"The proper thing is to be cleanly and nice, And yet so as not to be over precise; To neither be constantly scolding your slaves, Like that old prig Albutus, as losels and knaves, Nor, like Naevius, in such things who's rather too easy, To the guests at your board present water that's greasy." To a man of these simple tastes the elaborate banquets, borrowed from the Asiatic Greeks, which were then in fashion, must have been intolerable. He has introduced us to one of them in describing a dinner-party of nine given by one Nasidienus, a wealthy snob, to Maecenas and others of Horace's friends. The dinner breaks down in a very amusing way, between the giver's love of display and his parsimony, which prompted him, on the one hand, to present his guests with, the fashionable dainties, but, on the other, would not let him pay a price sufficient to secure their being good. The first course consists of a Lucanian wild boar, served with a garnish of turnips, radishes, and lettuce, in a sauce of anchovy-brine and wine-lees. Next comes an incongruous medley of dishes, including one "Of sparrows' gall and turbots' liver, At the mere thought of which I shiver." A lamprey succeeds, "floating vast and free, by shrimps surrounded in a sea of sauce," and this is followed up by a crane soused in salt and flour, the liver of a snow-white goose fattened on figs, leverets' shoulders, and roasted blackbirds. This _menu_ is clearly meant for a caricature, but it was a caricature of a prevailing folly, which had probably cost the poet many an indigestion. Against this folly, and the ruin to health and purse which it entailed, some of his most vigorous satire is directed. It furnishes the themes of the second and fourth Satires of the Second Book, both of which, with slight modifications, might with equal truth be addressed to the dinner-givers and diners-out of our own day. In the former of these the speaker is the Apulian yeoman Ofellus, who undertakes to show "What the virtue consists in, and why it is great, To live on a little, whatever your state." Before entering on his task, however, he insists that his hearers shall cut themselves adrift from their luxuries, and come to him fasting, and with appetites whetted by a sharp run with the hounds, a stiff bout at tennis, or some other vigorous gymnastics;-- "And when the hard work has your squeamishness routed, When you're parched up with thirst, and your hunger's undoubted, Then spurn simple food if you can, or plain wine, Which no honied gums from Hymettus refine." His homily then proceeds in terms which would not be out of place if addressed to a _gourmet_ of modern London or Paris:--