ought down from the nearest mountains and artificially
preserved. Healths were drank in as many "glasses" as the name
contained letters; absent ladies were toasted in a similar way; and at
some hour or other guests asked their footmen for their shoes and
cloaks, and departed to their homes under the escort of attendants,
who carried the torches or lanterns and were ready to deal with
possible footpads and garroters, if any were lurking in the unlighted
streets for pedestrians less wary or less protected. The "Mohawks"
also will let them alone, and perhaps their homeward way may be
entertained by the sounds of serenaders at the door of some beautiful
Chloe or Lydia on the Upper Sacred Way or near the Subura.

It is not, however, to be supposed that every evening meal, even of a
noble, took the form of a dinner-party. It is indeed probable that
there were few occasions upon which, while in town, he was not either
entertaining visitors or being himself entertained. Occasionally there
would be an invitation to dine at Court, where perhaps eighty or a
hundred guests of both sexes, distributed in different sets of nine or
seven over the wide banquet-hall, would eat off gold plate, and be
entertained from three or four o'clock till midnight with all the
unbridled extravagance that a Petronius or some other "arbiter of
taste" might devise for the Caesar. The snob of the period set an
enormous value upon this distinction. The emperor could not always
review his list of invitations, nor could he on every occasion be
personally acquainted with every guest. It was therefore quite
possible for his servants now and then to smuggle in a person
ambitious of having dined at the palace. Under Caligula a rich
provincial once paid nearly L2000 for such an "invitation." When the
emperor found it out, he was, if anything, rather flattered; the next
day he caused some worthless trifle to be sold to the same man for the
same amount, and on the strength of this acquaintance invited him to
dinner, this time pocketing the money for himself.

Yet there must have been no few evenings upon which Silius preferred
the company of an intimate friend or two, making all together the
"number of the graces," and dined with less form and ceremony. At such
times the meal would be of comparatively short duration, and there
would be deeper and more intimate matter of conversation. Now and then
the dinner would be purely domestic; and, after it, Silius would
p