Note 953 — Chapter III · (691-695.)

“On the 23rd of August, the day of inauguration of Lentulus, flamen of Mars, the house was decorated, and couches of ivory were set up in the triclinia. In the two first halls were the pontiffs Q. Catulus, M. Æmilius Lepidus, D. Silanus, C. Cæsar, king of the sacrifices, and ... L. Julius Cæsar, augur. The third received the vestals. The repast was thus composed:—For the first course: sea-urchins, raw oysters in any quantity, pelorides (a kind of oyster of extraordinary size), spondyli (shell-fish of the oyster kind), thrushes, asparagus; and, lower down, a fat hen, a vol-au-vent of large oysters, and sea-acorns black and white (sea and river shell-fish according to Pliny). Then more spondyli, glycomarides (another shell-fish mentioned by Pliny), sea-nettles, beccaficos, filets of venison and wild boar, fatted fowls powdered with flour, beccaficos, murices and purple fish (shell-fish bristling with points, which yielded the purple of the ancients). Second course: sows’ udders, wild boar’s head, fish-pie, sows’ udder-pie, ducks, boiled teal, hares, roast fowls, starch (flour that is obtained in the same manner as starch, without grinding—many sorts of creams, amylaria, were made of it), loaves from Picenum.” (Macrobius, Saturnalia, III. 9.)