The city nevertheless abounds in shabby-genteel individuals or social climbers who are miserable every afternoon because some senator or an eques does not tell them, “Come home to dinner!” For example, there is a certain ubiquitous Selius. He hangs about the law courts, and if a pleader is rich and noble, is always interrupting with a loud “Excellent!” or “How clever!” Some afternoons, however, he is seen dragging about, “the picture of misery.” Has his wife just died or his steward embezzled? Not so. He “must dine alone at home.” Thus there develops a type of high-class parasites, “_shadows_,” men of thick hide and nimble wit who snap at every possible excuse for thrusting into a dinner party, and who are willing to pay for the least honored place on the couches by becoming the butts of the jests, or by bringing laughter on themselves by such feats as swallowing whole cheese cakes at a mouthful. =94. The Standard Dinner Party--Nine Guests.=--In Athens in other days a delightful informality prevailed at banquets. The number of guests was seldom fixed, and it was quite proper to intrude two or three more at the last minute. Romans are more grave, methodical, and, be it said, more commonplace. The standard size for a dinner party is determined by an almost inflexible custom--nine. Three couches, three guests to a couch;--that number can concentrate around a single set of serving tables, and let everybody mingle easily in the conversation. Of course, you can get along with fewer guests, but it is the height of meanness to have more than three to a couch. For a larger affair one must therefore have two or three or more triclinia,--eighteen or twenty-seven guests, etc. Unlike Athens, however, it is perfectly proper to invite high-born ladies to mixed dinner parties, although not to the free and easy drinking bouts that sometimes follow; and the women apparently recline on the couches with perfect decorum and modesty. Nevertheless, “stag” parties are extremely common, and one such, of a very conventional nature, Calvus gave recently in honor of a friend, Manlius, who was just departing as _proquæstor_ (assistant governor) of Africa. =95. Preparing the Dinner and Mustering the Guests.=--The guests were invited by personal greetings at the Forum or Baths of Trajan except one who had to be summoned by slave messenger at his home. However two places on the couches have been left vacant deliberately to let Manlius invite any two acquaintances he desired--a frequent prerogative of the guest of honor. The dinner was to be a strictly decorous affair, and, therefore, it did not begin before the tenth hour (4 P.M.). If Calvus had desired a carouse, he might have begun at 3 P.M. in order to get plenty of leeway for a long riotous evening; but “early dinners” are ordinarily as great a reproach in Rome as “late dinners” will be later.