The Romans, inheritors of the luxury of Asia and Greece, did not erect a temple to the greedy Addephagia, goddess of good cheer, who possessed altars in Sicily;[XXII-22] but they thought it impossible to repay too highly those who knew how to extend the limits of the pleasures of the table,[XXII-23] and a generous senator offered his _chef_ at least four talents, or more than £800 a year. This is yet but little compared with the magnificence of Antony. He gave a supper to Cleopatra; that princess praised the delicacy of the feast, and immediately her lover called for the cook, and presented him with a city, in recompense. How times are changed! We, at the present day, treat all this as pompous and ridiculous prodigality. It is because our somewhat mean epoch judges the olden times by the narrow ideas of order, foresight, and economy. The ancients enriched their _Archimagiri_, wasted their revenue in feasts, and then killed themselves. We have adopted a very different style of living. But, at the same time, how far are our most sumptuous banquets behind the most modest collations of Greece and Rome! Lucullus caused to be served to Cicero and Pompey a little _ambigu_, which cost £1,000. There were only three of them to partake of it! The Emperor Claudius had generally six hundred guests at his table.[XXII-24] Vitellius did not spend less than £3,200 for each of his repasts;[XXII-25] and the composition of his favourite dishes required that vessels should unceasingly ply between the Gulf of Venice and the Straits of Cadiz.[XXII-26] It must be confessed that cooks of that gastronomic era had to fulfil an incessant and most laborious task. What was then more natural than to abandon to them some thousands of those sesterces, which the profusion of the master devoured by millions, in the form of phenicopters’ tongues, scarus or parrot-fishes’ livers, and peacocks’ brains? We see that the Cæsars encouraged this frightful gastronomic monomania. Tiberius gave more than £3,000 to the author of a dialogue, in which the interlocutors were mushrooms, fig-peckers, oysters, and thrushes.[XXII-27] Galba breakfasted before day-break, and the breakfast would have enriched a hundred families.[XXII-28] Ælius Verus invented the _pentapharmacum_, a kind of _Macédoine_, composed of sows’ flanks, pheasants, peacocks, ham, and wild boars’ flesh.[XXII-29] Geta insisted upon having as many courses as there were letters in the alphabet, and each of these courses must contain all the viands whose name began by the same letter.[XXII-30] These follies, which cooks were forced to obey, continued to astonish the world until the moment when Rome--with her gods, the monuments of her ancient glory, and of her recent turpitudes--crumbled beneath the invincible weight of that horde of barbarians, that mysterious and implacable scourge, which Divine vengeance reserved for the punishment of unheard-of crimes.