gry stomach seldom loathes common victuals. O that I could see a swingeing mullet extended on a swingeing dish! cries that gullet, which is fit for the voracious harpies themselves. But O [say I] ye southern blasts, be present to taint the delicacies of the [gluttons]: though the boar and turbot newly taken are rank, when surfeiting abundance provokes the sick stomach; and when the sated guttler prefers turnips and sharp elecampane. However, all [appearance of] poverty is not quite banished from the banquets of our nobles; for there is, even at this day, a place for paltry eggs and black olives.[1] And it was not long ago, since the table of Gallonius, the auctioneer, was rendered infamous, by having a sturgeon, [served whole upon it]. What? was the sea at that time less nutritive of turbots?[2] The turbot was secure and the stork unmolested in her nest; till the prætorian [Sempronius], the inventor,[3] first taught you [to eat them]. Therefore, if any one were to give it out that roasted cormorants are delicious, the Roman youth, teachable in depravity, would acquiesce, in it.
In the judgment of Ofellus, a sordid way of living will differ widely from frugal simplicity. For it is to no purpose for you to shun that vice [of luxury]; if you perversely fly to the contrary extreme. Avidienus, to whom the nickname of Dog is applied with propriety, eats olives of five years old, and wild cornels, and can not bear to rack off his wine unless it be turned sour, and the smell of his oil you can not endure: which (though clothed in white he celebrates the wedding
- ↑ Olives, intended for the table, were gathered when they began to ripen and turn black. Cruq.
- ↑ The fanciful, fashionable taste is but of short continuance; that of nature is unalterable. You are now as fond of turbot as Gallonius was of sturgeon. But were there no turbots in his time? Certainly there were; but no coxcomb had made them fashionable, and the prætor decided in favor of sturgeon. Another glutton brought turbots and storks into vogue, and perhaps we only wait for a third man of taste to assure us, that a roasted cormorant is infinitely more delicious than sturgeons, turbots, or storks. Dac.
- ↑ The storks built their nests in safety until the time of Augustus, when your prætor taught you to eat them. Asinius Sempronius, or, according to others, Rutilius Rufus, when candidate for the prætorship, entertained the people with a dish of storks. But the people, according to an ancient epigram, revenged the death of the poor birds by refusing the prætorship to their murderer. From this refusal the poet pleasantly calls him prætor. Torr.
