=99. Distribution of Garlands and Perfumes. Social Conversation.=--While one corps of slaves was passing about the wine, asking each guest whether “Hot?” or “Cold?” others were distributing wreaths of fragrant flowers, to put on the forehead and even around the neck (by their odor supposedly preventing drunkenness) and also little alabaster vials of choice perfumes which the guests immediately broke and poured upon their hands and hair. Then followed long conversations, grave or gay according to the mood. Calvus had not provided any professional entertainers, but all through the drinking a good flute-player and a good harpist hid behind a curtain kept up a soft pleasing melody. While Manlius and the older guests discussed the control of the Moorish tribes of Numidia, young Nepos and one or two others found much to say about a new “Thracian” who had just fought at the Flavian Amphitheater, and presently all the others pressed the host (knowing him to be a little vain on the subject) to show some new moves in “robbers” (_latrunculi_, a board game with men extremely like checkers) which he had evolved with peculiar pride. It would have been good form also to have played at making impromptu verses, or at matching riddles, but for a Roman gentleman to indulge in anything like singing a song, even before a group of friends, would have been undignified; Nero possibly shocked public opinion even more by appearing openly as a common theater performer than he did by killing his mother! At last the evening ended. It was only 8 o’clock by later reckoning; but everybody had to be up again by gray dawn. The streets were already dark and deserted save by prowlers and the police-watch. “My shoes, boy,” called Manlius to his valet. All the other guests imitated him, and already their retinues with slaves and torches were crowding in the vestibule. The eight diners departed after thanking Calvus. The slaves cleared out the triclinium, and quenched the lights. Soon the whole domus was asleep. =100. Elaborate and Vulgar Banquets. Simple Home Dinners.=--Such was a very decorous and ordinary dinner. It could easily have run off to greater follies and vastly greater magnificence, useless to describe. Space lacks, also, to describe the magnificent imperial banquets at the palace when all the gold, glitter, and luxury of the capital is on display. Calvus is no great philosopher, or he might have followed the mode and insisted upon his guests conversing solely about the “Stoic Conception of Duty”; or the “Immortality of the Soul.”