CLEOPATRA—PTOLEMY—APICIUS 209 
the Nile and the Red Sea figured conspicuously), pales before 
that of a supper given in honour of Xerxes and his captains 
by Antipater of Thasos, i.e. 400 (presumably Attic) talents 
or some £100,000! No wonder Herodotus mournfully adds, 
‘Wherever Xerxes took two meals, dinner and supper, that 
city was utterly ruined!’ ! 
Nor at the feasts, which the invader of Media made “ for 
a great multitude every day,’ was it a case of taking up of the 
fragments that remained but twelve basketsful, because, as 
Posidonius (in the 14th book of his History) continues, ‘* be- 
sides the food that was consumed and the heaps of fragments 
which were left, every guest carried away with him entire 
joints of beasts, and birds, and fishes, which had never been 
carved, all ready dressed,? in sufficient quantities to fill a 
waggon. And after this they were presented with a quantity 
of sweatmeats,’’ etc. 
The prize, however, for mad lavishness must be adjudged 
even in a race of such strenuous competitors, to “ that most 
admirable of all monarchs,’ Ptolemy Philadelphus. It is 
“Eclipse first, the rest nowhere,” if the description of the 
coronation feast given by Callixenus in his Hzstory of Alexandria 
be faithfully rendered by Athenzus.? 
The imagination of the average reader before reaching the 
last chapters will have been fatigued and appalled by the 
picture of overwhelming wealth and magnificence, but as 
Ptolemy, after a reign of grandiose and continuous expenditure, 
left at his death £200,000,000 in the treasury, the cost of the 
whole entertainment must have been as nought compared with 
his revenue. 
M. Gavius Apicius, after squandering half a million sterling 
on the indulging his passion for creating new dishes and new 
combinations of food from materials collected in Europe, 
Asia, and Africa, one day balanced his accounts. Finding 
1 Herodot., VII. 118~-120, Athen., IV. 27. 
2 See Athenzus (V. 46), who is so struck that he quotes the passage twice ! 
The culinary accommodations must have been “ prodeegeous!’’ At the 
birthday feast of a mere Persian grandee, an ox and an ass, and other animals 
that were his, even a horse and a camel, were roasted whole in stoves (or ovens). 
Herodot., I. 133. 
3 V. 25-35. 
