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Lucrine oysters, formerly a wedding dish, are now everyday fare; for which, accordingly, the bankrupt glutton silently prepares the incendiary torch. While formerly the father disposed of his boy, now the disposal is transferred to the latter: he disposes, forsooth, of his father by poison. The Comitium had become an exchange, the criminal trial a mine of gold for the jurymen.
The palace-like edifices will in a short time leave but a few acres for the plough; ponds of wider extent than the Lucrine lake will be every where to be seen; and the barren plane-tree will supplant the elms. Then banks of violets, and myrtle groves, and all the tribe of nosegays shall diffuse their odors in the olive plantations, which were fruitful to their preceding master.
If at any time, but more especially on a hot day, they have courage to sail, in their painted galleys, from the Lucrine Lake to their elegant villas on the seacoast of Puteoli and Cayeta, they compare their own expeditions to the marches of Cæsar and Alexander.
The fountains were frozen, icicles hung from the locks of the marble statues in the Chiaia. And yet the oranges glowed like gold among their green leaves; the roses, the heliotrope, the geraniums, bloomed in all the gardens. It is the most contradictory climate. We lunched one day, sitting in our open carriage in a lemon grove, and near at hand the Lucrine Lake was half frozen over.
Lucrine oysters, formerly a wedding dish, are now everyday fare; for which, accordingly, the bankrupt glutton silently prepares the incendiary torch. While formerly the father disposed of his boy, now the disposal is transferred to the latter: he disposes, forsooth, of his father by poison. The Comitium had become an exchange, the criminal trial a mine of gold for the jurymen.
The young Livian would have as readily questioned his own existence. Some one thrust back the flaps of the tent, and called inside into the darkness: "Are you here, Drusus?" "I am," was the wearied answer. "Is that Antonius?" "Yes. Come out. We may as well dispose of our cold puls before the moon rises, and while we can imagine it peacocks, Lucrine oysters, or what not."
Powdered footmen serving modern coffee seemed here like anachronisms in livery. In such a room one should have been waited on by boys crowned with roses, and have partaken only of classic dishes of Venafran olives or oysters from the Lucrine lake, washed down with Massic, or Chian, or honeyed Falernian. Some half-dozen gentlemen, chatting over their coffee, bowed to Dalrymple when we came in.
Oysters from the Lucrine Lake were in great demand; snails were fattened in ponds for cooking, while the villas of the rich had their piscinae filled with fresh or salt-water fish. Peacocks and pheasants were the most highly esteemed among poultry, although the absurdity prevailed of eating singing-birds.
Fish were the chief object of the Roman epicures, of which the mullus, the rhombus, and the asellus were the most valued. Oysters, from the Lucrine Lake, were in great demand. Snails were fed in ponds for the purpose, while the villas of the rich had their piscinae filled with fresh or salt-water fish.
On the left lay Baiae, all but forsaken, its ancient temples and villas stretching along the shore from the Lucrine lake to the harbour shadowed by Cape Misenum; desolate magnificence, marble overgrown with ivy, gardens where the rose grew wild, and terraces crumbling into the sea.
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