Attic maid with Ceres’ sacred rites, bearing wines of Cæcubum; Alcon brings those of Chios, undamaged by the sea.[1]Here the master [cries], “Mæcenas, if Alban or Falernian wine delight you more than those already brought, we have both.”
Ill-fated riches! But, Fundanius, I am impatient to know, who were sharers in this feast where you fared so well.
I was highest, and next me was Viscus Thurinus, and below, if I remember, was Varius; with Servilius Balatro, Vibidius, whom Mæcenas had brought along with him, unbidden guests. Above [Nasidienus] himself was Nomentanus, below him Porcius, ridiculous for swallowing whole cakes at once. Nomentanus [was present] for this purpose, that if any thing should chance to be unobserved, he might show it with his pointing finger. For the other company, we, I mean, eat [promiscuously] of fowls, oysters, fish, which had concealed in them a juice far different from the known: as presently appeared, when he reached to me the entrails of a plaice and of a turbot, such as had never been tasted before. After this he informed me that honey-apples were most ruddy when gathered under the waning moon. What difference this makes you will hear best from himself. Then [says] Vibidius to Balatro; “If we do not drink to his cost, we shall die in his debt;” and he calls for larger tumblers. A paleness changed the countenance of our host, who fears nothing so much as hard drinkers: either because they are more freely censorious; or because heating wines deafen the subtle [judgment of the] palate. Vibidius and Balatro, all following their example, pour whole casks into Alliphanians;[2] the guests of the lowest couch did no hurt to the flagons. A lamprey is brought in, extended in a dish, in the midst of floating shrimps. Whereupon, “This,” says the master, “was caught when pregnant; which, after having young, would have been less delicate in its flesh.” For these a sauce is mixed up; with oil which the best cellar of Venafrum pressed, with pickle from the juices of the Iberian fish, with wine of five years old, but produced on this side the sea, while
- ↑ It was customary to mix sea-water with the strong wines of Greece; but Fundanius, when he tells us that the wine Alcon carried had not a drop of water in it, would have us understand that this wine had never crossed the seas, and that it was an Italian wine which Nasidienus recommended for Chian. Lamb.
- ↑ Large cups, so called from Allifæ, a town of Samnium. Schol.
