'At three a bell sounded, and the baths were opened. The bath combined business, medical treatment, and pleasure. The poor enjoyed them in the public baths, the voluptuous rich, in their palaces.... The bath was a place of assembly, with a degree of boyish freedom. There was laughing, talk, gaming, even dancing.... There, too, the great affair of the day was arranged--the supper--almost the only social meal of a Roman. As evening came on, the party stretched themselves, leaning on their elbows, round the hospitable table, and had before them for the meal and for society all the hours till night. It commonly consisted of six or seven (never more than the Muses, said the proverb, or less than the Graces), stretched on couches of purple and gold, round a table of precious wood. A large band of servants was employed in the service of the feast; the _maître d'hôtel_ provided it, the _structor_ placed the dishes in symmetrical order, the _scissor_ carved. Young slaves, in short tunics, placed on the table the huge silver salver, changed for each course, upon which the dishes were tastefully arranged. Children kept, what Indians in our day call punkahs, in motion over the heads of the company, to drive away the flies, and to cool them. Young and beautiful cup-bearers, with long robes and flowing hair, filled the cups with wine, others sprinkled on the floor an infusion of vervain and Venus-hair, which was supposed to promote cheerfulness. Round the table are songs, dances, and symphonies, tricks of buffoons, or discussions of philosophers. In the midst of all this merry-making the king of the feast gives the toasts, counts the cups, and crowns the guests with short-lived flowers. "Let us lose no time to live," he said, "for death is drawing near; let us crown our heads before we go down to Pluto." In fact, the dominant thought of ancient society was to live, to enjoy, to shut out from life as much as possible everything of suffering, care, toil, and duty.'--('Les Césars,' vol. ii. p. 388.)[4]