Isæus, De Pyrrh. Hered. § 2. That among the more simple and old-fashioned citizens of Athens, however, men and women, when of the same family or clan, dined together, we have the testimony of Menander to prove. He introduces one of his characters, apparently a fop, observing that it was a bore to be at a family party, where the father, holding the goblet in his hand, first made a speech, abounding with exhortations: the mother followed, and then the grandmother prated a little. Afterwards stood up her father, hoarse with age, and his wife, calling him her dearest; while he mean time nodded to all present. Athen. ii. 86. Footnote 736: Athen. v. 6. Footnote 737: Odyss. δ. 48, sqq. Footnote 738: Athen. ix. 27. In some luxurious houses wine mingled with spices was presented to the guests in lavers for the purpose of washing their feet. Plut. Phoc. § 20. In the palace of Trimalchio we find Egyptian servants pouring water, cooled with snow, on the hands of the guests. Petron. Satyr. p. 76. Footnote 739: Schol. Aristoph. Eq. 412. Footnote 740: Rich purple napkins were sometimes used. Sappho in Deipnosoph. ix. 79. These articles are still in the Levant elaborately embroidered. Footnote 741: Athen. iv. 31. ----- But we are proceeding too fast, for the guests are scarcely within doors, and our imagination has jumped to the conclusion. To return then. Immediately on entering, and when the host had welcomed and shaken hands with all, such gentlemen as possessed beards[742] had them perfumed over burning censers of frankincense, as ladies have their tresses on visiting a Turkish harem. The hands, too, after each lavation, were scented.[743] Before sitting down to table, and while the cooks were peppering the soup, frying the fish, or giving the roast-meat another turn, politeness required the guests to take a stroll[744] in the picture-gallery and admire the exquisite taste of their entertainer in articles of _virtu_.[745] Here while the scent of the savoury viands found its way through every apartment, and set the bowels of the hungry parasites croaking, the rogues who had lunched well at home leisurely discussed the merits of Zeuxis or Parrhasios, of Pheidias or Polygnotos, or opened wide their eyes at the microscopic creations of that Spartan artist whose chisel produced a chariot and four that could be hidden under the wing of a fly. At length, however, the connoisseurs were interrupted in their learned disquisitions by the entrance of Xanthos, Davos, or Lydos, with the welcome intelligence that dinner was on the table. ----- Footnote 742: