Fishing from the earliest times - Blog

BANQUETS—VITELLIUS—VENUS—Sf/B ROSA 207God of Love to the God of Silence, to intimate that henceforthall things said or done at the feast were to be kept,inviolable and sub rosa, under which flower by the rain ofmyriads of petals all the guests literally soon were." ^The amount of money spent on suppers and entertainmentsat Rome staggers conception. The figures recorded by evenserious historians seem beyond all belief : for instance, theordinary expense of LucuUus for a supper in the Hall of Apollois given at 50,000 drachmce, or ^1600.At one of the suppers to which itwas the custom of Neroto invite himself—his meals, Suetonius {Nero, 27) tells us,were prolonged from midday to midnight or vice-versa—noless than ;^32,ooo was expended on chaplets, and at anotherstill more on roses alone. But it must be remembered thatthe ItaHan rose bloomed only for one day—witness the lines," Una dies aperit, conficit una dies," and " Quam longa unadies, aetas tam longa rosarum." 2 The cost of an entertainmentby his brother in honour of the Emperor VitelUus on hisentrance to Rome was nearly ;^8o,ooo !But of Vitellius himself let Suetonius 3 speak :chiefly addicted to the vices of luxury and cruelty."HewasHe always^ Sammonicus Serenus, a savant of the early third century a.d., statesthat the acipenser was brought to table to the accompaniment of flutes byservants crowned with flowers. Cf. Macrob. III. i6, 7 f. Cf. Athen. VII. 44, and>Elian, VIII. 28.In describing this imaginary Attic supper, Badham certainly lets himselfgo. The allusion to " the present of the God of Love " he may have takenfrom an anonymous epigram in Burmann's Anihologia (1773), Bk. V. 217." Est rosa flos Veneris ; cuius quo furta laterentHarpocrati matris dona dicavit Amor.Inde rosam mensis hospes suspendit amicis,Convivae ut sub ea dicta tacenda sciant."These lines, of which several variants exist (notably that of the Rose Cellar inthe Rathskeller of Bremen), are founded on the legend that Cupid bribed theGod of Silence with his mother's flower not to divulge the amours of Venus.Hence a host hung a rose over his table as a sign that nothing there said wasto be repeated. A quaint and touching legend runs that in the beginning allroses were white, but when Venus walking one day among the flowers waspricked by one of their thorns, these roses " drew their colour from the bloodof the goddess," and remained encarmined for ever. Cf. Natal. Com.MythoL, V. 13. See also A. de Gubernatis, La Myihologie des Plantes (Paris,1882), II. 323, and R. Folkard, P/a«^ Lore, Legends, and Lyrics (London, 1884),516 If.* Cf. Ausonius, Id., XIV. 39, and 43.3 Suet., VHeU. 13.