"_Took their coena at noon_."--And, by the way, in order to show how little _coena_ had to do with any evening hour (though, in any age but that of our fathers, four in the afternoon would never have been thought an evening hour in the sense implied by _supper_,)--the Roman _gourmands_ and _bons vivants_ continued through the very last ages of Rome to take their coena, when more than usually sumptuous, at noon. This, indeed, all people did occasionally, just as we sometimes give a dinner even now so early as four, P.M., under the name of a _dejeuner à la fourchette_. Those who took their _coena_ so early as this, were said _de die coenare_--to begin dining from high day. Just as the line in Horace--"Ut jugulent homines surgunt _de nocte_ latrones," does not mean that the robbers rise when others are going to bed, viz., at nightfall, but at midnight. For, says one of the three best scholars of this earth, _de die, de nocte_, mean from that hour which was most fully, most intensely day or night, viz., the centre, the meridian. This one fact is surely a clencher as to the question whether _coena_ meant dinner or supper.] End of Project Gutenberg's Miscellaneous Essays, by Thomas de Quincey