-"quid enim majore cachinno Excipitur vulgi quam pauper Apicius."

Juvenal, Sat. ii. v. 2.*

Before proceeding farther, we may remark, in justice to the taste of the rich personages of ancient Rome, that there exists, as the author of "Tabella Cibaria" has correctly observed, a grand difference between two classes of persons, the designation of one of which we have borrowed from the French: we mean between the Gourmand and the glutton or gormandizer; and this we must maintain, notwithstanding the high authority of the Dictionaire de l'Académie.

S'il faut," says the author of the Almanach des Gourmands, "en croire le Dictionaire de l'Académie, Gourmand est synonyme de Glouton et de Goulu, et Gourmandise l'est de Gloutonnerie. Il nous semble que cette definition n'est point rigoureusement exacte: qu'on doit réserver les epithètes de glouton et de goulu pour caracteriser l'intempérance et l'insatiable avidité, et que le terme de gourmand a reçu, depuis quelques années, dans le monde poli, une acception beaucoup moins défavorable, osons même de dire beaucoup plus noble. Le gourmand n'est pas seulement l'être que la nature a doué d'un excellent estomac et d'un vaste appetit: tous les hommes robustes et bien constitués sont dans ce cas; mais c'est celui qui joint à ces avantages ce goût éclairé dont le premier principe réside dans un palais singulièrement délicat, mûri par une longue expérience. Tous les sens doivent être chez lui dans un constant accord avec celui du goût et il faut qu'il raisonne ses morceaux même avant que de les approcher de ses levres. C'est dire assez que son coup d'œil doit être pénétrant, son oreille alerte, son toucher fin et sa langue capable; ainsi le gourmand que l'académie nous peint comme un être grossier, c'est au contraire par état un personage doué d'une extrême délicatesse la santé seule chez lui doit être vigoureuse." Again, in the technology of the "noble science de la gueule" a difference has been drawn between the gourmand and the gourmet.Gourmand, as we have already shown, being applied to the man who, having empirically discovered the different tastes of esculent substances, is able to select the most dainty parts; in short, he is the epicure of the English. The gourmet, however, considers chiefly the theoretical part of gastronomy, speculating more than he practises, and eminently priding himself in dis

"And what diverts the sneering rabble more

Than an Apicius miserably poor?”—Gifford.

Such is the case with gormandize and gluttony in our own language, each word being used indifferently for the other; by some, indeed, the former has been derived from another source than the French. The Danes have always had the credit of introducing hard drinking into England, and also hard eating; and hence the word gormandize has been derived from Gormund, one of their kings in the time of Alfred.

covering the nicest shades of difference and of excellence in the materials set before him. In fact, the word gourmet has long been used to designate a man who, by sipping a few drops out of the silver cup of the vintner, can instantly tell from what country the wine comes, and its age; or who, according to STELLUT, "sapevano dire gustando li tordi s'erano domestici ò pur selvaggi, e se maschi ò pur femmine."

This denomination has of late acquired a greater latitude of signification, and not improperly, since it expresses what the words gourmand and glutton could not mean.. So that if we form a scale, beginning with the practical man, and ascending to the theoretical, we have, first of all, the glutton, whose great object is practice, and who cares nothing for theory, and who has, by metonymy, been denominated gastrophile or gastrophiler;-the gourmand, who unites theory with practice, and has been designated gastronomer; and the gourmet, who is occupied with the higher branches of the art, and is careless about practising, to whom the loftier appellation of gastrologer has been appropriated. Now, the majority of the Romans, as our readers will find in the course of this article, belonged to the second of these classes, or to that of the gourmand or gastronomer, who unites theory with practice, although, it must be confessed, that too many of them must be ranked amongst those who preferred the practice without the theory: under what other division than that of gastrophiler, for example, can we place Claudius Cæsar and Vitellius, who were addicted to such excessive eating as to be constrained to leave the table once or twice in a meal, and after having unloaded the stomach, to return again to the charge-or the followers of the by no means uncommon custom of taking an emetic before meals, to sharpen the appetite, for the same reason that the females, after bathing before supper, drank wine and threw it up again, and after meals, to obviate the effects of their gluttony-"vomunt ut edant, edunt ut vomant"—or Firmius Salencius who devoured a whole ostrich in a day-or Clodius Albinus, commander of the Romans in Gaul, who is reported to have eaten at one sitting, 500 figs, 100 peaches, 10 melons, 20 pounds of raisins, 100 snipes, 10 capons and 150 large oysters-or a thousand other examples which might be enumerated.

Unfavourable as these examples are to the gastrophilic Romans whom they concern, they yet fall short of some which have been related in Athenæus of their Grecian archetypes;-setting aside the mythical accounts of the enormous eating and extraordinary appetite of Hercules, who, according to Ion, when excited by applause, would devour logs of wood and live coals.

ὑπὸ δὲ τῆς εὐφημίας

κατέπινε καὶ τὰ καλὰ καὶ τοὺς ἀνθρακας of Theagenes, the Thasian VOL. II. NO. 4.

55

athleta who ate a whole bull at a sitting-of Milo the Crotoniate, who, according to Theodorus Hieropolitanas, devoured 20 pounds of meat, with as much bread, and drank three gallons of wine, besides other gastrophilic feats-of a female named Aglais, who ate 12 pounds of flesh, four semimodii of bread (áprův dè xaivixas Téocapas) and drank a gallon of wine, of course, at one sitting. We have a story told on the testimony of Chrysippus, of one Philoxenus, after whom certain cakes were named ovetot, who, in order to be able to eat his food as hot as possible, kept his hands in hot water, and gargled his mouth with the same: by bribing the cook, the dinner was introduced hot, and he was thus enabled completely to distance his competitors. This glutton was, however, outdone by one Pithyllus, who, according to Clearchus, guarded his hands against the extreme heat of his food, with fingerstalls, (daxr2nopas) and encrusted his tongue with an envelope, the nature of which has set all commentators at defiance.

*

The limits of this article will not admit of our inquiring at length into the sumptuousness of Lucullus, or of Littius, the former of whom is affirmed by Nicolaus Peripateticus, to have been the first introducer of luxury amongst the Romans, and the ordinary expense of whose suppers, in the hall of Apollo, is said to have been 50,000 drachmæ, or upwards of $7,100; into the prodigality of Esop; the extravagance of Antony and Cleopatra; the sottish profusion of Caligula, (who is said to have spent on a single supper, centis H S. upwards of $358,700 ;) of Claudius, or of Nero; the inconceivable gluttony of Vitellius; the expensive caprice of Verus; the insane monstrosities of Heliogabalus, one of whose suppers cost tricies H S. upwards of $107,600-or, it might be easy to prove, as M. Peignot has remarked, "que la réputation gastronomique des Romains n'est pas moins colossale que leur réputation politique et militaire."

Before considering the separate edibles of the Romans, we shall make a few observations, 1. on their mode of fattening meats, and 2. on their manner of killing for the table.

1. Lean meat was, in ancient times, not only considered comparatively unwholesome, but also unsavoury; so that Quintus Curtius, being sewer at the table of Cæsar, and seeing a dish of lean birds, did not hesitate to throw them out of the window ; neither did the heathen priests of Rome and Egypt, eat of lean flesh, owing to their idea of its being in a state of imperfection, until fat hence we find, in the various older writers, (especially

We give the description of Clearchus, in order that our readers may have an opportunity of being more fortunate: Ὁ αὐτος (Κλέαρχος) φησι. Πιδύλλου, τὸν Τεν ην καλούμενον, ού, περίγλωττιδα μονον, ὑμενίνην φορεῖν, ἀλλὰ καὶ προσελυτροῦν τὴν γλῶσσαν πρὸς τὰς ἀπολαύσεις καὶ τέλος ἰχθυν τρίβων ἀπεκαθείρεν avery. Schweighæuser, Athen. l. 1. c. 5.

"de re rustica") that great attention was paid to the fattening of esculent animals of all kinds, as we shall have occasion to remark when treating of them individually we may observe, en passant, what many of our readers, doubtless, already know, that the fattening of fowls for the markets of large towns, and especially for that of London, forms, at the present day, a considerable branch of rural economy. The mode pursued, as described by Dr. Mavor in his Agricultural Report of Berkshire, is to put them into a dark place, and cram them with a paste made of barley-meal, mutton-suet and some molasses or coarse sugar, mixed with milk, when, at the expiration of a fortnight, they are found to be completely ripe; but if kept longer, the fevers induced by the continued state of repletion, render them red, not vendible, and frequently kills them.

This plan of keeping them in dark places,* with the occasional barbarous substitution of stitching up the eyes! and of cramming them, was well known to the Romans, and largely practised-it was considered to render the flesh tenderer, sweeter, whiter, and also, as was supposed, wholesomer. It has long been imagined, however, and seems now to be pretty generally admitted, that animals brought to this state of artificial obesity, are never so well flavoured in the flesh, and probably not so salubrious as those of the same species fattened in a more natural way.†

A very cruel method of preparation for slaughter, at one time prevailed, but is now, happily, obsolescent, in regard to the bull, although it is to be feared that the original object of its institution was frequently lost sight of, and that it was followed, in too many instances, as an inhuman sport. Bull. beef has long been esteemed hard of digestion and unwholesome, requiring the most vigorous powers to overcome it; and hence the mythical legend of Hercules feasting chiefly on bull's flesh and green figs: Ἡρακλῆς ος τους Βοειοῖς κρέασιν ἐπήσθιε συκα† χλωρα. Το remove these qualities of the flesh, bulls have been, from the earliest times,

"Aves quæ conviviis comparantur, ut immotæ facile pinguescant in obscuro continentur."-Seneca Epist. 123.

There are still some who refuse their assent to this conclusion. Fowls which are fattened artificially, are by some epicures preferred to those called barn-door fowls-who, we have heard say, that they should as soon think of ordering a barndoor for dinner, as a barn-door fowl. Kitchener in Cook's Oracle. 3d London Edit. p. 179.

There is a circumstance, by the by, connected with the literary history of the fig, which may not have struck the general reader's attention,-we mean the origin of the word “sycophant.” It would seem, according to Ister (apud Athen. iii. p. 74.) that the Athenians were interdicted from exporting figs, in order that the natives alone might feed upon themἵνα πονοι απολαύοιεν οι κατοικούντες.— This gave occasion to the laying of informations against those who carried them away in a contraband manner, and to such informers the word σuxcavтaι was first applied. These informations being frequently calumnious, the word was subse quently employed to designate a calumniator.

either baited by dogs, hunted by men, or torn by lions. Patrocles, indeed, has affirmed, that if a lion be merely shown to a bull, three or four hours before he is killed, the flesh of the latter will be made perfectly tender, "fear dissolving his hardest parts, and making his very heart to become pulpy." By some ancient municipal laws in. England, no butcher was allowed to expose any bull beef for sale, unless it had been previously baited-a regulation adopted for the reason already assigned; for it is a law in the animal economy, that when animals have undergone great fatigue immediately before death, or have suffered from a lingering death, although their flesh may sooner become rigid, it also becomes sooner tender, than when they have been suddenly deprived of life when in a state of health. The flesh of hunted animals also is soon tender, and speedily spoils; and, upon this principle, the flesh of the pig is rendered more digestible by the revolting cruelty, said to be practised by the Germans and others, of whipping the animal to death.* It has long been a custom to cause old cocks to fight before they are killed; and the Moors of West Barbary, before they kill a hedgehog, which is esteemed a princely dish with them, as it was of yore with the Greeks, rub his back against the ground, by holding his feet betwixt two, as men do a saw that saws stones, till it has done squeaking, and then they cut its throat."

2. The mode of killing for the table, as at the present day, differed materially amongst the ancients. The Greeks strangled their swine, and ate them with their blood: the Romans thrust a spit red-hot through the body, and suffered them to die without bleeding; but if a sow were about to farrow, they trampled, at the same time, upon her abdomen, bruising the foetal pigs and the mammary glands with the milk and blood, and served all up as a delicate dish. This mode of slaughter was replete with objections, if we regard it in a gastronomic point of view solely; for the flesh of animals thus killed, is dark-coloured, from the retention of blood in the vessels, and hence becomes speedily putrid. Decidedly the best mode of slaughtering cattle, according to our own taste, is that practised by the butchers of the Jewish persuasion, the Mosaic law strictly prohibiting the eating of blood. The Talmud contains a set of regulations regarding the killing of animals: their method is to cut the throat at once down to the bone, so as to divide the whole of the large vessels of the

*"To make a pig taste like a wild boar." "Take a living pig, and let him swallow the following drink, viz. boil together, in vinegar and water, some rosemary, thyme, sweet basil, bay leaves, and sage: when you have let him swallow this, immediately whip him to death, and roast him forthwith!!" Booke of Cookrye by A. W. 1591, quoted by Kitchener. Again-how "to still a cocke for a weake bodie that is consumed." "Take a red cocke that is not too olde, and beate him to death."