208 FISH MANIA—VITELLIUS—APICIUS—COOKS 
made three meals a day, sometimes four—breakfast, dinner, 
supper, and a drunken revel afterwards. This load of food 
he bore well enough, from a custom to which he had inured 
himself, of frequently vomiting !’’ No wonder Seneca lashes 
the gluttons of Rome with “ Vomunt ut edant, edunt ut 
vomant!’’! For each of these meals he would make different 
appointments at the houses of his friends for the same day. 
None ever entertained him at less expense than 400,000 
sesterces (or £3200). But the most famous entertainment— 
given in his honour by his brother—commandeered no less 
than 2,000 choice fishes, and 7000 birds. 
Yet even this supper he himself outdid at a feast to cele- 
brate the first use of a dish fashioned expressly for him, and 
from its extraordinary size yclept “‘ The Shield of Minerva.” 
In this dish? costing £100,000 and capable of feeding one 
hundred and thirty guests “ were tossed together the livers of 
charfish, the brains of pheasants and peacocks, the tongues of 
flamingos, and the entrails (or rather the milt) of lampreys, 
brought in ships of war from the Carpathian Sea, or the Spanish 
Straits.’’ 3 
In order “ satiare inexplebiles libidines,’”’ etc., Vitellius is 
believed to have squandered in a few months‘ no less than 
seven million two hundred and sixty-five thousand pounds 
(£7,265,000) ! 6 
No wonder that Caligula, perhaps the biggest spendthrift 
of the Cesars, laid down the maxim that “a man ought to be 
either an economist, or an Emperor !”’ 
The fabulous sums spent on entertainments by the Greeks 
and Romans were equalled, even surpassed by the Persians, 
the Sybarites, the Egyptians, and other nations. But the 
cost, though prodigious, of Cleopatra’s four-day entertainment 
to Antony and his captains (in the menu of which fishes from 
1 For Vitellius’s habit, see Dion., 65. 2. 
2 Adrian had the good taste to melt it down. 
3 Thomson’s translation. The mania for expensive bowls obtained in 
either nation: the philosopher Aristotle owned 70, while sop, the tragic 
actor, paid {8000 for a single ewer. The histrionic, as sop and Roscius 
show, was a most lucrative profession. Cf. Pliny, XXXV. 46. 
“ According to Dion., 65. 4, and Tacitus, Hist., II. 95. 
5 Tac., loc. cit., ‘‘ noviens milies sestertium paucissimis mensibus intervertisse 
creditur sagina.”’ 
‘ 
