It was not, however, that all meals, as Isidore imagined, were indiscriminately called _prandium_; but that the one sole meal of the day, by accidents of war, might, and did, revolve through all hours of the day. The first introduction of this military meal into Rome itself, would be through the honorable pedantry of old centurions, &c., delighting (like the _Trunnions_, &c., of our navy) to keep up in peaceful life some image or memorial of their past experience, so wild, so full of peril, excitement, and romance, as Roman warfare must have been in those ages. Many non-military people for health's sake, many as an excuse for eating early, many by way of interposing some refreshment between the stages of forensic business, would adopt this hurried and informal meal. Many would wish to see their sons adopting such a meal as a training for foreign service in particular, and for temperance in general. It would also be maintained by a solemn and very interesting commemoration of this camp repast in Rome. This commemoration, because it has been grossly misunderstood by Salmasius, (whose error arose from not marking the true point of a particular antithesis,) and still more, because it is a distinct confirmation of all we have said as to the military nature of _prandium_, we shall detach from the series of our illustrations, by placing it in a separate paragraph. On a set day the officers of the army were invited by Cæsar to a banquet; it was a circumstance expressly noticed in the invitation, by the proper officers of the palace, that the banquet was not a "coena," but a "prandium." What followed, in consequence? Why, that all the guests sate down in full military accoutrement; whereas, observes the historian, had it been a coena, the officers would have unbelted their swords; for, he adds, even in Cæsar's presence the officers lay aside their swords. The word _prandium_, in short, converted the palace into the imperial tent; and Cæsar was no longer a civil emperor and _princeps senatûs_, but became a commander-in-chief amongst a council of his staff, all belted and plumed, and in full military fig. On this principle we come to understand why it is, that, whenever the Latin poets speak of an army as taking food, the word used is always _prandens_ and _pransus_; and, when the word used is _prandens_, then always it is an army that is concerned. Thus Juvenal in a well-known satire-- ----"Credimus altos Desiccasse amnes, epotaque ftumina, Medo _Prandente_."