The absurdity of the thing ought of itself to have awakened the spirit of criticism, apt enough sometimes to detect errors. But this was so marvellous a thing, and raised the ancients so far above all contemporaries in skill, that the seduction to moderns was irresistible, so one after another, scholars and critics, have repeated the four-coloured passage, without regard to the context, without comparing one assertion of the author with another. If the whole passage where the famous sentence is found be read, it will appear that Pliny is declaiming after his accustomed manner against the luxury of the Romans, of his time, and particularly their indulgence in fine colours, their very walls, and ships, and funeral cars being coloured, as he says, with blue and scarlet of the most costly kind; while the ancient painters produced their fine works with only four colours, naming the commonest and coarsest he can recollect for the sake of contrast; and produces as witnesses, the works of the painters, Apelles, Echion, Melanthus, and Nichomachus. Now, whoever will take the trouble to read a little farther, will find that Pliny exclaims with as much bitterness against the use of large earthen dishes as against the luxury of colour; and brings examples equally forcible to prove that it was wise and virtuous to love little cups. And, again, if the nineteenth book be referred to, what pathetic complaints of the decline of cabbage eating will be found, and how monstrous he thought it that a man should buy a fish or a fowl at market when his forefathers fed upon salad! Then the enormity committed by Apicius in teaching young Drusus not to like cabbage sprouts so well as broccoli, and the reprimand of Tiberius addressed to the youth on the occasion, are good specimens of Pliny’s love for the “wisdom of his ancestors,” and his little consideration for the great benefits he himself enjoyed from more modern improvements. Then he laments that asses may eat thistles while the common people of Rome are debarred from cardoons and artichokes; and I verily believe, that were his respect for Cato not in the way, we should have had a philippic against those who presumed to eat asparagus larger than wheat-straw; but Cato, it seems, was among the first who had asparagus beds near Rome; so with one growl at such as devoured the monstrous plants from Ravenna, he allows that cultivated asparagus may be eaten.