According to Suetonius (whose name suggests "duff") the villain Nero was accustomed to dine in a superb apartment, surrounded with mechanical scenery, which could be "shifted" with every course. The suppers of "Vitellius the Glutton" cost, on the average, more than £4000 a-piece--which reads like a "Kaffir Circus" dinner at the Savoy--and the celebrated feast to which he invited his brother was down in the bill for £40,350. Now a-nights we don't spend as much on a dinner, even when we invite other people's wives. "It consisted"--I always think of Little Dombey and the dinner at Doctor Blimber's, on reading these facts--"of two thousand different dishes of fish, and seven thousand of fowls, with other equally numerous meats." "Sharp-biting salads," salted herrings, and pickled anchovies, were served, as _hors d'oeuvres_ during the first course of a Roman banquet, to stimulate the hunger which the rest of the meal would satisfy; but although Vitellius was, according to history, "a whale on" oysters, they do not appear to have been eaten as a whet to appetite. And it was the duty of one, or more, of the Emperor's "freedmen" to taste every dish before his imperial master, in case poison might lurk therein. A garland of flowers around the brows was the regular wear for a guest at a "swagger" dinner party in ancient Rome, and, the eating part over, said garland was usually tilted back on the head, the while he who had dined disposed himself in an easy attitude on his ivory couch, and proffered his cup to be filled by the solicitous slave. Then commenced the "big drink." But it must be remembered that although the subsequent display of fireworks was provided from lively Early Christians, in tar overcoats, these Romans drank the pure, unadulterated juice of the grape, freely mixed with water; so that headaches i' th' morn were not _de rigueur_, nor did the subsequent massacres and other diversions in the Amphitheatre cause any feelings of "jumpiness." The Roman bill-of-fare, however, does not commend itself to all British epicures, one of whom wrote, in a convivial song-- "Old Lucullus, they say, Forty cooks had each day, And Vitellius's meals cost a million; But I like what is good, When or where be my food, In a chop-house or royal pavilion. At all feasts (if enough) I most heartily stuff, And a song at my heart alike rushes, Though I've not fed my lungs Upon nightingales' tongues, Nor the brains of goldfinches and thrushes." My pen loves to linger long over the gastronomies of those shaven voluptuaries, the ancient Italians; and my Caledonian readers will forgive the old tales when it is further set forth that the Romans introduced, amongst other things, _Haggis_