Burmann’s Anthologia (1773), Bk. V. 217. 
“ Est rosa flos Veneris ; cuius quo furta laterent 
Harpocrati matris dona dicavit Amor. 
Inde rosam mensis hospes suspendit amicis, 
Convive ut sub ea dicta tacenda sciant.” 
These lines, of which several variants exist (notably that of the Rose Cellar in 
the Rathskeller of Bremen), are founded on the legend that Cupid bribed the 
God of Silence with his mother’s flower not to divulge the amours of Venus. 
Hence a host hung a rose over his table as a sign that nothing there said was 
to be repeated. A quaint and touching legend runs that in the beginning all 
roses were white, but when Venus walking one day among the flowers was 
pricked by one of their thorns, these roses ‘‘ drew their colour from the blood 
of the goddess,’ and remained encarmined for ever. Cf. Natal. Com. 
Mythol., V. 13. See also A.de Gubernatis, La Mythologie des Plantes (Paris, 
1882), II. 323,and R. Folkard, Plant Love, Legends, and Lyrics (London, 1884), 
516 ff. 
2 Cf. Ausonius, Id., XIV. 39, and 43. 
3 Suet., Vitell. 13. 
