the Romans displayed
their hosts of slaves ministering to luxury, their bands of
musicians, their dancing-girls, their elegant furniture, their
carpets glittering with gold or pictorially embroidered, their
purple hangings, their antique bronzes, their rich silver plate.
Against such displays the sumptuary laws were primarily directed,
which were issued more frequently (593, 639, 665, 673) and in
greater detail than ever; a number of delicacies and wines were
therein totally prohibited, for others a maximum in weight and
price was fixed; the quantity of silver plate was likewise
restricted by law, and lastly general maximum rates were prescribed
for the expenses of ordinary and festal meals; these, for example,
were fixed in 593 at 10 and 100 sesterces (2 shillings and 1 pound)
in 673 at 30 and 300 sesterces (6 shillings and 3 pounds)
respectively. Unfortunately truth requires us to add that, of all
the Romans of rank, not more than three--and these not including
the legislators themselves--are said to have complied with these
imposing laws; and in the case of these three it was the law of the
Stoa, and not that of the state, that curtailed the bill of fare.

It is worth while to dwell for a moment on the luxury that went
on increasing in defiance of these laws, as respects silver plate.
In the sixth century silver plate for the table was, with the
exception of the traditionary silver salt-dish, a rarity; the
Carthaginian ambassadors jested over the circumstance, that at
every house to which they were invited they had encountered the
same silver plate.(50) Scipio Aemilianus possessed not more than
32 pounds (120 pounds) in wrought silver; his nephew Quintus Fabius
(consul in 633) first brought his plate up to 1000 pounds (4000
pounds), Marcus Drusus (tribune of the people in 663) reached
10,000 pounds (40,000 pounds); in Sulla's time there were already
counted in the capital about 150 silver state-dishes weighing 100
pounds each, several of which brought their possessors into the
lists of proscription. To judge of the sums expended on these,
we must recollect that the workmanship also was paid for at enormous
rates; for instance Gaius Gracchus paid for choice articles of
silver fifteen times, and Lucius Crassus, consul in 659, eighteen
times the value of the metal, and the latter gave for a pair of
cups by a noted silversmith 100,000 sesterces (1000 pounds).
So it was in proportion everywhere.

How it fared with