the hour was later, owing to the press of
business. For example, on one occasion when the senate had been
sitting _ad noctem_, Cicero dines with Pompeius after its dismissal
(_ad Fam_. i. 2.3). Another day we find him going to bed after his
dinner, and clearly not for a siesta, which, as we saw, he never had
time to take in his busy days; this, however, was not actually in Rome
but in his villa at Formiae, where he was at that time liable to much
interruption from callers (_ad Att_. ii. 16). Probably, like most
Romans of his day, he had spent a long time over his dinner, talking
if he had guests, or reading and thinking if he were alone or with his
family only.

The dinner, _cena_, was in fact the principal private event of the
day; it came when all business was over, and you could enjoy the
privacy of family life or see your friends and unbend with them. At no
other meal do we hear of entertainment, unless the guests were on
a journey, as was the case at the lunch at Arcanum when Pomponia's
temper got the better of her (see above, p. 52). Even dinner-parties
seem to have come into fashion only since the Punic wars, with later
hours and a larger staff of slaves to cook and wait at table. In the
old days of household simplicity the meals were taken in the atrium,
the husband reclining on a _lectus_,[442] the wife sitting by his
side, and the children sitting on stools in front of them. The slaves
too in the olden time took their meal sitting on benches in the
atrium, so that the whole familia was present. This means that the
dinner was in those days only a necessary break in the intervals of
work, and the sitting posture was always retained for slaves, i.e.
those who would go about their work as soon as the meal was over.
Columella, writing under the early Empire, urges that the vilicus or
overseer should sit at his dinner except on festivals; and Cato the
younger would not recline after the battle of Pharsalia for the
rest of his life, apparently as a sign that life was no longer
enjoyable.[443]

But after the Second Punic war, which changed the habits of the Roman
in so many ways, the atrium ceased to be the common dining-place, and
special chambers were built, either off the atrium or in the interior
part of the house about the peristylium, or even upstairs, for the
accommodation of guests, who might be received in different rooms,
according to the season and the weather.[444] These _triclinia_ were
so arranged as