ized parliament. The speeches, to
be sure, passed into oblivion, the fat capons, however, stayed in the
barnyards until they had acquired the saturation point of tender
luscious calories to be enjoyed by those who could afford them. How
the capon was "invented" is told in a note on the subject.

Many other so-called luxuries, sausage from Epirus, cherries from the
Pontus, oysters from England, were greeted with a studied hostility by
those who profited from the business of making laws and public
opinion.

Evidently, the time and the place was not very propitious for
gastronomic over-indulgence. Only when the ice was broken, when the
disregard for law and order had become general through the continuous
practice of contempt for an unpopular sumptuary law, when corruption
had become wellnigh universal chiefly thanks to the examples set by
the higher-ups, it was then that the torrent of human passion and
folly ran riot, exceeding natural bounds, tearing everything with
them, all that is beautiful and decent, thus swamping the great empire
beyond the hopes for any recovery.

APICIUS THE WRITER

Most of the Apician directions are vague, hastily jotted down,
carelessly edited. One of the chief reasons for the eternal
misunderstandings! Often the author fails to state the quantities to
be used. He has a mania for giving undue prominence to expensive
spices and other (quite often irrelevant) ingredients. Plainly,
Apicius was no writer, no editor. He was a cook. He took it for
granted that spices be used within the bounds of reason, but he could
not afford to forget them in his formulae.

Apicius surely pursues the correct culinary principle of incorporating
the flavoring agents during the process of cooking, contrary to many
moderns who, vigorously protesting against "highly seasoned" and
"rich" food, and who, craving for "something plain" proceed to
inundate perfectly good, plain roast or boiled dishes with a deluge of
any of the afore-mentioned commercial "sauces" that have absolutely no
relation to the dish and that have no mission other than to grant
relief from the deadening monotony of "plain" food. Chicken or mutton,
beef or venison, finnan haddie or brook trout, eggs or oysters thus
"sauced," taste all alike--sauce! To use such ready-made sauces with
dishes cooked _a l'anglaise_ is logical, excusable, almost advisable.
Even the most ascetic of men cannot resist the insidiousness of spicy
delights, nor can he for