CAELATURA—WEDDING OF CABANUS. 157
and
several fancy loaves, and house-pigeons, and ringdoves, and
partridges, and all other sorts of fowls in abundance. "These dishes
also" (to give Hippolochus' own words) " we handed over to our servants
; and as we had/had enough of eating we washed our hands. Then garlands
were brought in for us in profusion, made out of flowers of every kind,
and each of them contained a bandeau of gold equal in weight to the
first wreath." After this Hippolochus describes how Proteas, grandson
of Proteas son of Lamia the nurse of Alexander the Great, was a very
hard drinker fully equal to his grandfather Proteas, Alexander's
foster-brother ; and how he drank to the health of every one present :
and then he goes on with his narration as follows :—
3.
" And now that we were agreeably estranged from sobriety, comes in a
troop of female flute-players, singers, and some Ehodian
dulcimer-girls, all naked as it seemed to me, though some would have
they had on (thin) tunics, and after having given us a specimen of
their skill, they departed. Thereupon enter other girls each with a
pair of cruses of perfume tied together with a strip of gold, the one
gold, the other silver, holding a cotyle (nearly half a pint)
each, and presented them to every guest. Next is served up wealth
instead of a course, an oblong dish of silver very thickly gilt, and
large enough to receive the bulk of a pig roasted whole and of very
great size; which was laid upon its back displaying its belly crammed
with plenty of good things, for in the same were, baked together with
it, thrushes, and sows' paunches, and an innumerable lot of ortolans,
and the yolks taken out of eggs, and oysters, and scallops : and they
were set before each guest and given to him dish and all. After this,
when we had drunk off our bowls, we received each of us a boiled kid
upon another dish of the same size as the
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