allons of wine, five pounds of cheese, two pounds and
a half of figs, and some very small sum of money to buy flesh or fish
with. Besides this, when any of them made sacrifice to the gods, they
always sent a dole to the common hall; and, likewise, when any of them
had been a-hunting, he sent thither a part of the venison he had killed;
for these two occasions were the only excuses allowed for supping at
home. The custom of eating together was observed strictly for a
great while afterwards; insomuch that king Agis himself, after having
vanquished the Athenians, sending for his commons at his return home,
because he desired to eat privately with his queen, was refused them
by the polemarchs; and when he resented this refusal so much as to omit
next day the sacrifice due for a war happily ended, they made him pay a
fine.

They used to send their children to these tables as to schools of
temperance; here they were instructed in state affairs by listening to
experienced statesmen; here they learnt to converse with pleasantry, to
make jests without scurrility, and take them without ill humor. In this
point of good breeding, the Lacedaemonians excelled particularly, but
if any man were uneasy under it, upon the least hint given there was no
more to be said to him. It was customary also for the eldest man in
the company to say to each of them, as they came in, "Through this"
(pointing to the door), "no words go out." When any one had a desire to
be admitted into any of these little societies, he was to go through the
following probation: each man in the company took a little ball of soft
bread, which they were to throw into a deep basin, that a waiter carried
round upon his head; those that liked the person to be chosen dropped
their ball into the basin without altering its figure, and those who
disliked him pressed it betwixt their fingers, and made it flat; and
this signified as much as a negative voice. And if there were but one
of these flattened pieces in the basin, the suitor was rejected,
so desirous were they that all the members of the company should
be agreeable to each other. The basin was called caddichus, and the
rejected candidate had a name thence derived. Their most famous dish was
the black broth, which was so much valued that the elderly men fed only
upon that, leaving what flesh there was to the younger.

They say that a certain king of Pontus, having heard much of this black
broth of theirs, sent for a Lace