“Our slaves,” says one of the guests, “piled all the gifts we had received in our baskets; and the trumpet, according to the custom of the Macedonians, at length announced the termination of the repast.” Caranos next began that part of the potations in which small cups alone figured, and commanded the slaves to circulate the wine briskly; what they drank in this second bout being regarded as an antidote against that which they had swallowed before. They were now, as might be supposed, in the right trim to be amused, and there entered to them the buffoon Mandrogenes, a descendant, it was said, of Strato the Athenian. This professional gentleman for a long time shook their sides with laughter, and terminated his performances by dancing with his wife, an old woman, upwards of eighty.[86] This fit of merriment would appear to have restored the edge of their appetites, and made them ready for those supplementary dainties which closed the achievements of the day. These consisted of a variety of sweetmeats, rendered more tempting by the little ivory-plaited corbels in which they nestled, delicate cakes from Crete, and Samos, and Attica, in the boxes in which they were imported. ----- Footnote 86: If octogenarian dancers were held in admiration in England, it would, according to Lord Bacon, be easy to form an army of them; since “there is, he says, scarce a village with us, if it be any whit populous, but it affords some man or woman of fourscore years of age; nay, a few years since there was, in the county of Hereford, a May-game, or morrice-dance, consisting of eight men, whose age computed together, made up eight hundred years, inasmuch as what some of them wanted of an hundred, others exceeded as much.” History of Life and Death, p. 20. ----- Hippolochos, to whose enthusiasm for descriptions of good cheer, the reader is indebted for the above picturesque details, concludes his important narrative by observing, that, when they rose to depart, their anxiety respecting the wealth they had acquired sobered them completely. He then adds, addressing himself to his correspondent Lynceus, “Meanwhile you, my friend, remaining all alone at Athens, enjoy the lectures of Theophrastus with your thyme, rocket and delicate twists, mingling in the revels of the Linnean and Chytrean festivals. For our own part we are looking out, some for houses, others for estates, others for slaves, to be purchased by the riches which dropped into our baskets at the supper of Caranos.”