The Jews and the Egyptians washed the feet of the persons whom they received into their houses, and offered them larger portions as a mark of greater honour.[XXXIV_1] These homely and hospitable usages have disappeared with the simplicity of the primitive ages.

The Greeks required their guests to arrive neither too soon nor too late. It was a rule of politeness from which nothing could exempt them,[XXXIV_2] and which we ourselves observe at this day.

In the Homeric ages each one received his share of meat and wine,[XXXIV_3] and the man who at that epoch piqued himself on his knowledge of the science of life, never failed to offer his neighbour a part of his dinner. So Ulysses gives Demodochus one-half of the “chine of beef” with which he is served.[XXXIV_4] It is true that the King of Ithaca was regarded as a perfect model of complaisance and delicacy.

Another custom (adopted it is said only in the modern taverns and dining-rooms) was that of warming the remains of a preceding banquet for other guests.[XXXIV_5] It must have constituted very poor fare, for the Greeks were remarkable for a formidable appetite, and their repasts were prolonged indefinitely. The banquet of Menelaus, noticed by AthenÆus, is a proof of it. They eat at first without speaking, and after prodigies of mastication they began to discourse. Then, having washed their hands, face, and beard, a fresh attack was commenced, more formidable than the first; and when the ardour and energy of the assailants seemed to be exhausted, they hardly took time to breathe ere they fell on the viands with renewed avidity. Nothing resisted them; the dishes were cleared; only a few bones remained to certify their achievement.[XXXIV_6] A saddening, unsatisfactory trophy for future guests.

Archestrates, whose gastronomic axioms we cannot respect too much, was averse to large dinner parties. Three or four persons—five at most—chosen with care, assembled with taste, appeared to him sufficient[XXXIV_7] for those solemnities in which silence was to be maintained so long, under pain, said Montmaur, of no longer knowing what one eats.

The LacedÆmonians admitted as many as fifteen guests, but they elected a king of the banquet, and that ephemeral autocrat decided without appeal all questions which might have compromised the tranquillity of the banquet.[XXXIV_8]

Greater numbers met together in Athens. Plato gave a supper to twenty-eight of his friends.[XXXIV_9] Hundreds of citizens often met together at the public repasts; but then a magistrate was deputed to see that modesty, moderation, and temperance were observed.[XXXIV_10]

The Romans understood that it is at table that one lives; so they gave those whom they invited the name of conviva (cum vivere, living conjointly), a charming type of that easy, gentle cordiality which arises, is fortified, and displayed between those who partake of the same dishes, drain in friendship cups of the same wine, and separate with the hope of soon seeing a return of the same pleasures.

People were very polite in Rome, as in Greece, when they met in the dining-room. Never did they fail to make a low bow.[XXXIV_11] This act of Roman courtesy recalls a very pretty expression of Fontenelle’s, which we cannot refrain from citing. This grand nephew of the great Corneille passed, on his way to the table, before Madame HelvÉtius, whom he had not perceived. Fontenelle was then ninety years of age. “See,” said she, “what esteem I must have for your gallantry: you pass before me without looking at me.” “Be not surprised, Madam,” replied the old gallant; “if I had looked at you I should never have passed.”

In the year of Rome 570 (182 B.C.), the tribune of the people, C. Orchius, was the prime mover of the first sumptuary law, which enacted that the number of guests were not to exceed that of the Muses, nor be less than that of the Graces.[XXXIV_12] Subsequently seven were thought to be sufficient, and some insisted that when there were more the banquet ought rather to be called a rout.[XXXIV_13]

In the year of Rome 548, the Consul C. Fannius carried a law (Lex Fannia) which prohibited the assembling of more than three persons of the same family on ordinary days, or more than five at the nones, or on festival days.[XXXIV_14] This rigorous measure was pressingly solicited by the rational portion of every order of citizens, who could not witness without a shudder the whole of Italy plunge into the most brutifying excesses, after obscene orgies which we dare not describe.[XXXIV_15]

But who could dissipate that fearful bewilderment with which nations seem to be seized when they are about to fall? Rome blushed for her ancient virtues, and veiled them with dissolution and crimes. She had exhausted all the prodigies that the genius of debauchery could invent—she created monsters!

Ruinous banquets soon revived, and the number of guests had no other rule than the unbridled desire of ostentation and expense.

Let us not forget those miserable parasites who managed to get to the corner of a table in Greece and Italy, and to whom meagre portions were conceded as a reward for cringing servility, such as the vilest slave would have been ashamed to exhibit. There were three kinds of parasites. Some, under the name of buffoons, amused the company with their grotesque attitudes and ridiculous sayings.[XXXIV_16] Others allowed their ears to be boxed, and suffered a thousand different torments, provided a piece of meat or a bone were afterwards thrown to them. These patient sufferers[XXXIV_17] diverted the Greeks and Romans very much. The adulatory parasites were the most skilful of these hungry parias. They were well treated and almost respected. They were persons who possessed a kind of merit which was always equally appreciated, and to which we still render justice—they flattered whosoever gave them a supper.[XXXIV_18]

An energetic, familiar expression in French often replaces the word parasite, transmitted to us by the Greeks and Romans: that expression, which conveys the same idea, is pique-assiette, an image necessarily associated with disdain and insult.

The Count de Gerval had invited to his table several persons of high distinction, among whom was remarked one of those intruders who find means to get themselves received, notwithstanding the profound contempt they inspire. The dessert was just served, and a magnificent pear attracted the attention of the parasite, who endeavoured to bear it off on the point of his knife, but, in so doing, he broke a valuable plate. “The deuce take it, sir,” said the master of the house; “piquez l’assiette as long as you like, but don’t break it!”

The guests always washed their hands, and frequently their feet, before they placed themselves on the triclinium.[B][XXXIV_19] They received that custom from the orientals, and we find numerous examples of it in the Old and New Testaments.[XXXIV_20] Perfumes were then poured on their heads,[XXXIV_21] as among the Jews,[XXXIV_22] and wreaths of flowers were offered them.[XXXIV_23]

It was at this solemn moment that the guests turned their attention to the election of the king of the banquet, whose grave functions consisted in regulating the number of cups that each one was expected to empty during the repast.[XXXIV_24]

Among the Anglo-Saxons, he who wished to drink asked the nearest person to pledge him. The latter replied affirmatively, and immediately armed himself with his knife or his sword to protect the other while he emptied his cup. The death of Edward the Martyr, it is said, gave rise to this custom. Elfrida, his mother-in-law, caused him to be basely assassinated from behind whilst he was drinking.[XXXIV_25]

“The following,” says Strutt, “according to ancient historians, is the manner in which Rowena, daughter or niece of Hengist, drank to the health of Vortigern, King of the Britons. She entered the banqueting-hall where the prince was with his guests, and, making a low curtsey, she said: ‘To your health, my lord and king.’ Then, having put the cup to her lips, she presented it on her knees to Vortigern, who took it and emptied it, after having replied: ‘I drink to your health.’”[XXXIV_26]

We find in the works of Pasquier an affecting anecdote of the unfortunate Queen of Scotland, Mary Stuart: “On the eve of her death,” says he, “towards the end of the supper, she drank to all her attendants, commanding them to pledge her; the which obeying, and mingling their tears with their wine, they drank to their mistress.”

Divers spectacles, of which we shall have occasion to speak hereafter, occupied the leisure of the guests during the interval necessary to remove the remains of one course and serve the next. These representations and amusements, of which they never tired in the middle ages, received from our ancestors, in France, the name of entre-mets; a designation much more true and just than the modern acceptation imposed on the word—anything served between the roast and the dessert.

The entre-mets were interludes, pantomimes, concerts, and even melodramas performed between each course. So that a piece which in our days attracts crowds to one or other of the theatres, would have been then a little entre-met, or a cold side-dish (hors-d’oeuvre).

In 1287, at the marriage of Robert, son of Saint-Louis, with Machault, Countess of Artois, very singular spectacles were given between each course of the banquet. A horseman crossed the hall by making his horse walk on a thick cord, extended above the heads of the guests. At the four corners of the table were musicians seated on oxen; and monkeys, mounted on goats, seemed to play the harp.[XXXIV_27]

A droll custom prevailed at the court of the Frank kings. St. Germier having come to solicit some favour from the King of the Franks, Clovis, that haughty Sicamber received the bishop with kindness, and had an excellent dinner served for him. The holy bishop took leave of the king after the banquet, and the king, who sometimes piqued himself upon his politeness, pulled out a hair, according to the custom of the time, and offered it to his guest. Each of the courtiers hastened, in his turn, to imitate the benevolent monarch, and the virtuous prelate returned to his diocese enchanted with the reception he had met with at the court.[XXXIV_28]

Among other amusements prepared for Queen Elizabeth, during her sojourn at the celebrated castle of Kenilworth, “There was,” says Laneham, “an Italian juggler who performed feats of strength and leaps, and cut such capers with so much suppleness and ease, that I began to ask myself whether it were a man or a sprite. Indeed I know not what to say of that comical fellow,” adds the artless chronicler; “I suppose his back must resemble that of a lamprey—it had no bone.”[XXXIV_29]

In England, during the middle ages, the courts of princes and the castles of the great were crowded with visitors, who were always received with sumptuous hospitality. The pomp displayed by the lords was truly extraordinary, and it is difficult to understand how their fortunes could suffice for it. They had their privy-counsellors, treasurers, secretaries, chaplains, heralds, pursuivants-at-arms, pages, guards, trumpeters—in a word, all the officers, all the servants, with which royalty itself is surrounded. And besides this numerous domestic establishment, there were troops of minstrels, clowns, jugglers, strolling players, rope-dancers, &c., lodged there at the great banqueting times. Each of the apartments open to the guests presented spectacles in harmony with the gross taste of the epoch. It was a marvellous confusion, a prodigious chaos, in which the ear was struck at once with the sound of dishes, of cups clashing one against another, of harmonious music, with the bustle of the dance, the notes of the song, pasquinades, somersaults, and everywhere the most boisterous laughter. The face of decency alone was slightly veiled.[XXXIV_30]

Sometimes the term entre-mets was also applied to decorations, which were paraded through the banqueting hall, and which represented cities, castles, and gardens, with fountains, whence flowed all kinds of liquors. At the dinner which Charles V. of France gave to the Emperor Charles IV. there was a grand spectacle, or entre-met. A vessel appeared with its masts, sails, and rigging; it advanced into the middle of the hall, by means of a machine concealed from the view of all. A moment after there appeared the city of Jerusalem; its towers covered with Saracens. The vessel approached it, and the city was taken by the Christian knights who manned the vessel.[XXXIV_31]

Among the Egyptians a funereal idea was made the means of rousing the erewhile buoyant spirits of the guests at the end of a repast. A servant entered carrying a skeleton, or the representation of a mummy, which he took slowly round the dining-room. He then approached the guests, and said: “Eat, drink, amuse yourselves to-day; to-morrow you die.”[XXXIV_32]

Greece, and Rome in particular, adopted this lugubrious emblem of the rapid flight of time and pleasure. This sepulchral image hurried them on in the enjoyment of the present: it never revealed to paganism a “hope full of immortality.”[XXXIV_33]