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CAELATURA.
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145
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between
the Centaurs and Lapithaä, where the vessels snatched from the table
supplied the combatants with weapons. This preposterous piece of
barbarity came into such favour as to be adopted even in country towns.
Well does Pliny exclaim hereupon, " Our age has done things that
posterity, will deem mere fables."
Heliogabalus
was the first to make his entire " batterie de cuisine " out of silver
: some of the pieces, adds Lam-pridius, weighed one hundred pounds
each, and were chased with the most lascivious designs. His cousin and
successor, on the other hand, reduced the whole service of plate used
in the palace to the very moderate limits of two hundred pounds ; and
this too, notes the historian, entirely plain : gold plate was totally
excluded from his table.* The Romans carried their services of plate
about with them in their remotest expeditions. " To my own knowledge,"
says Pliny, " Pompeius Paulinus, though no more than the son of a Roman
knight of Aries (and afterwards disinÂherited), had with him 12,000
pounds weight of plate when serving in the army campaigning against the
most savage of all races." Meaning the army of the Ehine, in which the
historian himself had held a command in the cavalry.
Rare,
indeed, were the specimens of these torentic wonÂders of the Greek
school, that had escaped time and the melting-pot, until a fortunate
discovery in 1830 enriched
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