[119] ON ITS PIVOT. Doors were not usually hung on hinges, as with us, but had on their upper and lower edges wedge-shaped pivots (_cardines_) which fitted into corresponding depressions in the threshold and upper part of the frame. [120] FRIEND. Quintus would speak of Eurymachus as the ‘friend’ of Euterpe with intentional double meaning, half in the usual honest sense, but partly too in the sense which the feminine form, _amica_, had acquired in the course of time; a signification so ambiguous, that the bluntest frankness was better. [121] SESAME CAKE. _Sesamum_ σήσαμον was a plant with pods, from whose fruit was obtained a savory meal or oil. [122] THE USE OF SPOONS was not so general in Rome as with us, but was certainly customary for eating eggs in good society. [123] HYMENAEUS. A well-known poem by Catullus; the burden is: “_O Hymen, Hymenae!_” (Carmen 61, _Collis o Heliconis_.) [124] CAIUS (OR QUINTUS) VALERIUS CATULLUS was a native of Verona (B.C. 77) and died at the age of thirty. His works were most popular at the period of our story. Martial frequently compares himself with Catullus as a recognized classic, and in one passage hopes that he may one day be esteemed as second only to Catullus. Herodianus takes one of Catullus’s poems as a model, just as a worthy citizen of Germany, who wished to essay lyric poetry, might copy Schiller. CHAPTER VI. The house of Titus Claudius Mucianus, the high-priest of Jupiter, stood at no great distance from the precipitous Capitoline Hill,[125] looking over the Forum Romanum[126] and the Sacred Way.[127] Simple and yet magnificent, it showed in every detail the stamp of that quiet, self-sufficing and confident wealth, that ease of distinction, which is so unattainable to the _parvenu_.