125449
THE INNS OF
GREECE & ROME
SEEKING A TAVERN
THE INNS
OF
GREECE ROME
And a History of Hospitality Jrom the
Dawn of Time to the Middle Ages
BY
W. C.FIREBAUGH
With an Introduction
by WiaiACE RICE
and Illustrations by
NORMAN LINDSAV
CHICAGO
PASCAL COVICI
MCMXXVIII
COPYRIGHT, 1923
M.
, 1998
COVICI,
129- T^CX; U^rixED STATES ay
ILLUSTRATIONS
PAGE
Seeking a Tavern Frontispiece
Vintage Experts 6
Bringing in a Course SO
At the Door of the Tavern 59
The Vegetable Cook 79
A Tavern Bedroom 121
A Cabaret Girl 142
An Innkeeper 194
The Hostess of Apuleius 215
Returning from the Tavern 226
INTRODUCTION
Surely there is fitness in having a man horn and reared
in the best hotels of his time, of which his father was pro
prietor, write a brief introduction to this interesting
account of the best, and worst, inns of antiquity. For to
most of us life outside the home, whether stately or
humble, is an abnormal and too often a subnormal state
of being, fully met when the only home one has known in
early life is itself an inn.
Reading of the hostelries of Greece and Rome as dis
closed in the classic and post-classic writings of these
lands, where the good old tradition of hospitality was
often so grossly abused, one is left to wonder if it was not
after all the exception that secured attention, if the honest
keeper of the clean tavern, with its warmest welcome and
savory food, was not in all ages performing his pious duty
to his guests, simply and unostentatiously and unmen-
tioned, while his ill favored competitor with his tricks of
misrepresentation, adulteration, and secret theft caught
the attention of poet and prose writer, who justly f ound
him guilty of an inhumanity which stands forth as a
sacrilege to the race.
For giving shelter from the storm, drink to the thirsty,
and food to the hungry has been at all times and places a
fundamental duty; and men, however unable to attain
their own ideals whether simple or lofty, have always been
dutiful. The debt owed by host to guest was sacred and
until lately has so remained in all stages of society, even
those of savagery in which the stranger is perforce an
enemy. Means of securing not mere immunity from
plunder and attack but all the rites of hospitality have
been noted by travellers in every continent where taverns
had not yet been demanded by the numbers of sojourners.
The sacredness of the wanderer s goods and person has
been willingly conceded, even to the formation of a per
manent bond between the provider of bread and salt and
him who partakes thereof. May we not rightly assume,
therefore, that even when the inns of antiquity are shown
at their worst there were still countless hosts, respecters
of the gods and worshipful of the rites of guestship, who
welcomed the coming, rejoiced the staying, and sent good
luck with the parting guest?
But in modern days a more subtle danger threatens
the ancient spirit* however maintained through the ages.
The devil of industrialism has invaded the hotel, and even
the revival of the roadside tavern in response to motor
travel has been contaminated by the desire to make
money first and allow the guest s comfort and pleasures to
become a mere secondary consideration.
Here I recall my father s sitting in the corridor down
which his guests must depart, his spacious pockets filled
with little flasks of choice liquor, with his own hands
bestowing these upon the men who slept under his roof,
not as an advertisement, not to secure their return thereto,
but because they had enabled him to discharge a duty
blest by the gods, for which he was duly thankful.
Happy picture of a bygone age in these United States,
and happy memory of a good man, best perhaps because
so genial a host, now gone to his reward a long generation
ago, having preserved into our own time the good and
ancient tradition so vividly set forth in this entertaining
volume.
WALLACE RICE.
been noted by travellers in every continent where taverns
had not yet been demanded by the numbers of sojourners.
The saqredness of the wanderer s goods and person has
been willingly conceded, even to the formation of a per
manent bond between the provider of bread and salt and
him who partakes thereof. May we not rightly assume,
therefore, that even when the inns of antiquity are shown
at their worst there were still countless hosts, respecters
of the gods and worshipful of the rites of guestship, who
welcomed the coming, rejoiced the staying, and sent good
luck with the parting guest?
But in modern days a more subtle danger threatens
the ancient spirit, however maintained through the ages.
The devil of industrialism has invaded the hotel, and even
the revival of the roadside tavern in response to motor
travel has been contaminated by the desire to make
money first and allow the guest s comfort and pleasures to
become a mere secondary consideration.
Here I recall my father s sitting in the corridor down
which his guests must depart, his spacious pockets filled
with little flasks of choice liquor, with his own hands
bestowing these upon the men who slept under his roof,
not as an advertisement, not to secure their return thereto,
but because they had enabled him to discharge a duty
blest by the gods, for which he was duly thankful.
Happy picture of a bygone age in these United States,
and happy memory of a good man, best perhaps because
so genial a host, now gone to his reward a long generation
ago, having preserved into our own time the good and
ancient tradition so vividly set forth in this entertaining
volume.
WALLACE RICE.
THE INNS OF GREECE & ROME
CHAPTER I.
Inns and Taverns of Antiquity A Nation s Inns an index to its
roads and methods of transportation Inns of the great routes of Egypt
Beer a National beverage Vintage Wines in the time of Rameses
Tavern Songs Drinking and conviviality among students Method of
making wine Cabarets of Alexandria Athenaeus the glutton
Drunkenness among women Juvenal s accounts of the debaucheries of
the Egyptians.
One whose habits of mind prompt him to seek diver
sion amongst company more select than that brought
together by chance in some inn or tavern may deem such
a subject unworthy of consideration and may even find
fault with the writer for presuming to invite him upon
such a ramble, for it will be a ramble, and along the little
known byways of culture. In fact, a history of hospitality
can not be less than a contribution to the most interesting
chapter in anthropology: the chapter which deals with
Survivals in Culture. Let us then remind him of the
cellar of the Auerbachs, and the legends which have grown
up around it: the ventas and posadas of the Spain of
Cervantes, of many an enchanting passage in the Letters
of James Howell, of the Wild Boar s Head kept by Mrs.
Hurtig, in Eastcheap, of the Tabard Inne of Chaucer, and
last, but not least, of the Mermaid Tavern, where Ben
Jonson gained inspiration for much of his finest work!
The inns and taverns of antiquity were not lacking in
scenes which deserve to be reanimated and preserved. It
is true that such establishments occupied a lowly station
i
THE INNS OF
~ i MI ii u*~m-*mm~m*
and that the calling of the innkeeper was looked down
upon, and even despised, but fortunately, the subject has
an interest aside from the poetic, an interest which justifies
the most minute treatment in detail. The nature of this
interest will begin to make itself felt when we give thought
to our inns and palatial hotels and the conditions which
brought about such development. The institutions of our
day fill a double purpose; they minister to the comforts
and needs of their patrons, and they cater to the amuse
ment and social needs of the public. That interchange of
ideas which, more than any other factor, has refined and
broadened civilization, and contributed to refinement in
taste and standards of comfort, has its origin in three
primary causes: wars of conquest, travel, and commerce,
and the last named has contributed more than the other
two. The greatest progress in the modern world has been
made in the direction of overcoming space, whether by
telephone, airplane, ocean greyhound, or luxurious trans
continental trains, and the impetus behind all these is
commerce.
If, then, we examine the public houses of the ancients
with closer attention, is it not in fact the same as though
we were to dissect their civilization for purposes of con
trast with our own?
Are not a nation s inns an index to its roads and
methods of transportation, as well as a true reflection of
the national character?
With this in mind we shall collect the scattered notices
upon the subject and attempt to bring it together into a
connected whole. For the present, we shall devote our
principal efforts to the inns and taverns of Egypt, the
Levant, Greece, and Rome; though in the future we hope
to pursue the subject through the Dark Ages, and deal
with the refectories and monastic orders which took upon
themselves the burden which a dying commerce could no
GREECE & ROME S
longer support. The growth of gilds in France, Italy, the
Low Countries, and England slowly rehabilitated com
merce and the monastic orders were gradually relieved of
their burden as we reach the age of Chaucer.
With the most primitive ages we have no concern, for
where traffic and commerce do not exist, where individuals
do not travel, and the wild hordes wandering in search of
spoil and pasturage are the only wayfarers, there is no
necessity for an inn.
The Heroic Age, however, furnishes us with an
entirely different picture and one infinitely more beautiful
and agreeable. Following an age of chaotic social rela
tions we are confronted with a rude culture which finds its
closest parallel in the writings of the Old Testament. It
has been well said that the two great literary works which
bear the closest resemblance to one another are the works
of Homer and the Old Testament. This, on its face, is a
startling assertion, but a little reflection will make the
conviction stronger. These two collections of writings are
emphatically the productions of two opposed civilizations
which had progressed to about the same stage of develop
ment. In both we have wars and rapine; both are largely
poetic and poetry is older than prose as a literary medium.
In both we find a realistic description of practically the
entire circle of life down to its smallest details: might
begins to yield the palm to wisdom and guile, but hos
pitality is still a duty and an obligation. Even in that age
individual traveling was by no means common. Save in
the instances of Egypt, Tyre, and Sidon, and probably
Cnossos, commercial intercourse was of little importance:
it was carried on almost exclusively upon the water and at
its best was but little removed from piracy. The urge to
go out into the world to gain knowledge, that divine
dissatisfaction from which all progress comes and which,
in the ages to follow, was to inspire the works of Herodotus
4 THE INNS OF
and Rutilius, had not yet awakened. A few, perhaps,
visited relatives or friends living near at hand, or some
vagrant may have fled from the scene of his crime of
passion. Yet even in that age, and before it, we know of
the sack of Cnossos, and read of the wanderings of
Ulysses. He, however, was an unwilling traveler and was
driven by powers beyond his control.
In the early heroic age there were no special establish
ments designed to profit from the necessities of strangers.
An arrangement nobler and more beautiful served as a
substitute, and a general hospitality, founded upon
religion, custom, and obligation, was practised.
Taking our subject in order, we will begin with Egypt,
whose monuments have preserved more than one scene in
wineshop and tavern, and whose festivals are the very
stuff of which the purest hospitality (purissimae impur-
itatis) was made.
"No people/* says Brugsch, in his Historie d Egypt,
" could be gayer, more lively, or of more childish sim
plicity, than those old Egyptians who loved life with all
their hearts and found the deepest joy in their very
existence* Everybody was fond of enjoyment, sang,
drank, danced, and made excursions into the country."
"They loved the flowing cup when work was done,"
remarks Arnold, in his History of Beer and Brewing, "and
perhaps, sometimes, when work was not yet done. Thus
the hieroglyphics tell us, and thus, too, do their ancient
literature, their imperishable monuments, their inscrip
tions, their papyri, nay, even their temples and their
tombs. 3 *
"Beer was the national beverage of the Egyptians, and
it was perhaps with them first of all, prior to the Baby
lonians and Assyrians, that barley was grown and beer
made. Beer was as intimately interwoven with Egyptian
life as it is with that of any modern European country
GREECE & ROME
where the vine is not grown in abundance. Four thousand
years ago the Egyptian peasant and landowner drank it,
as did the craftsman, the soldier, the merchant, the priest,
and the king. They brewed beer and they drank beer
down to the very last of the Pharaohs, under the
Ptolemies, as under the Roman rule. Even today, the
poverty-stricken fellah drinks his old fashioned Egyptian
beer, just as his ancestors did under Senefru or Thothmes,
or Rameses, and he is still bearing the same yoke they did,
thousands of years ago, and as much imposed upon and as
much tyrannized over as they were. But he does not
alone DRINK his beer in the same fashion, HE ALSO MAKES
IT IN THE SAME WAT*"
Maspero, in his "Sketch from Life in an Ancient
Egyptian City/ 5 has combined and condensed an immense
amount of material from original sources into a connected
and, lucid description which we hasten to quote:
The scene is probably laid in some Egyptian city of
the New Empire, circa 1300 B. C., in the time of Rameses
IL In our wanderings through the streets of this city we
come at length to a beer-house or tavern. , <^*~ - .
"The reception-room has been freshly lime washed,"
says Maspero. "It is furnished with mats, stools, and
armchairs, upon which the habitual customers sit side by
side, fraternally drinking beer, wine, palm brandy (shodu),
cooked and perfumed liquors, which would probably seem
detestable to us, but for which the Egyptians display a
strong taste. The wine is preserved in large amphorae,
pitched outside, and closed with a wooden or clay stopper,
over which some mud is laid, painted blue and then
stamped with the name of the owner or the reigning
Pharaoh. An inscription in ink, traced upon the jar,
indicates the origin and the exact date of the wine: THE
YEAE XXIII, IMPORTED WINE; THE YEAR XIX, WINE OF
BOUTO, and so on.
6 THE INNS OF
"There is wine of every variety, white and red; wine
from Mareotis, wine from Pelusium, wine of the Star of
Horus, Master of Heaven, native growths from the oases,
wines of Syene, without counting the wines of Ethiopia,
nor the golden wines which the Phoenician galleys bring
from Syria.
"Beer has always been the favorite beverage of Ihe
people. It is made in a mash-tub of barley steeped in
water, and raised by fermented crumbs of bread. When
freshly made it is soft and pleasant to the taste, but it is
easily disturbed and soon turns sour. Most of the
vinegar used in Egypt is made from beer. This defect is
obviated by adding an infusion of lupine (?) to the beer,
which gives it a certain bitterness and preserves it.
"Sweet beer, iron beer, sparkling beer, spiced beer, per
fumed beer . . . cold or hot, beer of thick sticky millet
like that prepared in Nubia and amongst the negroes of
the Upper Nile. The beer-houses contain stores of as
many varieties of beer as of different qualities of wine.
"If you enter, you are scarcely seated before a slave or
a maid-servant hastens forward and accosts you: * Drink
unto rapture, let it be a good day, listen to the conversa
tion of thy companions and enjoy thyself/ Every
moment the invitation is renewed: " Drink, do not turn
away, for I will not leave thee until thou hast drunk/
The formula changes, but the refrain is always the same
. . drink, drink, and again, drink. The regular cus
tomers do not hesitate to reply to these invitations by
jokes, usually of the most innocent kind: Come now,
bring me eighteen cups of wine with thine own hand. I
will drink till I am happy, and the mat under me is a good
straw bed upon which I can sleep myself sober. * (The
remarks of the drinkers are taken from a scene of a funeral
meal in the tomb of Ranni, at El-Keb. I have para
phrased them to make them intelligible to modern readers.)
VINTAGE EXPERTS
GREECE & ROME
They discuss together the different effects produced by
wine and beer. The wine enlivens and produces benevol
ence and tenderness; beer makes men dull, stupefies them,
and renders them liable to fall into brutal rages. A man
tipsy from wine falls on his face, but anyone intoxicated
by beer falls and lies on his back. The moralists reprove
the excesses, and cannot find words strong enough to ex
press the danger of them. "Wine first loosens the tongue
of man, even wresting from him dangerous words, and
afterwards it prostrates him, so that he is no longer
capable of defending his own interests. Do not, there
fore, forget thyself in breweries; be afraid that words may
come back to thee that thou hast uttered without knowing
that thou hast spoken. When at last thou fallest, thy
limbs failing thee, no one will help thee, thy boon com
panions will leave thee, saying: * beware of him, he is a
drunkard! Then, when thou art wanted for business,
thou art found prone upon the earth, like a little child.
Young men especially should avoid this shameful vice,
for beer destroys their souls. He that abandons himself
to drink is like an oar broken from its fastening, which no
longer obeys on either side; he is like a chapel without its
god, like a house without bread, in which the wall is
wavering and the beam shaking. The people that he
meets in the street turn away from him, for he throws
mud and hoots after them until the police interfere and
carry him away to regain his senses in prison."
Thus has Maspero given us an intimate picture of
Egyptian life under Rameses IE, enabling us to glance
back over the centuries.
We shall probably be greeted with song and laughter
in the next tavern we enter. The company will be jolly
and bent on festivities and both string and wind instru
ments will contribute to the occasion. While we are
catching up with the rest of the party and sampling the
8 THE INNS OF
stock in trade, singers will entertain us with something
like the following:
Let sweet odors and oils be placed for thy nostrils,
Wreaths of lotos flowers for thy limbs
And for the bosom of thy sister (mistress), dwelling in thy heart,
Sitting beside thee.
Let song and music be made before thee.
Cast behind thee all cares and mind thee of pleasure,
Till cometh the day when we draw towards the land
That loveth silence.*
The Horatian philosophy of Carpe Diem was thus not
original with the Augustan, Why should they not make
merry:
"Whether your term of life drags on in sorrow,
Or in some grassy nook you forget tomorrow,
Dallying and idling at your leisure
Wooing with Palernian your pleasure,
While Youth and Fortune grant you power,
While yet the Sisters threads endure. . . .
and the Egyptian, fatalist and almost Epicurean, withal,
goes on to say:
For no one can take away his goods with him,
Yea, no one returns again who has gone hence, f
Every now and then there is mention of students
private drinking bouts with doubtless all the con
comitants of a successful party, for it was not the
Egyptian custom to deprive the women of the social
indulgences in which the men took such delight. Abste
miousness was no part of the creed of Egyptian woman
hood, as is easily seen from tomb decorations, frescoes, con
temporary literature, and the like, and the gilded youth
of the day took its pleasures where it found them even as
*Duemichen, Hist. lose. II, 40.
fHatris 500 Pap. Maspero EtuA Egypt L
GRE E C E & ROME 9
our own today. In proof of this statement we have the
evidence of a letter written by some teacher or tutor to
his pupil who "did forsake his books/ 5 and "did wander
from street to street."
Thou art caught as thou dost climb upon walls,
And dost break the plank,
The people flee from thee,
And thou dost strike and wound them.***
Yes, even in that dark age the college boys were
enlightened enough to have acquired a taste for beer,
wine, palm brandy, or other ardent spirits : " every evening,
the smell of beer, the smell of beer (that) drives men
away/* Our rah-rah boy of long ago was also " instructed
how to sing to the flute, to give a monologue to the
accompaniment of the pipe, to intone the lyre, to sing to
the harp."
Another budding genius, who probably found the cost
of high living totally out of all proportion to the allowance
granted him by his father, is advised by that worthy man
" to content himself with two jugs of beer and three loaves
of bread."!
Nor are drinking and conviviality the only subjects
allied to hospitality upon which antiquity has com
mented* As there was a cause, so also was there an effect
and we learn quite a little about that famous "pulling of
the hair/* that morning-after-the-night-before feeling.
The Egyptians used a very simple and popular remedy to
cure it; a remedy which, since the discovery of the
bromide pick-me-up, has become obsolete in the so-called
western civilizations, but one which the writer has often
seen used when the guests of some Chinese mandarin were
a trifle heavy and lumpy in spots after undergoing a
*Pap. Anastasi, in Sd. Papyri
f Sallier Papyri.
10 THE INNS OF
course of sprouts at the august table. Athenaeus also
mentions the same specific, and the English translator of
his work has put the verses into English rhyme:
Last evening you were drinking deep,
So now your head aches, go to sleep;
Take some boiled cabbage, when you wake
And there s an end of your headache.
And, fortifying his position still further, he runs on,
"and Eubulus says, somewhere or other,"
Quick, wife! Some cabbage boil of virtues healing,
That I may rid me of this seedy feeling.
Some idea of the amount of wine and beer available in
Egypt (its population probably did not exceed some seven
and one-half millions) may be gained from the Great
Harris Papyrus, a document one hundred and thirty-
three feet in length, in which are recorded the endowments
of Rameses III, during a reign of about thirty-one years.
The amounts of wine and beer granted by him to the
temples were:
Jars of Wine 256,460
Jugs of Beer 466,303
The capacity of the beer jugs is not known to us, but,
judging by their bulk in proportion to the human figures
in the frescoes, they must have held more than one
gallon, and we thus arrive at the conclusion that the
average annual contribution of beer for sacrificial pur
poses was about fifteen thousand gallons, and, of wine,
probably about nine thousand five hundred gallons. Nor
should we assume that these beer and wine endowments
were in the form of a levy upon the people. They prob
ably came direct from the royal treasury and are set down
as regular expenses for the sacrificial fund. "There can
be no doubt that the department for the management of
GREECE & ROME 11
the royal domains, that is, in this case, the royal brewery,
made the beer/ *
From what has gone before we can infer that the
taverns of old Egypt were no less popular there than else
where, and we have the testimony of Strabo, the geo
grapher, to the conditions which in his day prevailed at
Canopus.
"They sail by this canal to Schedia," says mine author,
"to the great river, and to Canopus, but the first place at
which they arrive is Eleusis. This is a settlement near
Alexandreia and Nicopolis, and situated on the Canopic
Canal. It has houses of entertainment which command
beautiful views, and hither resort men and women who
are inclined to indulge in noisy revelry, a prelude to
Canopic life, and the dissolute manners of the people of
Canopus."f
Nor is this the only passage in which Strabo makes
mention of the taverns and cabarets of that joyous clime:
"But remarkable above everything else is the multi
tude of persons who resort to the public festivals, and
come from Alexandreia by the Canal. For day and night
there are crowds of men and women in boats, singing and
dancing without restraint, and with utmost licentiousness.
Others, at Canopus itself, keep hostelries, situated on the
banks of the Canal, which are well adapted for such kinds
of diversions and revelry." J
The theory of decantation as a preservative and
ripener was well known to the Egyptians, who taught it
to the Hebrews. According to Strabo the Mareotic
vintage was very highly esteemed after having ripened
and aged, the process being aided by decantation. The
Egyptians had several methods of pressing the grapes.
*Arnold, supra cit. p. 77.
fLib. XVH, Chap. I, No. 16.
{Lib. XVII, Chap. I, No. 17.
12 THE INNS OF
Sometimes they trod them under foot in stone troughs but
their more general practice seems to have been as follows:
they would weave an osier weir, enclose the grapes therein,
as though in a hammock of fine meshed net, and then have
recourse to torsion by means of bars to press the juice and
permit it to flow into a vessel placed to receive it.
Wilkerson has produced a bas-relief in which this process
is illustrated.
In the age of the Ptolemies, wine had come to be
regarded as one of the sources of wealth and one of the
glories of that sensual land. Athenaeus has transmitted
much information concerning the vintages, indicating
their respective claims to excellence, as, for example, their
color, their headiness, their excellence, their bouquet, taste,
and so on. That of Coptos is light and an aid to diges
tion, and was prescribed to patients with fevers. The
Mareotic was an excellent white wine, with an exquisite
bouquet, diuretic, and as it destroyed neither co-ordina
tion nor lucidity, it was little likely to give one that
morning-after-the-night-before feeling. Another there is
called by some Alexandrine the best, but the finest of
all was the wine which was produced on that tongue of
land between the sea and the lake, which was called the
Taeniotic, the ne plus ultra of the Egyptian wines, and
it was of a dark yellow color.
Athenaeus, always the glutton whom he professes to
be, omits, nevertheless, a number of vintages which ought
to be included. Far be it from us to reproach him for
having omitted to mention the wine of Libya, a detestable
beverage which the proletariat at Alexandria drank and
guzzled whenever anything but water or beer came its
way. " It is bad," says Strabo. " One is likely to discover
more sea water than wine in one of those casks, which,
along with their beer, is the drink of the commoners at
Alexandria. One is reminded of the smuggling conven-
GREECE & ROME 13
tions on the Cliina coast, when, if one were to substitute
counterfeit coin on the Chinese bootlegger who was good
enough to supply the needs of the enlisted personnel of the
Navy, his successor was certain to have as many bottles
of sea water as there were counterfeit coins in the original
order. And this, at five Mexican dollars per head, not
withstanding the peril of hauling such contraband cargo
up the side of a white ship with a white pack thread,
there was always the danger that some officious officer
might look overside and beat the bottle to its destination
before the prospective owner could cache it and himself.
But the elegant gastronomer and refined host and enter
tainer should not have failed to mention the Sebennytici
vini which were derived from the mixture and blending of
the juices of three different grapes, whose slips came from
three different parts of Greece, and which the gluttons at
Rome set such store by.
"The Sebennytici," says Pliny, "come from three
varieties of grapes called Thasian, Oethalus, and Peuce."
It would only be just, then, should Athenaeus, in speaking
of the wine that abounded under the name of Arsinoite,
and which came from the oasis of that name, to pay
tribute to it. Lastly, Athenaeus, in editing his list of the
wines of Egypt, should not have passed over in silence the
wine of Meroe, which is often confounded with Mareotic,
its pale rival, more especially as Lucan, in a passage no
less bombastic than eloquent, has taken the trouble to
distinguish between these two exquisite vintages. The
passage occurs in his description of the banquet of Caesar
and Cleopatra, and is one of the finer points in Egyptian
wine making:
"Many birds and wild beasts did they set before them,
the Gods of Egypt; and crystal supplied the water of the
Nile for their hands, and capacious bowls studded with
gems received the wine, but not of the grape of Mareotis,
14 THE INNS OF
but noble Falernian, to which, in a few years, Meroe had
imparted maturity, compelling it, otherwise full of
maturity, to ferment."*
The immoderate thirst of the drunkards of Egypt
could not have been assuaged by anything short of that
abundance of liquors of exquisite savor, nor could the
unbridled passion for drunkenness which the women
manifested have been sated otherwise. The bas-reliefs and
tombs furnish peremptory evidence of this devouring
passion, and, among a host, one illustration is often cited,
in which two women are represented, one of them paying
her dues to nature, being full of drink, while the other
holds her head and renders her kind service. The orgies
of Memphis and Alexandreia have been perpetuated by
pictorial art as well as by literature, and the scenes in
Pierre Louys* Aphrodite are by no means an exaggeration.
On the contrary, they are well within the limits of art and
are, if anything, less than realistic. A slave, holding a
basin whilst her mistress discharges the bile from a
stomach which can endure no more, is also an illustration
well known to the Egyptologist, and in still another bas-
relief we see two slaves supporting their master, who is
dead drunk, on his precarious voyage home from the com-
messatio. Joseph, therefore, had reason on his side when
he remarked that of all people in the world, the Egyptians
were the most debauched, and there is little of hyperbole
in the statements of Strabo, quoted above, or in the
terrible passage from Juvenal which follows. A passage
that seethes with energy and contempt, with sarcasm and
satire, a banquet at Tentyra or Canopus or Ombi, the
brawling and fighting which are the inevitable sequelae,
more especially when the same city limits contained the
revelers and their enemies. The passage occurs in Satire
XV, lines 33 to 83.
*Pharsalia, Lib. X,
GREECE & ROME 15
"Between the neighboring towns of Ombi and Tentyra
there burns an ancient and long cherished feud and
undying hatred, whose wounds are not to be healed.
Each people is filled with fury against the other because
each hates his neighbors gods, deeming that none can be
held as deities save its own. So when one of these peoples
held a feast, the chiefs and leaders of their enemies
thought good to seize the occasion, so that their foe might
not enjoy a glad and merry day, with the delight of grand
banquets, with tables set out at every temple and every
crossroad, and with night-long feasts, and with couches
spread all day and all night, and sometimes discovered by
the sun on the seventh morn" Egypt doubtless is a rude
country, but in indulgence, so far as I myself have noted,
its barbarous rabble yields not to the ill-famed Canopus.
Victory, too, would be easy, it was thought, over men
steeped in wine, stuttering and stumbling in their cups.
On the one side were men dancing to a swarthy piper,
with unguents, such as they were, and flowers and chaplets
on their heads; on the other side a ravenous hate. First
come loud words as preludes to the fray; these serve as a
trumpet to arouse their hot passions; then, shout answer
ing shout, they charge. Bare hands do the fell work of
war. Scarce a cheek is left without a gash; scarce one
nose, if any, comes out of the battle unbroken. Through
all the ranks might be seen battered faces, and features
other than they were; bones gaping through torn cheeks,
and fists dripping with blood from eyes. Yet the com
batants deem themselves at play and waging a boyish
warfare because there are no corpses to trample. What
avails a mob of so many thousand warriors if no lives be
lost? So, fiercer and fiercer grows the fight; now they
search the ground for stones, the natural weapons of civic
strife, and hurl them with bended arms against the foe;
not such stones as Turnus or Ajax flung, or like that with
16 THE INNS OF
which the son of Tydeus struck Aeneas on the hip, but
such as may be cast by hands unlike to theirs, and born in
these days of ours. For even in Homer s day the race of
man was on the wane; earth now produces nothing but
weak and wicked men that provoke such gods as see them
to laughter and loathing.
"To come back from our digression, the one side, rein
forced, boldly draws the sword, and attacks with a
shower of arrows; the dwellers in the shady palm groves
of the neighboring Tentyra turn their backs in headlong
flight before the Ombite charge. Hereupon, one of them,
overafraid and hurrying, tripped and was caught; the
conquering host cut up his body into scraps and morsels,
that one dead man might suffice for everyone, and
devoured it, bones and all. There was no stewing of it in
boiling pots, no roasting upon spits so slow and tedious
they thought it to wait for a fire that they contented
themselves with the corpse uncooked. 5 *
Wine, however, not only intervened in the affairs of
the Egyptians and Hebrews, Phoenicians and Assyrians,
to arouse them to violence and cause such bloody affairs
as that described above, it also played an important part
in the settlement of disputes and business difficulties
everywhere. It was one of the principal sinews of com
merce and credit through all antiquity, and, incidentally,
the one means by which a contract was sometimes
concluded. Among the Romans, and among our own
forefathers of the Middle Ages, no affair of importance
was disposed of without taking a drink upon it, and it i
so today, in the countries still fortunate enough to be free
from the^ propaganda of zealots and bigoted reformers,
whether it be the little intrigue of some artizan or the
vital concern of some cabinet minister, whether the pledge
be red zinfandel or some rare brandy, the ratification
(rata fiat) is never complete without this last formality.
GREECE & ROME 17
And it was the same amongst the Phoenicians, and after
them with the Hebrews, for they derived many of their
business usages from the merchant princes of Tyre and
Sidon. When a bargain had been struck, and a satis
factory understanding reached they shook hands, and
ordered a drink called "Chopen," that is to say, meta
phorically, the wine of the land, to drink to celebrate the
treaty. The French word chopine is said to have come
from this custom. It is not impossible, but it is certainly
very ingenious, if true, or, in our newspaper parlance,
interesting if true.
We have said above that beer was the drink most in
demand in Egypt, and Diodorus Siculus has credited
Osiris with the invention of it. c< Wherever a country did
not permit the culture of the vine, there he (Osiris)
taught the people how to brew the beverage which is
made of barley, and which is not greatly inferior to wine
in odor and potency. 55 *
18 THEINNSOF
CHAPTER EL
Assyrian and Babylonian inns conducted by women Laws reg
ulating inns Drinking led to most unbridled extremities Entire tity
of Nineveh in different degrees of intoxication Aromatic wines
Hebrew conception of hospitality The inn at Bethlehem where Joseph
and Mary were forced to take skelter in the stable in which Jesus was
lorn Donovan s description of the caravanseraei at Kuchan.
In closing our account of the professional hospitality
amongst the Egyptians we should bear in mind that they
regarded the affairs of everyday life, whatever their tenor,
as of little importance; on the other hand, they lavished
untold wealth and meticulous care upon their tombs as
the places of eternal silence and the sanctuaries to which
they withdrew themselves to sleep out time. In these
tombs the character of the Egyptian, king or noble, was
accurately mirrored, and a sense of dignity, aloof and
impersonal, was probably as deeply imbedded in his
character as the desire for life itself.
Our information as to Assyrian and Babylonian inns
and taverns is necessarily limited because of the fact that
their ruins were buried deep below the surface of the coun
try as it is today. Until a relatively recent period we
knew little of their records and experienced the greatest
difficulty in deciphering such of their inscriptions as had
come to light. Now, however, clay tablets, sherds, and
tiles have begun to give up their information and the pic
ture is becoming more and more distinct, though they are
still far from complete* In the code of Hammurabi (B, C.
circa 2225) we have a few facts from which we may infer
with reasonable certainty that wine and beer were vended
and drunk upon the premises. The ownership of such
beer-houses, wine-shops, or taverns, as were conducted in
GREECE & ROME 19
Nineveh and Babylon seems to have been vested in the
hands of big merchant princes who installed women as
managers, and these women actually conducted the
resorts. Payment seems to have been made in grain, the
price of which was fixed by statute. Patrons were given
credit and the score was paid after the harvest. Women
conducting such places were forbidden by law to demand
money, as this might have caused the customer em
barrassment or inconvenience, and the establishment
would also have profited if, after the harvest, there had
been a fall in the price of grain. Each evasion or con
travention of this law was punishable with death. The
paragraphs vital to our subject follow:
No. 108. If any of the wine-selling women have not
accepted grain in lieu of money, but have
insisted upon money in ordinary coin, and
thus have assisted in lowering the price of
drink and grain, she shall be summoned
and thrown into the water.
No. 109. If rebels have assembled in the house of a
wine-selling woman, and she has not seized
upon them and led them to the fortress,
she has forfeited her life.
No. 110. If a priestess who does not reside in the
convent have opened a dram shop, or if she
have entered there with the purpose of
drinking, she shall be burned.
It is of interest to note that the huge block upon
which the laws were inscribed had been erected in the
temple at Esagil, which was the temple of Bel Merodach,
in Babylon. It was discovered in 1901-2 by De Morgan,
French archaeologist, and a Dominican monk named
Scheil, in the acropolis at Susa. Evidently it had been re
moved from Babylon by the Elamites. Its contents
prove an astonishing degree of civilization in early Baby-
20 THE INNS OF
Ion and only recently it was invoked as a precedent by a
jurist in St. Louis, Missouri.
In addition to the native products, such, for example,
as the wines made from palms and dates, caravans also
transported the choice vintages of neighboring countries.
Drinking was almost universal. Royal banquets were
always heavily provided with wine, as both Daniel and
Curtius Rufus testify, and the daily fare of the upper
classes would have been ill esteemed without the benign
and cheering influence of the spirit of the grape. In the
houses of the wealthy, fruit juices were fermented and
mead and cordials were common. Curtius Rufus, in his
history of Alexander the Great, states that in Babylon
drinking was an out and out vice, and that in many
instances it was carried to the most unbridled extremes
and led to excesses such as even the court of Rome knew
but infrequently.
As to Assyria, Maspero has drawn the following
picture from original sources:
"The Assyrian is sober in ordinary life, but he does
not know how to stop if he once allows himself any
excess. Wines of Assyria and Chaldaea, wines from Elam,
wine from Syria and Phoenicia, wines from Egypt,
amphorae and skins are emptied as soon as opened, with
out visibly quenching the universal thirst. After one or
two days no brain is strong enough to resist it, and
Nineveh presents the extraordinary spectacle of an entire
city in different degrees of intoxication. When the
festival is over several days are required before it resumes
its usual aspect* Whilst the people are becoming tipsy
outside, Assurbanipal feasts the leading chiefs and the
ministers of state within the palace. They are seated on
double chairs, two on each side of a small table, face to
face. The chairs are high, without any backs or footstool
upon which the guests can rest either elbows or feet; the
GREECE & ROME 21
honor of dining with, the king must always be paid for
with some fatigue.
"The tables are covered with fringed cloths, upon
which the dishes are placed by the slaves. Unlike the
common people, the nobles eat little, so that few dishes of
meats are placed before them, but cakes and fruits of
different kinds; grapes, dates, apples, pears, and figs are
brought in continued relays by long lines of slaves.
"On the other hand, they drank a great deal with
more refinement, perhaps, than the common people, but
with greater avidity. Upon this occasion, the king has
distributed the most precious vases in his treasury, cups
of gold and silver, the majority of them moulded or
chased in the form of a lion s head. Many of them were
formerly sacred vessels which the priests of vanquished
nations used in their sacrifices; some are from Babylon
or Carchemish, some were taken from Tyre or Memphis,
whilst others belonged to the temples at Samaria and
Jerusalem. By using them for a profane occasion,
the Assyrians insult the gods to whose service they be
long, so that to the pleasure of drinking is added that
of humiliating the foreign deities in the sight of Assur
whom they resisted.
"The wines, even the most delicate, are not drunk in
their natural state; they are mixed with aromatics and
various drugs, which give them a delicious flavor and add
tenfold to their strength. This operation is performed in
the hall, under the eyes of the revelers. An eunuch,
standing before the table, pounds in a stone mortar the
intoxicating essences, which he moistens from time to
time with some substgoice. His comrades have poured
the contents of the amphorae into immense bowls of
chased silver, which reach to their chests. As soon as the
perfumed paste is ready they put some of it into each bowl
and carefully dissolve it. The cup-bearers bring the cups,
22 THE INNS OF
draw out the wine, and serve the guests. Even the
sentinels at the doors receive their share, and, standing
spear or club in hand, pledge each other as they mount
guard. The only persons who do not drink, or who drink
very little, through the necessity of retaining their
sobriety, are the eunuchs who stand behind the guests
to fan them the servants, and the musicians/*
The ancient Hebrew conception of hospitality was
based upon tenets as pure as those of Menelaus, though in
later times the right was not binding upon them unless
the wayfarer was of their own people.
The place where Zipporah and her son stopped when
Moses returned to Egypt may well have been one of the
inns along the road between Egypt and the northeastern
countries. Owing to the fact that the Hebrews made no
distinction between a harlot and an hostess, we cannot be
certain that Bahab did not conduct an inn rather than a
house of ill fame. In any case, the spies of Joshua found
shelter under her roof and she received her reward. The
same may be said of the harlot at Gaza whose hospitality
Samson shared; but one episode there is which admits of
no double meaning; I refer to the return of the sons of
Jacob from Egypt. They stopped at an inn and opened
their sacks to give fodder to their sumpter mules. One is
also impressed with the fact that they carried supplies for
the return journey. Such places differed little from the
khans of present day Asia; establishments where there
was shelter for man and beast but where it was necessary
to provide supplies. On the second journey the brothers
received from the ruler of Egypt an abundance of supplies
and a train of mules and wagons as well. One well
furnished with necessities and perhaps a few comforts was
confronted, in these towns of Judaea, with some difficulty
if he had no friends or acquaintances, and often was com
pelled to go into camp in the public place, like a modern
GREECE & ROME 23
Bedouin; proof positive that in the Hebrew villages there
was often no shelter except that of the shrine of the oldest
of professions.
When the angels arrived at Sodom they would have
remained in the streets had not Lot pressed his kindly
hospitality upon them, which probably meant that there
was no inn to which they could apply.
The Levite of Ephraim, a stranger at Gaba, had gone
into camp in the public place with his women, his servant,
and his beasts of burden; the latter had received their
fodder and he was even then getting ready to serve
supper, when an old man, a fellow countryman, came to
offer, in his own house, a hospitality which was accepted
because of the common tie between them.
One can still see in the Jewish villages the open places
where travelers pitch their tents, those spaces in the khans
where the caravans still find shelter, and conditions today
differ little from those of the days of Joseph. The khans
are, generally speaking, built within the villages, whereas
the enormous caravanserais are constructed along the
roads and at distances of about eight miles from each
other. Some described by O Donovan are enormous and
the discomfort which they offer is only exceeded by their
size.
It is in the khans, however, that we find the nearest
approach to the shelters which, in the times of Jacob,
were to be found along the roads leading from Egypt;
shelters which the Latin translators of the Holy Writ have
probably rendered erroneously by the term deversorium,
and the bleak desolation and utter lack of commissary are
eloquent commentary upon the wisdom which prompted
the sons of Jacob to prevent themselves from being placed
at the mercy of those conducting such places, more
especially where they were otherwise unknown and
friendless.
24 THE INNS OF
The inn at Bethlehem where Joseph and Mary were
forced to take such shelter as they could find in the face
of the emergency which confronted the expectant mother
was one of the khans such as are still the rule in those
regions. The crowd of travelers, caravan hucksters,
which had already arrived, left not even a corner for the
weary pair, and they were forced to find such comfort as
they could in the stable. There the mother gave birth to
Him who was thereafter to be the Saviour of all humanity;
she wrapped Him in swaddling clothes and laid Him in
the manger because there was no room in the inn.
If the inns were by no means numerous in the Hebrew
countries, the taverns were not more so, and an exhaustive
analysis of the Holy Writ will produce no allusion to a
cabaret, and this, notwithstanding the fact that much
wine was consumed and that the Hebrews also knew how
to brew beer. In addition to the native vintages, and
some of them were of the finest, wine was imported from
Phoenicia and from Egypt, and, later on, from the Greek
Archipelago and Ionia.
The promised land which lay at the end of the long
exodus from Egypt was a land of i1V and of honey, a
land of wine and of plenty. The grape and the pome
granate flourished, and the wines of Engeddi, Carmel,
and Gelboa were famous, although not produced in suffi
cient quantities to meet the demand, and pomegranate
wine and various artificial products were made.
Before quitting the subject of Levantine hospitality,
we wish to introduce the readers to two pictures which, it
is hoped, will enable the mind to visualize both sides of
the subject, the sordid and the beautiful. For this
purpose we quote O Donovan s description of the caravan
serai at Kuchan, as he found it in the latter part of the
nineteenth century. The quotation is apt because the
conditions he describes are in no way different from those
GREECE & ROME 25
which beset travelers in pre-classical ages, in the Levant,
and could with equal propriety be attributed either to
Persia or Palestine.
"After some experience of Kuchan, and especially of
its caravanserai, I felt the strongest desire to get away
from it. Of all the wretched localities of this wretched
East, it is one of the worst I have been in. To people at
a distance, the petty miseries one undergoes in such a
place may seem more laughable than otherwise; there
they do not at all tend to excite hilarity in the sufferer.
For four days and nights at a stretch I did not enjoy ten
minutes* unbroken rest. All day long one s hands were
in perpetual motion, trying to defend one s face and neck
against the pertinacious attacks of filthy blue-bottles, or
brushing ants or various other insects off one s hands and
paper. With all this extra movement, each word I wrote
occupied me nearly a minute. Dinner involved a per
petual battle with creeping things, and was a misery that
seldom tempted one s appetite. As for the time spent
on the top of the house, lying on a mat, and which it
would be a mockery to call bed-time, it would be difficult
to say whether it or the daylight hours were the more
fraught with torment. Every ten minutes it was neces
sary to follow the example of the people lying around,
and to rise and shake the mat furiously, in order to get
rid, for a brief space, of the crowds of gigantic black fleas
which I could hear dancing around, and still more dis
tinctly feel. The impossibilities of repose, and the con
tinual irritation produced by insects, brought on a kind
of hectic fever which deprived me of all desire to eat.
All night long three or four scores of donkeys brayed in
chorus; vicious horses screamed and quarrelled, and
hundreds of jackals and dogs rivalled each other in mak
ing night hideous. After sunset the human inhabitants
of the caravanserai mounted to the roof, and sat there in
THE INNS OF
^ ^M ^ BMB^B BMHM
scanty garments, smoking their kaliouns, and talking or
singing until long after midnight."
In contrast to this dreary picture we have O Dono-
van s tribute to a comfortable hotel in Teheran. It is
worthy of notice that there were and are certain estab
lishments in Ispahan and other centers which have a
charm scarcely to be found elsewhere except in some
secluded garden in Seville or in the private grounds of one
of the smaller potentates of the Asiatic tropics. The
Caf6 de Roses, the Caf 6 du Fleuve, the caf 6 de la Porte-
du-Salut, with its sycamores, happy patrons and servants,
lovely gardens and artificial waterfalls, has all the en
chanting and haunting charm of a half remembered
dream in which complete rest and relaxation fade slowly
into oblivion only to awaken to a reality that becomes
more haunting as it is better understood. Well did the
philosopher remark that East is East and West is West
and never the twain shall meet.
GREECE & ROME 27
CHAPTER m.
The Lydians established the first inns and taverns (?}The Greeks
of the Heroic Age knew not taverns nor inns, but practised the highest
standards of hospitality Lesches, places of gossip, preceding inns
Pausanias s description of two casinos in Athens and Sparta.
Herodotus, who, as he is better understood, will be
better appreciated, and who generally attempts to get to
the root of a matter, would place the origin of inns among
a people among whom he saw them and had experience
with them for the first time, and he therefore attributes to
the Lydians the establishment of the first inns and
taverns. In those primitive times, however, the truth
would be difficult to arrive at, if not utterly impossible,
and we shall not contradict his statement; nevertheless,
we doubt it, and we have many times asked ourselves why
the Lydians and no other people should have conceived
such an idea. It is true that they were jolly, light hearted,
and passionately fond of amusement. Had that not been
the case they would never have fallen so rapidly into a
state of decadence after the conquest of Sardi by Cyrus,
nor could they have taken so light a view of the captivity
and humiliation of Croesus. And Polydore Virgil has
defended his statement with a singular pleasantry and
brilliance, on the ground that the thing is very natural.
The Lydians, says he, invented games and they ought
therefore to have been the first to conceive the idea of a
tavern, and to open establishments, places, as he remarks,
where games and gambling would always be held in great
favor: ."quippe tale opus in cauponis maxime semper
fervet." Larcher, the great French translator of Herod
otus, is by no means agreeable to this. He does not accept
28 THE INNS OF
in that sense the word kapelos, employed by Herodotus,
and he is caustically critical of the translators of Herod
otus who have rendered that expression by the Latin term
caupona. According to him, the term of Herodotus
should be taken in the sense of retailer, retail tradesman,
and thus does he everywhere render it. He cites a great
number of passages where kapelos, in effect, is used in the
sense in which he maintains it should be taken, notably a
phrase in Plato where it is said that "all commerce
between towns other than bartering is called kapelican"
but with all the evidence he has cited, there is still room
for disagreement and an opinion to the contrary may be
maintained without any great difficulty. Scholarly
candor, however, compels us to admit that, notwithstand
ing the various Latin versions of Herodotus, and even the
evidence of Polydore Virgil, the word kapelos can be
taken in a double sense, i.e*, cabaret keeper and merchant.
And this legend upon a sign could only have been embar
rassing to a stranger in a Greek town, if he was searching
for an inn and not for a retailing establishment. The
habit of cheating, which from the earliest times has been
inherent in the two callings, would be a complicating
factor in the affair, and to do justice to such a situation
one should give still a third meaning to the term kapelos"
-i.e., that of pilfering or obtaining under false pretensions:
and the verb kapeleuein is no less elastic in the meanings
which it may convey, yet notwithstanding the various
innuendoes which it conveys, in spite of the various shades
of meaning which it takes on in different constructions,
one well acquainted with the genius of the Greek tongue
will unerringly arrive at the proper sense, and should the
stranger seek a wme-shop he had but to ask where he
could find an oinopoles; were he in search of lodgings, he
asked the location of a panddokos or a katagogos, but not
withstanding all his care and precaution, he would find
GREECE & ROME 29
himself in the presence of the kapelos whether he patron
ized the one or the other; and, in addition, he did well to
be on his guard against deception which often presented
itself in a guise as lovely as it was sweetly predacious.
The Greeks of the Heroic age were unacquainted with the
plagues which beset the ages in which inns and taverns
flourished. At that time there was literally no such thing
among them as professional hospitality, maintained for
profit. Each and every stranger had the right of sanctu
ary and asylum; every wayfarer, as though under the
protection of Zeus Xenios himself, was sure to find a host.
After the feast, a libation in honor of the god of hospitality
was poured upon the hospitable table, the protector of
strangers was honored, and the guest was then on even
terms with the host who entertained him. Pomp and
pageantry made not the slightest difference in the quality
of the welcome; a guest might arrive with a baggage train
of mules and slaves, or he might come as unostentatiously
as Orestes, in the Coephores, with a lean scrip, and leaning
upon a staff; he was a stranger, and sanctuary was his by
right. "At the voice of the stranger/ 5 eloquently remarks
Barthelemy, "all gates were opened, all his needs were
met, and, as a still more beautiful tribute to the homage
thus rendered to humanity, the host was not informed of
the state and birth of a guest until after the latter had
satisfied his necessities."
One phase of hospitality there was, in the Heroic Age,
which placed it far above the standards practiced by the
Hebrews, at least in the later ages of their history, and the
only examples which can be cited to compare with this
Greek standard are those of Abraham and Lot. To the
Greek, it made not the slightest difference whether his
guest was a Dorian or an Ionian, a Locrian, a Corcyrian,
or an Attican, it made no difference whether he was even
of Greek stock, he was entitled to food and shelter, and
30 THE INNS OF
also to protection while under his host s roof* The
Hebrew, in the later periods of his history, while always
hospitable, confined his charity and entertainment to
members of his own race, or to those closely allied to it.
The unlimited scope of Hellene hospitality will be better
understood after a thorough perusal of Homer. Let us
then attempt a description of the age in which he is said
to have lived, and perhaps we shall better understand the
entertainment of Telemachus by Menelaus, which is the
earliest and one of the finest examples of the hospitality
with which we are concerned. We need but cast a glance
at this cheerful, well contented, happy Homeric world to
be convinced that there was anything but a lack of social
amusement. At that time the cultus itself was a series of
light hearted entertainments, beautified by dances, sing
ing, and joyous barbecues and banquets. In addition to
this, the council of the nobles, the court of the monarch,
and the assembly of the people, were, to all practical pur
poses, as much social as political or commercial, and their
debates, often acrimonious and generally entertaining,
with their cutting and thrusting, were entertaining to the
highest degree, and the innumerable special celebrations
and religious fetes in the houses of the king and the nobles
added still more to the variety and richness of contem
porary life. After the banquet, virile youth hastened to
-the palaestra to engage in athletic sports and match their
strength and skill against one another in a physical com
petition beneficial to both body and character alike.
From this custom the finest artistic sense of all time was
evolved. The elders looked on and decided the issues in
accordance with the merits of the contestants, and the
Homeric age produced few weaklings, or, rather, few
survived, which is not a left-handed compliment to later
and supposedly better times. Then followed a wonderful
old folk dance of lovely damsels and armed epheboi, such
BRINGING IN A COURSE
GREECE & ROME 31
as are sometimes seen on the finer pottery of the time, a
dance which was symbolical of life itself, and Dryden, in
one little line, has caught the very spirit of that dance:
"None but the brave deserve the fair!"
Happy times, in that fairy-tale age of pure gold, when
man at his best was "knee deep in June, 55 when he led a
healthy, vigorous life, uncontaminated at its source by a
seething commercialism destined to devour itself and
everything it touched; when Advertising, its crafty and
specious spokesman, had not educated Appetite or tutored
Desire. What Horace wrote as his conception of the ideal
condition for man might be applied with equal propriety
to that age:
Who covets much will ever want,
But happy he on whom the gods bestow
With sparing hand, enough, and grant
Him health, and industry to keep him so.
How do the majority of our social pleasures compare
with these simple and healthy amusements? Are they as
good, as constructive? Are they not too refined? Will
not such a trend produce eventually a race of mollycoddles
and cuddling moths if carried to its end ? Let us note that
in building the stadia at the various universities we are
getting in tune with the ancient Greek ideal of robust
health and the physical beauty which crowns it. And we
shall have less of ennui, and of political indifference with
which to reproach demagogues, as a result.
The first public institutions in Greece which can with
any justice be compared with our inns and taverns, the
so-called kschai, are, in all probability, a development
arising at the close of the Heroic age. In the age which
followed they were adapted to the needs of the Ionic
cities, and larger towns, especially Athens. They were
also known to Doric Greece, but to a much less degree.
32 THE INNS OF
The first mention of these leschai is found in Homer in
that passage of the Odyssey in which an empty-headed
maidservant attempts to scold Odysseus, disguised in
beggar s rags, out of his own house:*
"Wretched guest" (Melantho, Penelope s adopted
ward, is speaking), "surely thou art some brain-struck man,
seeing that thou dost not choose to go and sleep at a
smithy, or at some PLACE OF COMMON BESORT, but here
thou pratest much and boldly among many lords and hast
no fear at heart. Verily, wine has got about thy wits, or
perchance thou art always of this mind, and so thou dost
babble idly. Art thou beside thyself for joy, because thou
hast beaten the beggar Irus ? Take heed lest a better man
than Irus rise up presently against thee, to lay his mighty
hands about thy head and bedabble thee in blood, and
send thee hence from the house."*
This is the only Homeric poem which contains such
mention, and it is probably, as stated above, that the
institution of public houses did not belong to the earlier
Heroic age and the bard very likely carried an institution
of his own time back into an earlier age. As regards the
passage cited, Eustathius the scholiast informs us that
leeches were buildings with open halls where people con
gregated for purposes of gossip and amusement.! Hesiod
also admonishes against habits of idleness which these
lesches fostered.
Gossip, however, was not the only conversation heard
in these places; more serious subjects were also discussed,
and as the gymnasiums later became the lecturing places
and haunt of philosophers and their neophytes, so also
these earlier substitutes served a like purpose. The
passage from Homer quoted above shows also that these
lesches, in addition to their social usage, served as shelter
*Book 18, 520 et sequitur;
fButcher and Lang.
GREECE & ROME 33
and sanctuary to the homeless and needy vagrants. As it
was unusual for the Greeks to foster a public custom or an
institution of a public nature without associating the same
with their religion and folklore, so they had also for these
institutions a patron : this was Apollo, who in this capac
ity was called Apollo Leschenarios. On this account
we need not be surprised at reading of these lesches as
being enumerated among the public buildings belonging
to the different cities. The degree to which these gath
ering places were frequented, depended naturally upon
the varying social character of the native customs and
still more, upon their mode of living. Athens and Sparta
will serve as striking examples of what is meant. Accord
ing to Pausanias, there were two such casinos, as we will
call them for want of a better word; one called the Krot-
anon or Club-room of the Crotonians, the other the
Painted Club-room, and in another passage, Book 10,
chap. 25, Frazer s translation, he speaks of another such
building at Delphi adorned with paintings by Polygnotus
and dedicated by the Cnidians.
Called by the Delphians the Club-room (lesche, place
of talk), because here they used of old to meet and talk
over both mythological and more serious subjects. That
there were many such places all over Greece is shown by
Homer in the passage where Melantho rails at Ulysses:
And you will not go sleep in the smithy,
Nor yet in the club-room, but here you prate.
Plutarch has laid the scene of one of his dialogues (De
Defectu Oraculorum) in this building. He says (chapter
6) : "Advancing from the temple we reached the doors of
the Cnidian club-house. So we entered and saw the
friends of whom we were in search seated and awaiting
us." Pliny mentions the paintings of Polygnotus at
Delphi, but seems to suppose that they were in a temple.
34 THE INNS OF
(Hist. Nat. XXXV, 59.) Of the two series of paintings
in the club-house, the one which represented Troy after
its capture seems to have been especially famous; it is
mentioned by Philostratus (Vit. Apollon. VI, 11, 64) and
by a scholiast on Plato (Gorgias, p. 448 b.). Lucian
refers to the graceful eyebrows and rosy cheeks of Cas
sandra in this picture (Imagines, 7). In the time of
Pausanias the pictures were already between four and five
hundred years old, and they seem to have survived for at
least two centuries more, for they are mentioned with
admiration by the rhetorician Themisteus, who lived in
the fourth century of our era (Or. XXXIV, 11).
The scanty remains of the club-house which contained
these famous paintings were excavated by the French in
recent years. The club-house is situated, in accordance
with the description of Pausanias, higher up the hill than
the spring Cassotis, a few steps to the east of the theatre.
It was built on a terrace, which is supported on the south
by a high retaining wall. A marble slab in this wall bears
this inscription:
KNIDIONODAMOS
TOANALAMMA
APOLLONI
"THE CNIDIAN PEOPLE (dedicated) THE STJPPORTING
WALL TO APOLLO"
t t
Let it not be inferred that the other club-houses in
Greece were constructed and adorned upon standards so
beautiful as this, the most celebrated of them all, or that
the forerunners of Gil Bias and Casanova, when down on
their luck, lodged habitually in sumptuous quarters such
as these* The name Leschai must have undergone some
changes in meaning between the Homeric age and that in
which Pausanias wrote. The term was applied to any
place in which people gathered to gossip or to talk serious
ly. The agora and its colonnades, the gymnasia, the
GREECE & HOME 35
shops of the various artisans and tradesmen* especially
the smiths whose shops were frequented in winter because
they were warm, all came under this heading. In Sparta
these club-rooms were the scene of the deliberations of the
elders on the welfare of the state and it was to them that
new-born children were brought, there to pass physical
examination for the purpose of determining whether the
child should be reared or exposed to die, vide, Plutarch,
Lycurgus, 16, 25.
In Athens, on the contrary, there were no less than
three hundred and sixty such club-rooms. This differ
ence had its cause in the inherent and national character
of the Spartans, which was not so volatile, not so sprightly
and talkative as that of the Athenians and Corinthians*
Nor must one also overlook the other features of their
public and private life features of such a nature as to
make such institutions almost superfluous. As is well
known, the Spartans lived their life entirely in common.
With them individual initiative, except in the field, was
discouraged, and in some cases punished; such ambitions
were always looked upon with suspicion. From boyhood
to old age, the Spartan underwent the discipline of mass
action. He was a cog in the wheel of a well oiled machine.
He played, ate, fought, and slept in a common brotherly
companionship. As a natural consequence, all classes,
whatever their condition in life, and they were all rel
atively poor, felt no social urge for changed conditions and
even discouraged the visits of Greeks from other parts of
the country. The almost patriarchal state of society,
with its military glamour, filled every need, social or
physical. Sparta was never a commercial community nor
was it adorned with magnificent edifices and temples.
Nor were there any wonderful collections of art to
attract outsiders. The stay of strangers in their city was
rendered short and difficult by special legislation, and
36 THE INNS OF
the comparatively small number of aliens who succeeded
in evading their immigration laws found adequate shelter
and care in the homes of individual families, or, if they
chanced to be official representatives of other states, they
were cared for by royal arrangement, as the king always
placed matters of this sort in the hands of designated
individuals who were responsible to him and to the state.
GREECE & ROME 37
CHAPTER IV.
Feast tendered Telemachus by Menelaus Ardor of hospitality
passes mth the Trojan War Tokens of hospitality, of copper, of brass,
of ivory, issued in the Middle Ages The origin of luggage checks
Tokens of credit Vitruviu& s description of apartments for guests and
entertainment afforded Origin of the proxy The sumptuous inns
of Persia.
After what we have just said of the Spartans we are
impelled in justice to them to introduce Homer s descrip
tion of the entertainment and hospitality tendered Tele
machus by Menelaus. We shall find that in that age,
the standards were the same.
"And they came to Lacedaemon lying low among the
caverned hills, and drave to the dwelling of renowned
Menelaus. Him they found giving a feast in his house
to many friends of his kin, a feast for the wedding of his
noble son and daughter ... So they were feasting
through the great vaulted hall, the neighbors and the
kinsmen of renowned Menelaus, making merry; and
among them a divine minstrel was singing to the lyre,
and as he began the song two tumblers in the company
whirled through the midst of them.
"Meanwhile those twain, the hero Telemachus and the
splendid son of Nestor, made halt at the entry of the
gate, they and their horses. And the lord Eteoneus came
forth and saw them, the ready squire of renowned Mene
laus; and he went through the palace to bear the tidings
to the shepherd of the people, and standing near spake
to him winged words:
" Menelaus, fosterling of Zeus, there are two strangers,
whosoever they be, two men like to the lineage of great
Zeus. Say, shall we loose their swift horses from under
38 THE INNS OF
the yoke, or send them onward to some other host who
shall receive them kindly ?
"Then in sore displeasure spake to him Menelaus of
the fair hair: Eteoneus son of Boethous, truly thou wert
not a fool aforetime, but now for this once, like a child
thou talkest folly. Surely ourselves ate much hospitable
cheer of other men, ere we twain came hither, even if in
time to come Zeus haply gave us rest from affliction.
Nay go, unyoke the horses of the strangers, and as for
the men, lead them forward to the house to feast with
us/
"So they loosed the sweating horses from beneath the
yoke, and fastened them at the stalls of the horses, and
threw beside them spelt, and therewith mixed white barley,
and tilted the chariot against the shining faces of the
gateway, and led the men into the hall divine. . . .
"But after they had gazed their fill, they went to the
polished baths and bathed them. Now when the maidens
had bathed them and anointed them with olive oil, and
cast about them thick coats and doublets, they sat on
chairs by Menelaus, son of Atreus. And a handmaid
bare water for the hands in a goodly golden ewer, and
poured it forth over a silver basin to wash withal; and
to their side she drew a polished table, and a grave dame
bare food and set it by them, and laid upon the
board many dainties, giving freely of such things as she
had by her, and a carver lifted and placed by them
platters of divers kind of flesh, and nigh them he set
golden bowls. So Menelaus of the fair hair greeted the
twain and spoke:
" Taste ye food and be glad, and thereafter when ye
have supped, we shall ask what men ye are; for the blood
of your parents is not lost in you, but ye are of the line
of men that are sceptered kings the fosterlings of Zeus;
for no churls could beget sons like you/
GREECE & ROME 39
"So spake he, and took and set before them the fat
ox-chine roasted, which they had given him as his own
mess by way of honor/ 5
And in the first canto of the Odyssey we read of the
welcome extended to the unknown goddess by Tele-
machus:
"But now I pray thee, abide here, though eager to
be gone, to the end that after thou hast bathed and had
thy heart s desire, thou mayest wend to the ship joyful
in spirit, with a costly gift and very goodly, to be an
heirloom of my giving, such as dear friends give to
friends/*
In the third canto of the same poem, when Telemachus
and Pallas were entertained by Nestor, we find no in
quiries until after food and drink have assuaged the
weariness and hunger and thirst:
"But when they had put from them the desire of meat
and drink, Nestor of Gerenia, lord of chariots, first spake
among them:
" Now is the better time to inquire and ask of the
strangers who they are, now that they have had their
delight of food. Strangers, who are ye? Whence sail
ye over the wet ways? On some trading enterprise, or
at adventure do ye rove, even as sea-robbers over the
brine? 5 55
Athenaeus comments very pleasantly on that usage
so dignified and so in keeping with sturdy ideals:
"A guest was received, 55 says he, "he was invited to
drink, and lastly he was interrogated, and, his drunken
ness aiding his sincerity, he sometimes told more than he
wished. 55 Thus speaks the spiritual disciple of Epicurus;
but he did well; that liberal confidence, that hospitality
open to all, the house of the father of the family was
sanctuary and asylum, a shelter where the wayfarer knew
a welcome awaited him, lodgings for parent or friend,
40 THE INNS OF
it is certainly one of the most beautiful aspects of the
Greek civilization of the heroic age and is entitled to the
most sincere reverence which after ages can lavish upon
it, if, as is said, imitation is the most sincere form of
flattery.
Some men, more ardent in their humanity, sought to
outdo even that pagan age with an 61an more prompt to
bestow the benefits of an evangelical charity and even
went so far in their desire to confer hospitality upon all
as to erect such places for this purpose. Among these
was Axilos, son of Theutranus, native of Arisbe in Troad,
who was slain by Diomedes.
"He had opened on the public road/* says Homer,
"a house in which he gave asylum to all who passed."
We should bear in mind that example of practical
hospitality and its benefits as shown by the heroic age,
also, as it has a vital bearing upon our subject and, as
Pouqueville has very justly remarked, "It would be
necessary to cite all antiquity to make known the im
portance .which attached to hospitality in those times/*
Still it should not be believed that this great ardor
for hospitality was always general throughout and that
sometimes it did not cease to function, for cause.* When
we reach the period of the Trojan War, the Golden
Fleece, and the age of Theseus, that is to say, the end
of the heroic age, this beautiful devotion begins to
break down. That fraternal bond which had formerly
seemed to unite all men even as though in one great
family, that fraternal chain, let us call it, seemed little
by little to break under the strain. All arms were no
longer open to the wayfarer. We enter upon an epoch
less primitive and more defiant wherein hospitality
deserts the villages and seeks its shelter in the country,
where Zeus and Hermes, driven away by an entire popu
lation hardened and haughty, could find no asylum except
GREECE & ROME 41
in such a cottage as that of Philemon and Baucis, Tt
is nothing if not a complete break with the ancient tradi
tion and no longer would it be as under the ancient
regime, that one saw the face of his host for the first
time when that host gave the wayfarer food and shelter;
hospitality came to have its preferences and to have also
its exceptions and reserves. In the cult of Zeus Xenios
one might place his faith, but he would be better served
were he to rely upon his friends and their near relations
and retainers, and the people who addressed them. There
after, hospitality flourished no longer as a general axiom,
nor was it actually accorded as a right except to such as
were deemed to have a just claim upon the host. It is
true that the question of defilement did not at that time
enter into the question as it had amongst the Egyptians
and Hebrews (it will be remembered that the Egyptians
could not eat with the Hebrews for such would have been
an abomination to the Egyptians, and the Jews were also
constrained by the same fetish, at least in the later periods
of their history. Daniel, for example, could not partake
of the wine and viands of the Babylonians for some dietary
reason, and many of the most savage riots between the
Roman legionaries and the Jews were probably caused by
the same considerations.
Thus, in course of time certain tokens came into circu
lation (tesserae hospitalitatis), which served to identify
the incoming stranger and enabled him to substantiate
his claim to the best the house afforded. These tokens
were issued as mandates of Zeus Xenios, although the gen
eral consideration to which he had been accustomed in an
earlier and happier age had long been atrophied. The
cabinets of Southern Europe have preserved several speci
mens and as a general thing they were of gold or silver,
broken in an irregular way, each family keeping a part
which needed the other to complete it. Sometimes they
42 THE INNS OF
were of copper or brass, ivory or even of wood, so cut that
the line of cleavage by which they were joined was diffi
cult to imitate and thus prevented fraud.
These tokens of hospitality, of which Tomassin has
transmitted to us certain likenesses, served still another
purpose during the Middle Ages, as tokens of recognition
for political purposes, and they played a sinister part in
the affair of St. Bartholomew, and earlier still in the Sicil
ian Vespers. From this system we derive hotel bills and
probably all checking systems, such as baggage checks,
and the like. When a guest parted from his host the
token was broken and each retained a piece. As no per
fect result could be attained in matching up the whole
without the actual parts, the identification was sufficient
for all purposes. Nor did their usefulness pale with the
death of either major party to the contract: they could
be bequeathed to heirs on either side and were honored
as long as there was anyone left to honor them. In the
Poenulus of Plautus, the Young Carthaginian remarks to
Agoratocles, "Thy father Antidamus was my guest; this
token of hospitality was the bond between us/ 5 and
Agoratocles immediately made answer, "And thou shalt
receive hospitality from me."
When a stranger arrived, bearing the token, the apart
ments reserved solely for guests were prepared as expe-
ditiously as possible, even as the inhabitants of the French
provinces who are still the very soul of hospitality, to this
day maintain the guest chamber (chambres de reserve) ;
the household supplies were seen to, meals planned, and,
in a word, a feast was prepared which taxed the resources
of the house to the uttermost.
It is of interest to note in connection with these tokens
of hospitality, that there was an ancient Slavic custom
which was current in Russia, Poland, Servia, Bulgaria,
and other Slavic countries, down to a period of about a
GREECE & ROME 43
hundred years ago, and by virtue of this custom, the
peasants drank on credit. The token of credit was a
stick, which the proprietor of the public house notched
with as many notches as there were days in the calendar
until their harvest of hops, barley, or wheat should be
marketed. When the account was liquidated, the stick
was broken in twain and debtor and creditor retained each
his piece. Should it happen that the account was not
liquidated as per contract, and there was no good reason
for the failure to meet the obligation, the publican would
threaten to break the stick and retain both pieces. This
was tantamount to the ruin of the credit of the debtor
throughout all the district, and furthermore, there was a
quasi-religious significance to the ceremony which terrified
the illiterate peasant to such a degree that he would even
go on his knees to prevent such an untoward happening.
The practice came to an end due to improved methods
in accounting.
Vitruvius, in his treatise on Architecture has spoken
of these special apartments, such as the owner of a house
of the better class always kept in readiness for a guest
whom Zeus Xenios might send him, and, curiously enough,
he has described one of these receptions for us:
"The peristylium, and this part of the house, is called
Andronitis, because the men employ themselves therein
without interruption from the women. On the right and
left, moreover, are small sets of apartments, each having
its own door, triclinium, and bed-chamber, so that on the
arrival of guests they need not enter the peristylium, but
are received in rooms (hospitalia) appropriated to their
occupation. For when the Greeks were more refined,
and possessed greater wealth, they provided a separate
table and triclinia and bed-chambers for their guests.
On the day of their arrival they were invited to dinner,
and were afterwards supplied with poultry, eggs, herbs,
44 THE INNS OF
fruits, and other produce of the country. Hence the
painters gave the name of Xenia to presents given to-
guests. Masters of families, therefore, living in these
apartments, were quite, as it were, at home, being at
liberty to do as they pleased therein."
It is readily seen that a host might have a certain
amount of ostentatious vanity at stake in thus welcoming
the arrival of strangers and giving them the run of his
estates. Trimalchio had it in abundance, and Nasidienus
had also his share. On this account Theophrastus has
introduced a host entertaining his guests at open table to
show their number and his own magnificence. Thus does
the Greek caricature Ostentation.
"When he is living in a hired house, he will say (to
anyone who does not know better) that it is the family
mansion; but that he means to sell it, as he finds it too
small for his entertainments."
Yet hospitable as the Greeks were, both in honest in
tention and deed, they nevertheless possessed types such
as even a Trimalchio might have envied. Theophrastus
has drawn one such to the life:
"Cool cistern- water has he at his house; and a garden
with many fine vegetables, and a cook who understands
dressed dishes. His house, he will say, is a perfect inn;
always crammed; and his friends are like the pierced
cask he can never fill them with his benefits!"
Thus have the ancient customs atrophied when we
reach the age of Theophrastus, who holds such preten
tious masquerading up to the ridicule it merits.
Prudence counseled prospective guests to see that the
house where they were to be entertained was not over
crowded lest the welcome wear thin, and what MoliSre
said of esteem might easily have been thought by them:
Esteem is founded upon preference.
This is an ancient method surviving today.
GREECE & ROME 45
In this connection let us listen to Aelian s recital of a
little anecdote in which Stratonice, the flute girl, played
a leading role, a guest disdainful of those houses too
liberally opened to hospitality:
"Stratonice, the flute girl, having been accorded a
welcome in a house which she had been invited to enter,
would have been greatly flattered by such attention which
she had found in a strange land in which she had no
reason to expect hospitality and no ties to entitle her to
that consideration.
"She presented her most graceful thanks to the host
whose kindness had prompted such attention and received
her with such good grace; but, arriving as an unexpected
guest, and perceiving that the house was open to any and
all who wished to stop and stay over; Let us go, 5 said she
to her slave, *we are like a pigeon that has taken to a
tree, what you mistook for a house of hospitality is only
an inn/ "
Again, it might happen that strangers would be ex
cluded from hospitality through a certain disdain of
ancient manners and customs, or because of certain pref
erences of citizens who refused to see a guest in a man
who did not present the token of amity. It might happen
that all the travellers recently arrived at some Greek
village would be unable to evoke any tie of friendship,
and therefore were placed under the necessity of finding
a lodging. Nor could they, as in the Hebrew villages,
go and camp in the public place. Some countries there
were, as for instance the island of Crete, where a certain
number of houses were perpetually kept in readiness for
strangers, and where tables were always kept set and
garnished.
"There were/ 5 says Athenaeus, "amongst all the
habitations of the island of Crete two houses designated
by the name of syssities; one was called the andreion,
46 THE INNS OF
the other the koimeterion, and these were the places in
which strangers were lodged. In the house set aside for
the common repasts, two tables were set; they were called
hospitalieres, and the strangers were given the first place
at these tables, the others arranging themselves thereafter
in order/ 9
In other parts of Greece they constructed near the
temples of the great gods vast shelters, veritable free
hostelries, where wayfarers found not only shelter but
also beds coiksecrated to the god adored in the nearest
temple. The hostelry which the Lacedaemonians erected
in the precinct of Hera on the ruins of Plataea we may
suppose to have been an institution of the kind just spoken
of. The passage of Thucydides in which he speaks of it
is very curious and we reproduce it here; moreover, it is
the only passage in the works of the historian in which
he speaks of the inns of that period, giving any details
as to their furnishings, style, and the like:
"They (the Lacedaemonians) afterwards razed the
whole place to the very foundations, and built near the
precinct of Hera an inn forming a square of two hundred
feet; it had two stories, and chambers all around. They
used the roofs and the doors of the Plataeans; and of the
brass and iron articles of furniture found within the walls
they made couches, which they dedicated to Hera/
The religious usage which constructed for wayfarers
places of abode in the vicinity of the temples may prob
ably have been derived from the devotional custom of
religious hospitality native to the Orient.
Lucian, in his Syrian Goddess, has a passage which
has a bearing on the question. He is speaking of the
hospitality which was the due of those coming to worship
the goddess, if they be strangers:
"When he is arrived at Hierapolis, he lodges with a
host whom he does not know, as though he were lodged
GREECE & ROME 47
with public hosts in each town, and he is received accord
ing to the country from which he comes. The Assyrians
are called tutors as they are the ones who give wayfarers
the necessary instructions/ 3
The Athenian proxenoi of whom we shall presently
speak were neither more nor less than the tutors of the
Syrian countries. In bringing up the subject of the
proxenos it may be well to discuss him and his function,
as his descendant in our times, I mean the proxy of our
boards of directors, scarcely measures up to the standard
set by the archtype of the species. The ancient proxenos
was not a "yes" man for any individual or state.
The office of proxenos grew out of public hospitality,
that hospitality which subsisted between two cities or
states, and the functions of the official closely approxi
mate those of our consuls who love their duty and do it,
in spite of political or tropical inertia. In the primitive
times when the Greek tribes were under tyrants a quasi-
public hospitality may have subsisted between the reign
ing families of the various tribes and this in turn may
have produced similar relations between their subjects.
With the abolition of the tyrants, the tradition was prob
ably carried on as a heritage of the past. Then again,
some prominent citizen of one state may have had great
interests and influence in another and thus have been able
to serve the interests of his fellow citizens in that state
as well as their interests in his own. This he would do
as a private citizen until his services were recognized and
rewarded by one or both peoples. When public hos
pitality was established between two states and no private
citizen presented himself as representative, it became
necessary that persons be appointed in each state to look
after the welfare of visiting citizens of the other, and show
them hospitality, and the officials who were thus ap
pointed were known as proxenoi. When a state appointed
48 THE INNS OF
a proxenos it could send one of its own citizens acceptable
to the authorities in the other or it could appoint a citizen
of the other state to represent its interests there* The
Spartans, in early times, held to the former, but in later
times the custom of conferring the honor of proxenos
upon a citizen of the other state with whom hospitium
publicum had been concluded seems to have gained in
strength and usage. With the exception of Sparta, the
common method of appointing a proxenos was by a show
of hands. In Sparta, the king had the right. The prin
cipal duties of the proxenos were to receive citizens com
ing from the state he represented, especially the ambas
sadors, to see that they gained admission to the assembly,
to see that they had seats in the theatre, to act as patron
to the strangers and to mediate between the two states
if any misunderstanding or dispute arose*
Should a stranger die in the state the proxenos of his
country took charge of his effects and property.
As regards the honors and privileges to which a prox
enos was entitled from the state which he served, the
different Greek states followed different principles; some
honored their proxenos with the full civic franchise, and
other distinctions besides. The right of acquiring prop
erty in the state of which he thus became a citizen does
not seem to have been general as when this was allowed
it was as the result of special legislation or authority. A
foreigner appointed in his own country as proxenos of
Athens enjoyed in his own person the right of hospitality
at Athens whenever he visited that city, in addition to
all the other privileges that a foreigner could possess
without actually becoming a citizen. Among these privi
leges, though they were not necessarily set forth in the
authority conferred upon him, were:
1. Epigamia . . . the right of additional marriage.
2, The right to acquire property at Athens.
GREECE & ROME 49
3. Exemption from payment of taxes.
4. Inviolability in times of peace and war, on land and
sea.
There were times when Athenian commerce was so
heavy that almost every citizen might have been called
proxenos (unofficially) because of the multitude of social
and commercial ties which bound them to other cities.
The proxenos 9 however, was a public character and acted
as such officially. As an example, when the representa
tives of Megara and Corinth arrived the proxenos ap
pointed by those cities lodged them in his own house,
served them as guide, lent his credit to their negotiations,
and in a word, as has been well remarked by Artaud in
a note on the Birds of Aristophanes, "He met every
demand which the strangers coming from allied cities
could make upon him." The real distinction between
our own consuls and the ancient proxenos was this: the
primary and imperious duty of the proxenos was hospi
tality: everything else came in due order; whereas hos
pitality seems to be the last duty of our own officials
who have inherited the chiton of authority under a foreign
But even this institution which embraced so many of
the needs of travelling inexperience failed to meet the
requirements of that fine old humanitarian Xenophon,
nor did it measure up to his generous ideal of what true
Athenian hospitality should comprise. It was his desire
that every foreign sailor who disembarked at Athens
should find free and clean lodgings and that every
stranger, from whatever country whatsoever, Greek or
barbarian, would always be sure of finding shelter in a
public inn. Therefore in his Treatise on the Causes of
Revenue he demands the levy of a special impost with
the proceeds of which he would construct such inns near
the harbors for the accommodation of pilots and other
50 THE INNS OF
watermen, "in addition to those already in operation/ 5
for those who should come to Athens.
All this Xenophon had seen in his residence in Persia,
where a system of inns, posts, and everything necessary
and convenient to people who travel was well organized.
There is little doubt that what he had seen in that coun
try had armed his criticism of the methods and crudities
in his native land, and as for the Cyropaedia, it is worthy
of credit. It was written at the request of a prince, but
with the unmistakable intention of amusing and instruct
ing the youth of Athens; it is not so much his desire to
describe Asia and Asiatic culture, as it is to inform his
countrymen of their own shortcomings and state of un-
preparedness, that they may remedy them. His life
among the Persians was an active one, and an observant;
what he has written of, he has seen. Before the days of
Xenophon s maturity, Herodotus had seen the Persian
system, in operation and had marveled at it.
"The first courier/ says he, te turned his dispatches
over to a second, the second to a third, and they passed
them along from one to another just as among the Greeks
the torch passes from hand to hand in the rites of Heph-
aestos. The distance traveled by a horse is called, in the
Persian language, Angareion/ " There are several other
passages in the writings of Herodotus in which he makes
mention of the Persian posting system, and hie demotes
some space to one detail which Xenophon scarcely notices;
the hostelry which the Great King maintained at each
station. He rarely mentions one without touching upon
the other.
Henricus Stephanus, in commenting upon this passage
of Herodotus, emphasizes the immense distances in the
empire of the Persians by saying that between the sea
and Susa, the capital of the Great King, there were one
hundred and eleven stations and caravanserai. The inns
GREECE & ROME 51
must have been exceedingly sumptuous, for we must re
member that the king went so far in his luxurious and
sanitary measures that he carried boiled drinking water
with him in silver tanks, in an age that knew not Lister.
Hence it must follow that when he stopped at an inn it
must have been all that comfort could require and money
could buy. Aelian also mentions these magnificent
caravanserai that were in operation throughout the
empire, from Asia Minor to Medea. Alexander stopped
at one of these places when beginning his march against
Darius: it was one of the stathmoi basilikai on the fron
tiers of Phiygia, and Mithridates also stopped at the
same caravanserai, deeming it a favorable omen as he
was thus destined, as he believed, to follow in the foot
steps of Alexander and overrun all Asia.
The Greeks, however, failed utterly to profit from the
information conveyed by Herodotus and Xenophon.
They detested the Persians so thoroughly that they
scorned to learn from them and the rapid posts and
luxurious inns of the Asiatic empire were never objects
familiar to the sight and experience of the dwellers in the
little peninsula. In many ways they were right, as the
extent of their country was infinitely small compared to
Persia, and their states were independent, whereas in the
empire there was a powerful central authority.
In place of imitating the Persian system and deriving
from it the things which might have aided their develop
ment, they gave a malignant turn to a term used by their
former enemies in their posting service. We have spoken
of the term angareion, as the distance a horse traversed;
the Greeks adopted the word, made it into a verb and
defined it as the sum of all tyrannical force well worthy
of the King of Kings, who forced citizens to run with
news at the peril of their lives. Strange destiny; that
the labors of the father of history and the disciple of
52 THE INNS OF
Plato should avail their countrymen only in adding to
the scope of the dictionary, but should, in years to come,
aid the most powerful and deadliest enemy of Hellas in
keeping the country in subjection, and should finally
contribute the most to the overrunning of occidental
civilization with the hordes of Tourania! Alexander s
messages were carried as were those of his ancestors in
the days of Agamemnon, and the institution of the
hemeradromoi lasted until the Roman Empire instituted
a post road system modeled upon that of Persia; a sys
tem from which all that have come later were derived.
In the days of the lower empire the post system reached
its greatest excellence in Greece. The course of empire
had shifted from Rome to the city of Constantine and the
centralized authority was closer to the Balkan and Asiatic
provinces, a fact which sufficiently explains the improve
ment. Thus we shall arrive at the period when through
out all Greece as in the other provinces of the empire we
shall see magnificent military roads with relays of ani
mals, and at every station a hostelry, where travelers
may lodge and where copiers may procure fresh horses.
The entire establishment shall be meant by the term
allage, which Eustathius has specifically informed us is
synonymous with stathmos, "by which, 55 writes he, in
formally, "we mean not only an inn and a stable but
also the places proper to make a halt, the stations where
travelers stay over to rest and recruit themselves/ 5 Thus
we have again the posting system of Persia, and rest
assured, that unless we have been deceived, the master
of posts will soon put in an appearance.
And as far as the term angareion is concerned, it has
not been lost; we still have it in the Latin angariare and
through low Latin in the French hangar, which conveys
accurately enough the impression of such shelters as the
stathmoi of Persia or the tillage of the lower empire.
GREECE & ROME 53
CHAPTER V.
Grecian inns of the fifth century before Christ The inn* of the
pleasure-loving Athenians The public houses, low dives, and public
stews Wine booths and dancing girls The giving of names and signs
to taverns the beginning of advertising Keepers of taverns and cabarets
held detestable and infamous Drunkenness and harlotry prevail
Diogenes a frequenter.
Inasmuch as we have only found inns complete in
needful details under the emperors, the question of
whether the Greeks of former times actually possessed
establishments where one could lodge and where his ani
mals could be taken care of, may arise. The rapid
decadence of hospitality, once it had set in, and the insti
tution of the proxenos serve but to cloud the issue, and
the unwary scholar might draw an erroneous inference
from the facts. The shelters erected for pilgrims to
religious festivals would also tend to bear out such an
inference. There are several terms in the Greek language
which denote inns, and many of these terms are classical,
some few being even ante-classical, there are also numer
ous passages in the authors, sometimes obscure and am
biguous, but which, nevertheless, offer positive evidence
that there were sumptuous establishments of the kind.
A verse in the Inachus of Sophocles, cited and commented
upon by Pollux, proves that as early as the fifth century
before Christ, hostelries were already known in Greece.
The pandokos xenostasis was an inn where guests only
were lodged; but the phatne as well as the stathmos were
used to denote a huge establishment where men and beasts
found shelter. Athenaeus cites a passage in the Peltate
of Ephippus as follows: "The place was furnished with
54 THE INNS OF
stables for beasts of burden, stalls for the horses, and
dining-rooms (gleumata). 99
It was in places such as these that great and powerful
individuals with carriages and baggage trains, such, for
example, as envoys on their way to their posts of duty in
foreign states, lodged. Such diplomats found the hos
pitality of the miserable little inns of Boeotia or Phocis
little to their tastes, and dearly bought. We know this,
thanks to a beautiful passage in the orations of Aeschines,
in which the Greek orator tells us that the Athenian
ambassadors lodged one of their companions, whom they
suspected of treason, in an inn, and among other indica
tions of their contempt, they refused to lodge or dine in
the same inn. The Jccdagogion was a very simple and
very common hostelry, as was also the Jcatalusis. Accord
ing to Pollux there were many of that sort at Athens,
and also throughout the whole of Greece, as is proved by
many references in the Greek writers. It was in such
an establishment as this that the famous case of murder
and telepathy took place at Megara, as Cicero tells us.
Secaldus, and the old man of Oree, found themselves
in a like situation in Argolis and it is there that they re
cited to one another that mutual account of their mis
fortunes which Plutarch has transmitted to our times.
People who went to consult the oracle, the devotees of
Pythia and Apollo, who departed for Delphi or Tegyre,
the place where the god was born, lodged there of their
own free will in the hostelries, as is easily inferred from
an anecdote related by Plutarch in his treatise On the
Oracles Which Are No More, and the same may be said
of certain Delians who had returned to Delphi. Had
they not overheard the words of a certain innkeeper, they
would all have been lost and would never have been able
to return to their country. "During the Peloponesian
War, the Delians having been driven from their island,
GREECE & ROME 55
they were advised by an oracle of Delphi to search out
and possess themselves of the place where Apollo had
been born, and there to make sacrifices of a certain
nature: they marveled about this and demanded whether
Apollo might not have been born elsewhere than amongst
them, the prophetess I*ythia advised them that a crow
would lead them aright. The representatives of the
Delians, on their return, passed by chance a village in
Chaeronia, and they saw a certain hostelry there with
some strangers frequented from the oracle of Tegyre to
which they wished to go, and as they were taking their
departure they heard the following conversation : * Fare
well, madame Crow/ and taking literally the response
of the prophetess, they made their sacrifice at Tegyre,
whereupon they were restored into favor and returned to
their country/ 5
But what were these hostelries, these Greek pan-
dokeia, such as were to be found in these villages, scattered
along the great roads for those travelling through the
country? How were they distributed, what was their
extent, what were the conditions in them and what were
their charges? This we do not know. The fragments
of Menander tell us that wine was sold for a few obols
the pint and that for the price paid daily to a pandar a
whole family could live in comfort for a month. The
details concerning the institution at Plataea with which
Thucydides has furnished us are happy in their fullness,
we are not so fortunate, however, in material of the same
sort which will serve to illustrate the pandok&ia, nor do
the writings of antiquity help us, in this respect. They
may have been simple caravanserai as Pouquevifle imag
ines, and might be compared with the klmns of modern
Greece, in his estimation; those vast and miserable sheds
where beasts of burden and men were herded indiscrim
inately into a hurly-burly, and of which Buchon gives so
56 THE INNS OF
piteous a description. We are of the belief that a passage
of Plutarch will prove that in those hostelries of Greece,
even as in the khans of Modern Greece, the life of the
wayfarer was identical in every respect, and, using the
expression of Buchon, "everything is done in the presence
and before the eyes of all/*
But in Athens these conditions were entirely different.
Putting aside the fact that from their very character,
pleasure-loving, witty, sprightly, and volatile, they would
naturally form a larger number and a greater variety
of social relations, they also possessed a civic life infi
nitely more cosmopolitan and sparkling. They harbored
a constant influx of strangers from the ends of the earth,
traders, merchants, brokers, all in search of business and
profit; travellers and art lovers, seeking to learn and to
enjoy, sages come to pay respect to the shrine of phil
osophy and literature. It was only natural that with
them the need for hotels and inns soon brought them into
being. In the life at Athens such institutions are often
mentioned, and the difference between conditions at
Athens and Sparta is very neatly and caustically summed
up in a witticism delivered by the philosopher Diogenes,
which Aristotle has preserved for us. This cynic once
said: "The public houses are the Phyditerien (a bagnio
where flute girls entertained and ministered to the desires
in any way requested [see Aristophanes for extended
note] ) of the Athenians." If from this witticism one
were to argue a greater frequenting of the public houses
this must be understood only of the lower and lowest
dregs of society, and therein lies the basic difference be
tween the public house of the ancient Greco-Roman
civilization and our own. There were exceptions, how
ever. When the Athenian ambassadors were sent to
negotiate with Philip of Macedon, they lodge everywhere
in inns. Dionysus (Aristoph. Ranae, 114), makes inquiry
GREECE & ROME 57
as to the quality of the inns on the road to Hell, and
what shall we say of those special provisions made by the
public to provide shelter for wayfarers coming to Athens
and Corinth to participate in the great religious festivals
and games ? In Athens, however, the better classes of the
people had nobler and finer occasions for social entertain
ment, though this was often very costly at Corinth.
Horace has remarked that not every man could afford
to pleasure there, and we have no less an authority than
Demosthenes to bear him out. The public houses had
little influence on the greater number of the upper classes
of society though these same upper classes were unani
mous in holding publicans and all their ways in contempt
not only because of the natural contempt of the aristo
crat for the underling, but also because these rogues and
scoundrels, fracturing by their very calling one of those
beautiful and sacred tenets of a semi-primitive culture
which carried out the rites of hospitality even to remote
generations and nourished the guest-friend even in the
face of war, could only be such and shelter the stranger
within their gates for gain. Then, too, the adulteration
of wine and devious methods in merchandising were only
too well known in classical times. According to Pet-
ronius, Socrates used to boast that he never had looked
into a tavern, but it is more probable that what he meant
to say was that he never looked around in one. But the
almost universal disrepute in which the aubergists were
held may be inferred from a multitude of passages in
classical literature. Among the most striking is that
passage in the Characters of Theophrastus in which
he describes an individual so lost to shame and so lacking
in intelligence that he would even be capable of con
ducting a public house. Isaac Casaubon, in commenting
upon the passage of Theophrastus cited above, hints at
the facility with which publicans lent their services in
58 THE INNS OF
the matter of pimping; and decries that zeal in the public
service which would procure service for the paying guest
who wants what he wants when he wants it. In fact,
the austere post-renaissance scholar goes so far as to sum
up the attributes of hosts who did better than serve their
patrons with a savory dish or a rare vintage, calling them
pimps and their establishments public stews. The
moralizing Socrates says somewhere that not even a slave
with a shred of respectability would risk eating in a pub
lic house. This seems somewhat exaggerated, however,
for from various passages in Aristophanes one learns
that the more common class of citizens and their wives
as well did not hesitate to enjoy themselves in such
houses. But that persons of position and dignity, on
the contrary, did not visit such places and that they
were partly constrained by law from visiting them can be
inferred from Hyperides as cited by Athenaeus, who
states that if a member of the Areopagitus had ever
entered a public house, even on a single occasion, his
colleagues would no longer have tolerated him as a
member of that assembly. As to the establishments
themselves, the Greek language defines them and places
them in different classes. First then we shall mention the
wine booths. Here wine was sold only on the street.
Then there were ale or beer houses or taprooms, at least
the lexicographer Suidas expressly differentiates the mere
wine seller from the publican. Such were the places
where Demos amused himself with flutists and lyrists
and dancing girls who were agreeable in other ways.
Whether all these wine shops also sheltered strangers, or
whether the rights and limitations of these houses were
so exactly defined and established and regulated by the
authorities is not known. This definite division does not
seem to have taken place. There is still another class of
public houses mentioned which seems to have provided
AT THE DOOE OF A TAYEEN
GREECE & ROME 59
especially for the shelter of strangers. These were known
by a characteristic name, pandokian, All Receiving, open
to all. Booths also, it seems, were sometimes connected
with these inns. Some establishments doubtless stood
somewhat higher in the scale than those mentioned, for
even if a large part or even if the greater part of strangers
stopping in Athens found shelter with hospitable friends,
there must have been a considerable number who had
no such connections and were therefore compelled by
necessity to avail themselves of a public house. How
ever, it is not at all to be expected that with the care
lessness and indifference which even yet prevails in the
Levant and Orient and even in the Latin countries, the
comfort of travelers was looked after to the same degree
as in our inns and hotels of today, especially in those of
the larger cities. That the Greeks, like ourselves, had
painted signs on such establishments may be ascertained
from a passage in Aristotle. Nevertheless, the fact that
in Aristophanes and other writers no further trace of the
use of such signs is to be met appears to weigh against
the universality of the custom, and as this usage would
have furnished many an opportunity for sarcastic com
ment, its absence is indicative of the fact that the custom
was not widespread. That the omission is accidental is
too much to suppose. The custom of giving names and
signs to inns and the like is perhaps the very beginning
of advertising as we understand it today. For instance,
we have the familiar sign of the two triangles laid one
over the other, and also the bush set up in front, both of
which go back to Graeco-Roman times, as will be shown.
The Greek innkeepers had a special patron saint just as
our publicans have theirs, in Pandolphus and Julianus.
They placed themselves under the patronage of Mercury,
who, by the way, was also the very prince of purloiners,
of whom Horace wrote:
60 THE INNS OF
Choused of lus cattle, ApoDo in a rage
Demanded restitution, with a frown;
Threatening thee gamin, impish and sage
"Who laughed, and, his impotence to crown
Didst filch his quiver with thy guile
And he could only swear and smile.
Such, then, was the manner In which the public houses
of Athens were instituted in general, and, as will be seen
from the foregoing, they were bound to differ immeasur
ably from ours in importance and in the esteem in which
they were held. Yet the writer well remembers more
than one wayside forest inn along the former bound
aries of western Russia and eastern Germany and Aus
tria which were strongly reminiscent of the standards to
which the ancients took such universal exception and he
is here tempted to enlarge upon the statement of Sir
Samuel Dill, in his Roman Society from Nero to Aurelius :
* The Roman inns, from the time of Horace to Sidonius
Apollinaris were in bad standing and even dangerous."
Had Sir Samuel journeyed through the forests of eastern
Russia he would have commented upon these inns and
harpies at some length. The inns of Greece and Asia
Minor then belonged in general to a very low place in
the social order and the need they filled was limited,
while our public houses, in their large number and
variety, our ale and beer houses (O shades of Gambrinus
and the golden age), inns, wine rooms, coffee houses,
casinos, clubs and restaurants, are patronized in the
evening by the greatest number of all those who have
become weary during the day by application to business
or even by sheer lack of all employment. The reason
for this contrast is not difficult to adduce or to under
stand, for why should a free Athenian have wished to
seek entertainment and social intercourse in such a place?
Was not all life a series of gay festivities and activities
GREECE & ROME 61
which stimulated his mind? There were the numerous
religious fiestas, venerable and national, and, almost
coaeval with his traditions, built on the very foundation
of his character and its needs, beautiful in their simplicity
and symbolism; and in addition there were the games,
the philosophical schools, folk dances, and the ever pres
ent spectre of war among themselves which kept alive the
glamour of military tradition and service.
In the theatre he saw his gods on the stage, in the
majesty and grandeur of Aeschylus and Sophocles he
heard their utterances, and the memory lingered until
the next occasion and lingers still. The greater part of
his time, however, was occupied with political duties and
activities. He presided in the popular assembly as a
magistrate or attended as a citizen, he spoke, or listened
to the speeches of others, which sometimes tended to
benefit him but often injured him, and which always en
tertained him. He elected officers and he was elected to
office, or he sat in open court as judge or as spectator.
Everywhere subjects were discussed which touched his
interests closely, and the debates were such that by their
wit and energy of expression, their brilliant rhetoric and
the exquisite artistry in the manner of their presentation,
they were then supreme and have never been surpassed
or even equalled to the present time. Aristophanes has
flayed the designing Cleon, and he was not alone in
demoralizing Demos, sycophants and subserviency often
had such plausibility that they were able to overthrow
honor and lead even the most scrupulous citizen into a
dangerous and expensive lawsuit, but when that age came
Greece was on the decline even as has always been the
case with other nations* "Men," said Aristophanes, and
after bmi Petronius, "men are lions at home and foxes
abroad."
Only the results of all this were tragic, however; in
62 THE INNS OF
the daily and ordinary activity of these institutions there
unfolded itself on the other hand, a certain strength of
mind and activity of thought, a stimulating of the facul
ties and an energy of action compared with which our
public life forms a contrast almost as marked as the dif
ference between life and death. We must be cautious in
condemning lest we condemn ourselves and our own
institutions.
One should do whatever will benefit his health, sing,
declaim, or if he so desires, walk up and down in the great
room of a hostelry, whether strangers be present or no,
"it makes no difference whether one is a passenger aboard
ship or whether he is lodged in an inn with many others,
if the attendants are inclined to laugh and make sport
it makes no difference, it is no less dishonest to eat than
it is to take one s exercise." From this passage it would
appear that no separate room was allotted to each indi
vidual traveler, and the pandokeion was a common
refectory and dormitory. Would it then follow that the
same disorder of men and beasts would have been found
there as in a modern Greek kahn? We do not think
otherwise.
We base our belief on the passage of Epphippus cited
by Athenaeus, and upon another not less curious found
in Pollux. In his precious chapter upon the settings of
a play and the decorations of Greek theatres, he informs
us that ordinarily they opened through the proscenium,
three doors; that in the middle might open upon a palace,
a cavern or grotto, or the house of a nobleman, but that
the second, on the left, invariably opened upon an
inn, whilst the one on the right led to a temple in
ruins or remained vacant. In tragedies, on the contrary,
the inn or "door of strangers/ according to his diction,
was on the right, and one discovered a prison on the left.
These details, while of interest, go far to prove that inn
GREECE & ROME 63
life was well known and was a familiar part of daily liv
ing in ancient Greece, otherwise they would never have
had a part in the drama of the times, and have been
always introduced in the scenic scheme of the theatre;
but let us give the passage in the words of Pollux: "In
the comedies, an awning was stretched over a carpet, it
was always stretched near a tavern doubtless so that those
passing might cool themselves in the hot hours of the
day, and nearby one saw the stables for the beasts of
burden, and the great gates which the Greeks called
Jclisiades, and they passed through these to enter their
carriages." Here, then we see one of those edifices of the
Greeks, great halls for the guests, near by stables for
the horses and sumpter mules, and great doors for the
carriages. But at that point our information comes to
an abrupt end.
As to the masters of these establishments, we cannot
think ourselves better informed, in fact, our information
is, if anything, even more scanty and sketchy. We only
know that, as in the case of the keeper of a tavern or
cabaret, the calling of him who conducted a pandokeion
was held detestable and infamous. Pollux has trans
mitted to our admiring curiosity the entire index expur-
gatorius of infamous callings and damaged goods and
we have good reason to suppose that the legislator was
very wisely occupied with such subjects in placing the
ban of a public scarcely less moral, all those who lodged
for the night, all the tavern keepers in the villages and
towns, or along the great routes of Hellas.
Their women were for the most part strumpets from
the lowest stratum. In absolute proof of this we need
only cite a very curious passage from the Theodosian
code, as later on we shall, that such women were absolved
from the penalties carried by the law against adultery,
so true was it thought that their hideous calling was but
64 THE INNS OF
one facet of the profession still older; a few phrases from
Theophrastus s chapter on Slander shall suffice for the
present. He tells us that the daughters of Thrace, so
numerous at Athens, many being of the nobility of their
own country, but for the most part slaves, sellers of rib
bons, tavern girls, all combining the calling of sweet
predaciousness with their other metier; our evil speaker
launches an epigram at the sons of such abandoned
women, imputing the same qualities to her son like
mother like son, as it were: "His mother, I may add, is
a noble damsel of Thrace, at least, in the language of
Corinth she is called my life, my soul,* and such ladies
are esteemed noble in their own country, they say. Our
friend himself, as might be expected from his parentage,
is a rascally scoundrel. Such women snatch the passers-
by out of the very street. That house has not the best
of characters. Really there is something in that proverb
about the women. In short, they have a trick of gossip
ing with men . . . and they answer the hall-door them
selves/* In other words, such hostesses conducted hostel-
ries along the great roads, but the pleasure of their
guests was the most serious and profitable concern of
their lives. Nor should we be astonished at this in
formation when we remember the nature of the company
thus brought together in the stalls called, by way of
compliment among the Greeks, inns, and we find the
high minded Plutarch greatly insensed and defending
well born men from tavern friendships and familiarities.
He says to them: "That they should not do as many do
and imagine they have the substance of a good time
when they have but the shadow, gaming with dice, playing
mora, lodging with innkeepers and picking up gambling
friendships with tavernkeepers in the villages to the
glittering spell of games." And a saying of Plato in his
Laws wherein he sets forth his ideas upon a Utopian
GREECE & ROME 65
government is as much to the point in some favored
countries today as it was when lie enunciated it. I
refer to the passage in Lib. XI, sec. 918 of the Laws.
There is, of course, little doubt that the unpopularity
of innkeepers in Greece arose in part from the feeling
against receiving pelf for hospitality, but their tendencies
toward adulteration and substitution, extortion, espion
age, and the like, also contributed to their ill repute.
"On this account (eagerness for gain) all the lines
of life connected with retail trade, commerce, inn-keeping,
have fallen under suspicion and become utterly disrepu
table. For if what I trust may never be and will not
be, we were to compel, if I may say a ridiculous thing,
the best men everywhere to keep taverns for a time;
or carry on retail trade, or do anything of that sort;
or if, in consequence of some fate or necessity, the best
women were compelled to follow similar callings, then
we should know how agreeable and pleasant all these
things are; and if all such occupations were managed
on incorrupt principles, they would be honored as we
honor a mother or a nurse. For the sake of trade, a
man opens lodgings in a lonely place, a long way from
anywhere. He receives bewildered travelers in barely
tolerable quarters, or affords warmth, quiet, and rest in
his close rooms to people driven in by angry storms.
And then, after receiving them as friends, he does not
provide them with hospitable entertainment according
to that reception but holds them to ransom like captive
enemies whom he has got into his clutches, on the most
exorbitant, unjust, rascally terms. It is these offenses
and others like them, shamefully common in all such
callings, which have brought discredit upon all minis
tration to men s need."
Is it any wonder that Dionysus in the Frogs in
quires what are the best inns on the road to Hell?
THE INNS OP
No, Theophrastus, you were wrong; the reckless man
would not become a tavern keeper with such profits in
sight.
The impudent predaciousness and harlotry of the
women of the inns and taverns were able foils for the
unprincipled thievery and general rascality practised
habitually by the men of the house; hungry for profits,
they cared not a fig what the source might be. They had
taking ways, but their charity was hypo-microscopic and
could only be awakened by some wily impostor with a
supposititious legacy to leave or some other motive of
paramount interest; arrogant where they did not fear
personal chastisement, they bore admirably the tradition
of Aristophanes, that "men are lions at home and foxes
abroad."
They held the stranger in contempt who was careful
of his expenditures and did not hesitate to manifest it
when they dared. All these, and other characteristics
are meant by the term Jcapelos.
Any man possessing a tavern where entertainment
was to be had passes, if that were possible, for even a
greater knave than the innkeeper. It was always a dis
grace to frequent his establishment, and any man making
such a place his headquarters would have been held to
be without shame and utterly lost to all sense of honor,
and would have blushed to have been seen sitting at
table there. A certain Demosthenes, not the orator, as
he was a drinker of water, was seen one day by Diogenes
the Cynic, getting drunk in a tavern, and was greatly
put out, according to Plutarch, and wished for nothing
so much as to get away from the place undiscovered.
"The more you pull back, 3 * said the Cynic, "the further
you get into the tavern," meaning of course infamy.
Although Diogenes spoke to that purpose, he was none
the less a frequenter of such abandoned places, in true
GREECE & ROME 67
cynic form* Before lie took Ms perpetual headquarters
in the patched tub in which he crouched, he had spent
practically his whole life in taverns. He took his meals
in them, too. Once when he was dining amongst a
crowd in a tavern he saw through the open door Demos
thenes the orator passing by in the street. He called
to him, and as the other heeded not the invitation, but
continued his walk and turned his head, "And why/*
yelled the Cynic after him, "are you too proud to ap
proach a place where your master does not disdain to dine
and spend his time?" "It was his desire/* remarks
Aelian, who has transmitted the anecdote to posterity, " to
speak to people in general, and to citizens in particular,
intimately, individually; such he deemed the office of
the orator; and such as harangued the public for reasons
of state are but the slaves of the multitude/*
68 THE INNS OF
CHAPTER VI.
Realistic night in a Greek inn, from Marcel Schwob Adventure of
the poet and the slave Beggars 9 guild, their methods Theophrastus
on ostentation Night life in Athens Arts of Athenian innkeepers-
How they avenged the dupes Their jinesse in substitution Plutarch
on capacity Price of wines Gentle art of obtaining something for
nothing Wine inspectors.
Let us now cite a pleasanter picture, conventional, it
is true, but not lacking in beauty. The gem is from the
works of Marcel Schwob, Mime IV, The Hostelry. (Edi
tion of Mosher, 1901.):
"Hostelry, o errun with vermin, the poet, bitten till
deplete of blood, salutes thee. Not to thank thee for
having sheltered him one night on the borders of a dark
highway; the route is miry as that which leads to Hades
but thy cots are broken down, the lamps smoky; thine
oil is rancid, galettes mouldy, and, since last autumn
there are white worms in thine emptied nut-shells.
"But the poet is grateful to the venders of swine who
came from Megara to Athenae (thy partitions are thin,
O hostelry), and renders thanks also to thy vermin,
which kept him awake by preying upon his whole body,
swarming in hurrying masses upon the beds.
"For, since thus he might not sleep, he sought to
breathe the white moonlight through an opening in the
wall; and from thence he saw a vender of women who
came knocking at the door very late at night. The
merchant called : * Child, child ! but the slave was snor
ing, face downward, and with upstretched arms muffled
his ears with the coverings. Then the poet wrapped
himself in a yellow robe, of the same shade as nuptial
veils : this crocus tinted robe had been left in his possession
GREECE & ROME 69
one morning when a young love-maiden deserted Mm
clad in a new lover s robe. So the poet, with the out
ward seeming of a servant, opened the door; and the
vender of women ushered in a numerous band. The
breasts of the young girl who entered last were firm as
the quince fruit; she was worth, at least, twenty minae.
" * servant/ said she, * I am weary; where is my bed? *
" O my dear lady/ said the poet, *thy friends already
occupy every bed in the inn; only the servant s cot is
left; if you wish to lie thereon you are welcome/
"The miserable wretch who cared for all these fair
young girls flared the light of the great charred lamp-
wick in the face of the poet; perceiving a maid-servant,
neither too beautiful nor well arrayed, he uttered no
word of dissent.
"Hostelry, the poet, bitten till deplete of blood, thanks
thee. The woman who rested with the maid-servant
this night was softer than eiderdown, and her fragrant
throat was like to a perfected fruit. But all this had
remained untold, O hostelry, but for the noisy prating
of thy cot. The poet fears that the little pigs of Megara
may have thus learned of his adventure.* O ye who
listen to these words, if the *coi, coi 5 of these little pigs
from Agora to Athenae falsely relates that our poet
indulges in low amours come to the hostelry and see his
little friend whose love he knew she whose breasts are
as firm as the quince fruit, this poet bitten by the
blessed vermin on a moonlit night/ 5
The principal frequenters of the taverns of Athens,
then, would have been the lower classes, the sailors and
watermen (pronneikvi) of the Piraeus; and the rascally
scapegraces which Suidas and Harpocration include
under the name peristatoi, idlers and vagrants, turbulent
rioters of the Agora; their especial haunt the tavern
*From Aristophanes, the idea at least, but the basket is missing.
70 THE INNS OF
which harbored abandoned women; obstreperous hecklers
of the demagogues of the Pnyx, where Demosthenes him
self, though affecting to despise their good or evil opinion,
labored, nevertheless, for their favor, never ceased in
triguing for their backing, and was always attempting
to win their applause and support.
The more hardy of the beggars* gild forgathered in
the vicinity of the cabarets, the mob of impudent brag
garts such as the one of whom Theophrastus speaks in
the skit called Aponoia (The Reckless Man) :
"In character a coarse fellow, defiant of decency,
ready to do anything; just the person to dance the
cordax, sober and without a mask, in a comic chorus.
At a conjurer s performance, too, he will collect the
pence, going along from man to man, and wrangling
with those who have the free-pass and claim to see the
show for nothing. He is apt, also, to become an inn
keeper or a tax-farmer. . . . And he would seem, too,
to be one of these persons who collect and call crowds
about them, ranting in a loud cracked voice and ha
ranguing them."
Beggars gilds are not new under the sun, and the
leader of the clan, a ruffian hardier and more brazen
and enduring than any of his cohorts, furnished, through
his lieutenants, the pittances of silver necessary to
effectuate the carrying out of any predatory campaign
contemplated against the peace and pocketbooks of
the community, or to bait the traps and snares set for the
feet or appetites of Inexperience or Lusty Age, or to
buy the wine for some poor devil who had been picked
to the bones while drunk and irresponsible. And from
each enterprise he took the lion s share, holding his
slaves and serfs to a daily accounting. It is for this
reason that Theophrastus has depicted the hero of the
episode quoted above as: "Great in lawsuits, now as
GREECE & ROME 71
def endant, now as prosecutor, sometimes excusing himself
on oath, sometimes attending the court with a box of
papers in the breast of his cloak and satchels of note
books in his hands. He will not disdain either to be a
captain of market-place hucksters, but will readily lend
them money, exacting, as interest upon a dollar, twenty-
five per cent per diem; and will make the round of the
cook-shops, the fishmongers, the fish-picklers, thrusting
into his cheek the interest which he levies on their gains."
But night was the greatest friend of designing idle
ness. The cabarets were always open, and the pick
pockets dancing attendance upon their dupes were as
alert as bird-catchers watching their snares. The cour
tesan of the Ceramicus glided noiselessly into the light
from the somber darkness of the side-street, a wavering
light from a dim lamp that lit up the sign over the door,
she took her place in this Athenian medley along with
the thieves and smugglers, she boldly demands drink
in her hoarse voice, "Crasi, crasi" she calls to the host,
she drinks deeply in a manner worthy of an Athenian,
and although her head may be hot, her reasoning para
sitism is cool enough to take instant advantage of the
slightest opportunity of gain and to make the best of
such meager advantages as nature has endowed her
with. The design carried out, she takes her share and
vanishes, but alas, not into oblivion, for day will dawn
and with it will come the overlord who must be paid
and whom there is no avoiding.
The poor dupe did not remain to seek revenge; the
police of Athens were not more numerous than active,
they were not equipped like our own with eyes that
outnumbered those of Argus, there it was the tavern-
keeper himself who avenged the wrong, a sort of lex
talionis, a gentle and insinuating blackmail that knew
the value of well paid silence as well as the best method
72 THE INNS OF
of communicating the fact that he possessed knowledge
and probably a dangerous gift of eloquence* Little by
little the spoils would find their way into his till and
all was well. Mine host knew so well the whole band of
robbers, he served them with adulterated vitriols (kykeon)
in delightfully small cups, veritable nectar as he would
call it, and the cistern water with which he tempered
his munificence was the most valuable portion of the
drink. To put it bluntly, our tavern-keeper was not only
a blackmailer and a thief, but he was also a poisoner,
and we are guilty of no euphemism when we charge him
with having undertaken to avenge the dupe, and settle
his losses in full.
The tavern-keeper of old Greece was not lacking in
expedients for doing business in a dishonest way with
a bold front and behind a mask of injured innocence. If
he had been very long in the business he knew every
resource of his calling; he was a good mixer and an adept
adulterator. He knew his wines. Unfortunately, we
know nothing definitely of the methods or perfidious
ingredients which took the place of the grape, and which
gave the synthetic mixture its taste and color. The
Greek vintner may have made it as a substitute for the
wine of Crete or Cyprus, just as a Parisian vintner of
the sixteenth century made a substitute for malvoisie,
producing a wine of the same native growth, as Beaujeu
informs us, or again, as the merchants of the eighteenth
century with no less effrontery made an imitation of
muscat. At any rate, according to a recipe left by
Olivier de Serres, they mixed together water, honey,
orval juice, and the dregs of beer, to attain the horrible
mash. But supposition has no place here. Thanks to
the indiscretion of Plutarch, there is one manoeuvre of
the Greek tavern-keepers that has not escaped us. They
would serve their customers with potable vintage until
GREECE & ROME 73
the wine had made itself felt in their finger tips and then
substitute a vile vintage (oxos). Our host also had the
benefit of false measures, the eternal expedient which
those who sell anything seem to inherit by instinct. "Is
it the tavern-keeper of our neighborhood, who is always
cheating me grossly with her half pints?" asks Blepsi-
demus, in the Plutus of Aristophanes. In the Thesmo-
phoriazusai, we have another passage: "If any male
or female publican falsifies the legal measure of the
gallon or the half pint, pray that he may perish miser
ably." The fraud against which the dramatist is con
tending is the alteration more or less bold of the public
measure which the government of Athens had established
by law, and all sellers of liquids were bound by it not to
use utensils of capacity less than the legal standard.
"It is true," says Plutarch, in a curious passage in his
Symposium, where he attempts to prove that one should
drink according to the measure of his own stomach, a
standard highly specialized and never the same in two
individuals, sometimes increasing or diminishing even
in the same individual, "it is true that we go to the
tavern to purchase our wine according to the same
measure and uniform, which is public, but at our tables,
each stomach is the standard by which one is governed,
which does not fill itself with an amount uniform and
universal, but according to the capacity which each has
at the time."
With the measures themselves, we are little concerned
in a work of this scope, but with wine as cheap as it
was in the days of Menander, and later of Polybius, it
is difficult to understand how false measures or adulter
ation could have contributed enough in profits to make
it worth the while. With the rare and costly vintages
it would of course have been different, but these were
not often to be had of the tavern-keeper* Menander,
74 THE INNS OF
in a fragment of Ms Treasure cited by Stobaeus, speaks
of an Athenian vintner named Kantharos who was un
usually expert in adulterating wines, so much so that his
skill passed into a proverb "Cunning as Kantharos."
Very frequently, thanks to the quality of the custom
ers who came in along with the frequenters of the
drinking place, the Athenian tavern-keepers, who were
generally gifted with many of the less admirable attributes
of the fox, found much to engage their conversation.
They were generally abusive, and always on the lookout
to cheat. The tavern-keeper had to serve his product
before receiving his money, and often the guest drank
to his health and departed hastily without having paid
for his wine.
These tricks of Greek villainy renewed their venom
in the warm baths of the Cynosarges, the retreat outside
the city for those not of pure Athenian blood, such as
vagrant philosophers, pretty ladies, parasites who were
fasting for the time being; places which were warmed
for the proletariat in the winter. In Theophrastus we
read of an episode which parallels the experience of the
Athenian tavern keeper:
"He is apt, also, to go up to the coppers in the baths,
to plunge the ladle in, amid the cries of the bath-man
and to souse himself; saying that he has had his bath,
and then, as he departs, no thanks to you ! " In explana
tion of the above passage it should be stated that a
shower bath was sometimes taken by having water
dashed over the head. It was the bath attendant s duty
to do this service which our Pyrgopolynices does for
himself, saving his money, and depriving the attendant
of his fee. In all disputes the voice of the tavern-keeper
was likely to be heard in the land, first of all, loudest of
all. "Whom do you take me to be?" asks Poverty, in
the Plutus of Aristophanes, after having threatened the
GREECE & ROME 75
admirable Blepsidemus and Chremylus, who are intent
upon expelling her from the hearths of all the just people
in Hellas: "Some hostess (bar harlot), or pulse-porridge
seller," responds Chremylus promptly, "otherwise you
would not have screeched at us, having wronged you
in no way." It was held shameful to enter into a con
troversy with a courtesan, a bath attendant, a tavern-
keeper, a fish monger, or an itinerant peddler of any kind.
Aristophanes is almost positive evidence on this point,
and Theophrastus is almost equally outspoken.
Furthermore, as we have said above, it would have
dishonored any man of good morals to even have been
seen in a tavern no matter what the circumstances, aside
from taking part in the revelries and brawls which so de
lighted the idle Athenian proletariat, where not even a
respectable servant could have passed his spare time and
saved his moiety of reputation.
Athenaeus quotes Cynulcus on the frequentation of
taverns and cook-shops as follows:
66 And do you dare talk in this way, you who are not
rosy fingered/ as Cratinus says . . . and do you bring
up again the recollection of that poet your namesake,
who spends all his time in cook-shops and inns? Although
Isocrates the orator has said, in his Areopagitic Oration,
*But not one of your servants ever would have ventured
to eat or drink in a cook-shop; for they studied to keep
up the dignity of their appearance, and not to behave
like buffoons/ And Hyperides, in his oration against
Patrocles (if, at least, the speech is a genuine one), says
that they forbade a man who had dined in a cook-shop
from going up to the Areopagus. But you, you sophist,
spend your time in cook-shops, not with your friends
(hetairon), but with pretty ladies (hetairon), having a
lot of cadets, male and female about you, and always
carrying about these books of Aristophanes, and Apollo-
76 THE INNS OF
dorus, and Ammonius, and Antiphanes, and also of
Georgias the Athenian, who have all written about the
pretty ladies at Athens. O, what a learned man you
are!"
Public morality, such as it was, decreed that the
frequentation of these places was infamous, and the ban
extended even to the man who went there but once.
The public of Athens seems to have had a well developed
sense of the proprieties, and reserved for gluttons, mem
bers of the oldest profession, brawling roisterers, and cynics,
spoken of above the privilege of immune frequentation.
The law left such inhibitions to the discretion of the
populace, and the opinion of disadvantage which was the
companion of such infractions of the moral code lay also
in their hands; we have no proof that the law ever oc
cupied itself seriously with the taverns and their keepers,
save only in cases where false measures had been used or
in cases of murder or treason, nor have we been able to
adduce evidence of law in the matter of taverns and inns
except such as is conventional or hypothetical, as in
Plato.
There was, on the other hand a peculiar edict of
Xerxes levelled against the Babylonians after their revolt
and appeal to arms. He promulgated a decree which
carried with it the severest penalties; a ukase which
prescribed that the Babylonians from then on were to
pass their lives in taverns and other places where revelry
ran rife, in order that such character and manly vigor
as remained to them should be disintegrated and leave
them a supine assemblage of slaves ripe for tribute and
utterly unfitted for self government or the effort neces
sary to secure independence.
One institution, however, proves that the police of
Athens were not entirely indifferent to the orgies of
drunkenness common in Athens, and the brawls and
GREECE & ROME 77
breaches of the peace which followed in their wake: I
mean the oenoptae, or inspectors of wine. Athenaeus
says of them: "The ancients affected so much of luxury
and grandeur that they had cup-bearers for their tables,
and in addition, inspectors of their wines." The Athen
ians made a public charge of that inspection. Eupolis
speaks of the same institution: "0 city of Athens, you
are happier than wise. You who are commanded by
those whom you have condescended to name inspectors
of your wines."
The oenoptae, however, had no right of inspection
over the taverns. Like the gynoeconomos, whose care
was the public weal, and who took precautions that the
number of guests did not exceed thirty, and that no
seditious gatherings should take place under pretext of
political banquets or excursions into the country, the
oenoptae did not concern themselves with particulars of
a dinner, they merely saw to it that such as drank did
so according to law.
"Now," remarks Athenaeus, "their function is unim
portant. The oenoptae number three, and they furnish
guests with necessary information during a dinner.
Therefore they have come to be known as *eyes/ "
There might have been an official over the inspectors,
an official whose powers were more far reaching; he
might, for instance have had control of the enforcement
of all laws concerning drink, the imposts, and especially
the sale to the public, and therefore to the taverns. A
passage from Plato, unfortunately incomplete, but cited
by Pollux, is of interest in this connection. It seems that
Plato desired to praise a man named Strabo for his
excellent management of the duties incumbent upon the
administration of the wine trade, and for that reason
calls Tn m a taverner. A most peculiar tribute, and one
which might be tortured into a tolerable epigram.
78 THE INNS OF
The Athenian innkeeper had not only to contend
with the officials of the wine business, he was also sub
ject to the visitations of the opsonomos, the official who
had authority over food stuffs; and whose chief aim in
life seems to have been the prosecution of retailers of
commodities who had recourse to misrepresentation and
lying in carrying on the affairs of business at a profit.
The Athenian inns dealt in food and drink, and were
frequented for both purposes even as those of Europe
today. These places served meals in proportion to the
excellence of the cook, the difficulty experienced in
carrying the carved pieces of the sacrificial victims from
the altars, and the complaisance of the landlord, and
Hermes regretted bitterly the effect Plutus has had upon
hospitality in the Athenian taverns:
HERMES: I used to enjoy all the good things in the
female innkeepers shops as soon as it was morning,
wine-cake, honey, dried figs, as many as was fitting for
Hermes to eat: but now I go to bed hungry and sleep in a
garret.
CARIO: Is it not then with justice, who sometimes
caused their loss, although you enjoyed such good
things?
HERMES: Ah me, for the cheese-cake that was baked
on the fourth day!
CARIO: You long for the absent, and call in vain.
HERMES: Ah me, for the ham which I used to de
vour!
CARIO: Leap upon the bottle, there in the open air.
HERMES: And for the warm entrails which I used to
devour!
CARIO: A pain about your entrails seems to torture
you.
HERMES: Ah me, for the cup that was mixed half
and half!
THE VEGETABLE COOK
GREECE & ROME 79
CARIO: You ca.Tm.ot be too quick in drinking this
besides and running away.
HEKMES: Would you assist your own friend in any
way?
CARIO: Yes, if you want any of those things in
which I am able to assist you.
HEBMES: If you were to procure me a well baked
loaf and give it me to eat, and a huge piece of meat from
the sacrifices you are offering within,
CARIO: But there is no carrying out!
The Greek restaurants had one door on the street,
always open, and the most delicious aromas and odors
streamed out to assail the senses and stomachs of the
passers-by, where custom hesitated and was lost. Often
these odors would awaken a sluggard who would send
a slave out to find the morsel so much to his taste; this
usually completed the conquest and was sound adver
tising. Such was the experience of Philoxenos, glutton
and poet, one day. He was always keen upon the de
lights of the table as soon as he was awake. He chanced
to pass by the door of a famous innkeeper and his nostrils
were assailed by the delicious emanations from a goulash
or ragout which seems just to have attained the very
acme of culinary perfection. "Run out and get that
dish for me/ 5 he commanded in a voice vibrant with
ravenous desire.
"But," replied the slave, who tested prices by the
poignancy of the aroma, "it will be very dear."
"Very well/* replied Philoxenos, "so much the
better!" Surely an exclamation worthy of Brillat-
Savarin!
All inn-kitchens, however, were not equally good, and
unless the fastidious customer paid his compliments to
the best known establishments, as for instance one whom
Athenaeus has cited under the head of cook and vintner,
80 THE INNS OF
he was likely to meet with a rogue, a bad dinner, and a
malodorous experience, all at the same time, and might
find no one in and the ovens cold. There was a certain
Lacedaemonian wholly uninformed as to anything which
concerned inns and taverns, and, being a Lacedaemonian,
he would know nothing of such things, and he addressed
himself to one of those kitchen keepers who was out of
everything. The former happened to be a man of some
rude wit and spirit. "The Laconian," says Plutarch, from
whom we have taken the anecdote, "gave the tradi
tionally soft and brief answer; having purchased a fish
in a tavern he delivered it to the taverner whom he had
accosted. When the taverner demanded of him vinegar,
cheese, and oil, he made answer as follows: "If I had had
what you demand of me, I would not have bought
the fish."
There were itinerant retailers of foodstuffs who had
portable ovens which burned charcoal. They were
numerous in the streets of Athens, but their favorite
haunt seems to have been the Agora and its vicinity.
They sold all sorts of underdone foods from their little
ovens, and, almost without exception, they had the mak
ings of excellent rascals in them. They were more guile
ful than even those oakum dealers and horse traders of
whom Aristophanes speaks so pointedly as being worthy
to succeed Cleon in conducting the governmental affairs
of the city. Nevertheless, customers often were able to
procure from these peripatetic retailers such delicacies as
were not served in the kitchens of the inns* Hot sausages
highly seasoned with pepper, let the venders of hot dogs
take notice, hash, omelettes wrapped in fig leaves (prob
ably the remote ancestor of the hot tamale), and a sort
of fruit pudding such as the English know today as plum
pudding: the Athenian commoner was exceedingly fond of
these last two delicacies. It is true that such dishes were
GREECE & ROME 81
grossly prepared, but they tickled to admiration the
tastes of the sailors and other plebeian sojourners in the
city. They also dealt in sweets such as honey cakes and
preserved fruits, blanc-mange, disposed handily in rows
in their shallow baskets woven from fragrant rushes,
very convenient and appropriate for the purpose. Carry
ing their stocks in trade they trotted up and down the
streets of the city and also sold their wares at the games
and other spectacles. Aristotle, who would never have
been suspected of having been interested in such things,
has said much of their hawking methods and their cries
as they glided through the crowds of the amphitheatre
and worked their way by degrees to the topmost benches,
to offer some customer their wares. According to the
grave philosopher, who has been suspected of having
a sense of humor, the success of a play, whether tragedy
or comedy, was always in inverse ratio to that of the
hawkers with their merchandise. If the play was unin
teresting, the audience appeased its appetite with cakes
in recompense for the disappointment to its curiosity, but
if the play was gripping, as for instance, the Oedipus of
Sophocles, or if the sublimity of Aeschylus had found an
instrument worthy to interpret it, the hawkers met with
the short shrift which should overtake all vociferous
votaries of Lucrum when they punctuate a Chopin noc
turne or a Beethoven sonata with their appeal to the
flesh. It would be highly interesting as well as entertain
ing to try some such comparison in our own theatres; I
mean in such of them as still permit an ox-like public
to be annoyed and harassed by the demands of such
gentry. The article vended might, for convenience, be
packages of salted peanuts, or other tidbit with a volatile
base. The greater the sales, the more the audience
would enjoy the play.
These petty peddlers of dainties were always pros-
82 THE INNS OF
perous and numerous at Athens, but only in Athens.
In every other Greek city, even in those in which it might
have been thought that conditions were favorable for
their trade, they found it unprofitable or utterly im
possible. We do not include Sparta in our survey, because
gormandising was always regarded there as a crime, and
cooks, caterers, and the like were classed as poisoners
and driven from the country, like any Sicilian mal
content* Corinth, the luxurious harbor of pleasure and
new sensations, is the city we have in mind; Corinth,
which placed such extravagant values upon hidden assets
and virgin territory. "Not everyone," laments Horace,
"can go to Corinth/* Yet with all its love of luxury,
Corinth was far behind Athens in matters of eating and
taste in choosing, and one of the characters in the Mer
chant of Diphilus is advised to hold in check his gas
tronomic preferences and comply with the law. "If,"
says he indignantly, "one sets a splendid table, the magis
trates promptly inquire into his manner of living and
the manner in which he employs his time; they ascertain
whether his revenues are sufficient to meet the outlays
demanded by such luxury. If his expenses are greater
than his income they will not permit it, if he persists in
his course, he must make amends. Should the day arrive
when he has no more property and he still persists in his
manner of life he is turned over to the executor of jus
tice who inflicts an infamous punishment upon him. 55
See how they dealt with luxury in one of the most luxury
loving republics of Greece!
Alciphron speaks in the same manner of Corinth, but
what Diphilus imputes to the severity of the laws,
Alciphron lays at the door of avarice. "One need only
approach that city to become aware of the miserly selfish
ness of the rich and the misery of the poor. It is noon,
I sally out to the bath, I see a great many young people,
GREECE & ROME 83
handsome, with faces gay and spirituel; none take the
road leading to the houses of the wealthy, all direct their
steps toward the Kranion, where the wine merchants
and fruit sellers have their booths. I see that they keep
their eyes bent upon the ground; some rake together the
pods of peas, others the shells of nuts, examining the
heaps with attention to see whether there is anything
there upon which to grind their teeth. They scrape
with their nails the peeling of the pomegranate; the
tiniest morsels of bread which have been trampled under
foot do not escape their search and are eaten."
Taverns and inns would not prosper in a city in which
the wealthy were restrained from extravagance by rigid
sumptuary laws, and the poor were forever constrained
by their melancholy condition to a diet of air sparingly
tempered with bread. The city was scarcely visited by
lighters except for the purpose of supplying their daily
allowance of wine, so that a single tavern-keeper could
have supplied all the custom to be found there. Plutarch
relates of Dionysius the Tyrant, that when he was living
in exile at Syracuse, his condition was no better than
that of a porter, and that he was compelled to purchase
his wine of the tavern-keeper, and that this was only the
stronger proof of the ignominious level to which he had
fallen.
But how different were things in happy and light
hearted Athens! The taverns were always open there,
day and night; you could always get a joint from some
succulent sacrifice in the inn and in good company;
always, somewhere in Athens these fraternities which
we shall later see again in Rome, were holding a banquet
with the delicate cuts which the gods with as much wis
dom as good taste refused. At Athens it was not re
garded as shameful to go daily to the tavern to buy wine,
and the wealthy did not blush to sell the same. Accord-
84 THE INNS OF
ing to an ancient usage in France, the abbots of monas
teries, the high magistrates, even the kings sold in detail
the products of their vineyards; a custom common also
in Italy, and especially in Florence and Naples. The
wealthy Greek vineyard owners left such wines as they
wished to dispose of in their houses in the city, under
charge of their slaves. The disgrace lay not in selling
the wine but in selling what purported to be wine, and
adulteration was deemed a disgrace which only a vintner
or tavern-keeper could be guilty of.
Yet in that lovely city so redolent of the soul of
gayety one could find no place in which to eat and drink
in good company, without some disagreeable individuals
to spoil the evening. The taverns, as we have said, were
impossible; therefore the wealthy men-about-town, who
had time on their hands, dropped into the booths of the
perfumers and the barbershops to exchange the news
and discuss matters of interest.
The women were forbidden to enter places where they
might mix with men or find themselves in male com
pany, and this was especially true of the taverns; they
therefore betook themselves to the gristmills to gossip,
just as the rural English woman frequents the ship
chandlery. Here they sang their songs of hero and
spindle, and love and life, while the men assembled in
these shops of good repute, principally those of the bar
bers, predestined, according to Theophrastus and Aris
tophanes, to be the centers of all the chit-chat, the head
quarters of writers and playwrights who decreed peace
and war and made or unmade the destinies of the State,
according to the visionary plans which they wrote in
charcoal on the walls. Aristophanes would have us
understand that all Athens was agog with the sudden
good which had befallen some dandy, and the barbers
were entirely responsible for the spread of the news* In
GREECE & ROME 85
many places Aristophanes mentions a certain Cosmos,
a perfumer, in whose shop the critics of Cleon met to
discuss him and his policies, and of the crowd of dema
gogues who raised such an uproar in front of the tribune
of the leather currier. Nor was there danger in thus
taking part in the political criticism of the time in these
shops, the haunt of the well-to-do idlers and literary
ciitics, the radicals of the times. Radicalism is not often
in conflict with the police unless it is clad in rags. It
was a contention of Demosthenes that Aristogiton, the
better to convince the people of his loving devotion to
their interests, made it a point never to be seen in the
shop of perfumer or barber; and the only instance I have
been able to find of a man of evil reputation slipping in
and intruding himself into such company is the arrogant
upstart whom Theophrastus satirizes in his Characters.
In addition to the taverns where wine was sold, and
the shops of the perfumers and barbers, there was another
institution where gossip ran rife, I refer to the thenn-
opolia. These establishments were very popular in
Greece and especially so at Athens, and we shall find
them well established at Rome in due course. The
thermopolia were places where hot drinks were sold.
The word is of purely Greek origin as is seen from the
roots, and in addition there is a passage in Pollux which
confirms the statement.
It is well known that in antiquity hot water was
esteemed as a delectable beverage and, in addition, it
was thought to possess certain hygienic virtues. Plutarch
in his Treatise on the Preservation of Health remarks
that it may be drunk without thirst, that it relaxes and
refreshes the body, and that it fortifies the bodily forces.
The eulogies of Dr. Sangrado must be taken as the sum
and total of all the opinions of antiquity, setting aside,
of course, that of Antonius Musa:
THE INNS Of
"In fact the wine had made me very thirsty. The
suspicion of anyone else but Sangrado would have been
awakened by the thirst that consumed me, and the great
draughts of water I tossed off; but he, fancying seriously
that I was beginning to acquire a taste for watery potions,
said to me with a smile: *I can see, Gil Bias, that you
no longer have such an aversion for water. Od s life,
you drink it like nectar. That does not astonish me,
my friend; I knew that you would get used to this liquid/
Sir/ I replied, there is a time for everything; I would
give just now a hogshead of wine for a pint of water/
This answer delighted the doctor, who did not lose so
good an opportunity of extolling the excellence of water*
He began a new panegyric upon it, not as a calm orator,
but as an enthusiast.
" * A thousand times/ he exclaimed, a thousand times
more estimable and more innocent than the taverns of
our days, were those water-establishments of former ages,
whither men did not go shamefully to prostitute their
wealth and their life in glutting themselves with wine,
but where they met to amuse themselves, decently, and
without risk, by drinking warm water! We cannot too
much admire the wise foresight of those worthies of the
State, who established places of public resort, where
water was given to all comers, and who confined wine to
the shops of the apothecaries, permitting its use only by
prescriptions of the physicians. What a stroke of wis
dom ! Doubtless/ he added, * it is by some happy remains
of this ancient frugality, worthy of the golden age, that
persons are found to this day who, like you and me,
drink nothing but water, and who as a preventive against,
or as a cure for all ailments, believe in drinking warm
water that has never boiled; for I have observed that
when water has been boiled it is heavier and sets less
easily on the stomach/
GREECE & BOME 87
"Whilst holding forth thus eloquently, I more than
once thought I should burst out laughing. Yet I main
tained my gravity, I did more; I entered into the doc
tor s views. I blamed the use of wine, and pitied man
kind for having acquired a taste for so pernicious a
beverage. Then, as my thirst was not yet quenched, I
filled a large goblet with water, and after taking a deep
draught, said to my master, Come, sir, let us quaff this
beneficent liquor! Let us revive in your house the
ancient water-taverns which you regret so much!* He
applauded these words, and exhorted me for a whole
hour never to drink anything but water. I promised
him, in order to accustom myself to this beverage, to
imbibe a large quantity every night; and, the better to
keep my promise, I went to bed resolved to go to the
tavern every day/*
Had the good doctor prescribed his aqueous specific
at the same low price at which hot water was served in
the thermopolia in Greece, and had he used as an excipient
infusions made from rare plants, charging, for example
three half obols, which the comic poet Philemon has
declared was the price of a cupful, he might have trans
formed that sovereign remedy into a popular beverage,
and have gone down into history as the inventive genius
whose ingenuity produced the soda fountain and all its
products.
Success was in his grasp had he but taken the trouble
to follow the precepts of the authors from whom he must
have amassed his information. Had he, for example,
stimulated the tastes and appealed at the same time to
the vanity of his patients by following the classical pro
cedure, and mixing equal volumes of very hot water and
very cold excipients in the form of decoctions, his prac
tise would have been enormous, and had his excipient
been wine, there is no saying where it would have ended.
THE INNS OF
^^M H
And it is true that this method had much to recom
mend it. Fluids could not be taken boiling hot, and it
was long deemed dangerous to drink ice cold beverages
in a hot climate. The temperature of the potion after
the mixture of the two was pleasant and salubrious, and
the trouble it necessitated made it only the more to be
desired. There is a passage in the letters of Aristaenetus
which bears directly upon the practice of mixing cold
water and hot wine. It is as follows:
"The cup bearer, skilled in his calling, has heated
the wine, which he will mix with cold water, in just such
proportion that the coldness of the water will lower the
temperature of the wine, excessive heat being moderated
by extreme cold, and the resulting beverage will be gra
cious to the palate in taste and in temperature/
Patients in raging fevers were not so scrupulous and
drank their wine ice cold. A courtesan was once enter
taining the comic poet Diphilus at supper and presented
him with a cupful of wine cooled with snow:*" By all the
gods," exclaimed the poet, "you have an ice-house in
your well/ 5 "Yes," answered the Athenian courtesan
with all the sprightly spirit of her class, "I throw the
prologues of your comedies into it when necessary. It
need not astonish you, Diphilus."
Finally, let us say, in praise of the uniform sobriety
of Greece, and to give the lie to the slander philosophical
reprobates later made current in Italy, that the term
pergraecari (to drink like a Greek), to get beastly drunk,
that in the times of which we speak, they mixed their
wine with water in Hellas. If it was taken pure, it was
the exception and not the rule.
And also, in the Heroic Age, when tradition assumes
that the whole nation was plunged into drunkenness,
which was continual and habitual, and was said to be
insatiable for the finer vintages of the soil in the Heroic
GREECE & ROME
Age, let us repeat, it was even as it was in the times of
which we treat, with, perhaps, the factor of moderation
still more preponderant. One who knew the secret of
procuring the most subtle mixture of wine and water
was deemed worthy of a statue; a lesson which seems to
have been lost upon a later but more inwardly degen
erate age. In the Homeric age, these mixtures of wine
and water were mixed before anything else was con
sidered. Large amphorae were employed for the pur
pose, and the cups of the guests were filled from these,
just as we have seen that at Assyrian and Babylonian
feasts, the cups of the revellers were replenished from
the huge silver urns which stood almost as high as the
eunuch slave s breast. Drunkenness at these entertain
ments in pre-classical Greece was not the rule; on the
contrary, the aim was to secure the maximum of effect
with the minimum of evil results, and, like Friar Tuck,
they loved to feel the grape at their very finger tips
without invading their intelligence or cheapening the
reputation for good repute which was one of the most
precious attributes of primitive strength. Because of that
continual sobriety, that detestation of pure wine, that
continual dilution with water, which must have been
particularly grateful when they opened the acrid pipes
from Arcady or Here, which rendered those who drank
them dull and torpid, and the ceramia which caused
women to miscarry, or even in the case of the vintages
of Laconia which were thick and heavy, or those of
Boeotia and Phocis, which were a mixture of grape and
pine cone extract, water made them all more pleasant to
the taste and less liable to overpower the head, as it
helped to dilute whatever poison they contained. The
use of water, however, might be questioned by a fine
taste where the rare vintages of wines of Smyrna, de
canted as they were in the shadow of the temple of the
90 THE INNS OF
mother of the gods, were concerned, or the white polios
wine of Syracuse, the wines of Lesbos or Thasos, gleaming
like gold in the pale yellow depths of their shimmering
volume, so exquisite to the taste with their sweet and
generous flavor, and which as they aged more and more
came by degrees to have much of the odor of the finest
apples. And one might well demand why they deemed
it necessary to debase the wonderful vintage of Chios
by incorporating it into any mixture? Or why adulterate
the delicate wine of the Aegean Islands with impure
water, as the Latins say? a wine so rare and costly that
when it was used even at Rome it was at only the most
sumptuous entertainments. It was regarded as the glory
of the island from which it came, and the Chian vintage
was celebrated with medals on which were engraved a
sphinx crowned with clusters of grapes on the one side
and on the other an amphora. Rare and costly indeed
was this wine, probably the rarest of all antiquity, and
was so precious that those who sold it sometimes drank
it from the amphora as such an ambrosia could give them
more pleasure than the profit they would take later on
from its sale. Goguet remarks that the preference of
the Greeks for mixtures of wine and water were founded
upon long established custom and on the headiness and
high alcoholic content of the native vintages. "All
Greek wines were luscious/* says he, "and if one drank
but a small quantity it flew to the head and rendered one
tipsy. In order to combat these tendencies they evolved
the method of exact dilution best suited to each vintage,
and when this was once worked out, they followed the
rules. Some wines were diluted more, some less, each
according to its quality. Homer proves this in many
passages."
One should not suppose that the professional drunk
ards took kindly to the usage, however, as there were
GREECE & ROME 91
many cynics whose dispositions were scarcely less acid
than their countenances, who would have thought their
cups and their persons profaned if a single drop of water
had come in contact with either, and our encomium on
the general sobriety of Greece would not ring true were
we to omit stating that there were many such tipplers
and bottle-nosed sages in Athens and Sparta, in Thebes
and in the Greek settlements of Asia Minor, and, in fact,
throughout all Greece.
Aelian has preserved a list of the more celebrated
devotees of the flowing bowl, and we confess to some
little confusion at finding it so long. The tyrants of
Hellas were all given to alcoholic excesses, Dionysius
(The Younger), of Syracuse, of whose exile in Corinth
we have spoken above, Charidemus, against whom
Demosthenes exercised his talents in vain, it was said
of him that wine acted as a spur to his cruelty but it
certainly detracted little from his subtlety. There are
many others in Aelian s list, but it seems unfair to chron
icle a leader s evil deeds without saying something of the
good he did as well, and unless the evidence is well authen
ticated, we shall not record such matters*
After the tyrants, the philosophers are given a place
of preference on Aelian s list. With them we shall not
be moved to leniency, as they did but dampen the dry-
ness brought on by their arid doctrines, "Lacydes and
Timon," remarks Aelian, "were not so well known as
philosophers as they were as drunkards."
Anacharsis, also, who was not enough of a Scythian
to take keenly to water, has a place in the middle of the
list, and our narrator of anecdotes states that while at
the court of Periander, his philosophical escutcheon was
besmirched by his drunken pranks. Diotomus was also
a great tippler. On him was bestowed the surname
"Funnel/* because he took the largest funnels he could
92 THE INNS OF
lay hands on, put the end in his mouth, and "swallowed
all the wine they could pour into it." He was certainly
a high priest of Dionysus, and the only guzzler that can
even be compared with him is that son of Syracuse who,
as Aristotle says, placed fresh eggs upon a carpet and
set a hen upon them, meanwhile, that no time might be
lost, retiring to a tavern to drink at his ease and wait
for them to hatch out. Cleomenes of Sparta also loved
his wine, but he lived amongst a populace which detested
alcoholic excesses, and would not tolerate them in indi
vidual or king, and Aelian s malignity can bring forward
but one charge against his sobriety: "he drank his wine
pure, in the Scythian fashion."
The Scythes, as is well known, were greatly given to
drunkenness, and among them a warrior s courage and
resource were reckoned and evaluated according to his
capacity to outlast the rest of the company in a drinking
bout. While there is no absolute evidence as to this,
other barbarians who had come from Scythia to Athens
had been known to drink almost to frenzy in the low
dives of the Piraeus or the Agora, on the days of solemn
festivals, and then stertorously sleep themselves sober on
the steps of the Parthenon or on the massive stairs of the
deserted Phyx. This seems to have been rather common
amongst such barbarians as were in the guard of the
archon, or the porters of the Areopagus or temples.
The Thracians, who were especially numerous in
Athens, where they formed almost the whole of the
domestic population, were by nature very like the
Scythians, and as drinkers they held their own with all
comers* Aelian has not included them in his index, but
what he has said of a barbarian race to the north may
well be applied to the Thracians. "It would be safe to
affirm that they live in wine; as other peoples use oil to
anoint their bodies, so do the Tapyrians soak themselves
in wine."
GREECE & ROME 93
Byzantium, whose sailors went in great numbers to
the port of Athens, its metropolis, was, among all the
cities of Thrace, the one in which there was the most
debauchery and drunkenness. Athenian depravity, re
acting upon the native coarseness and addiction to such
entertainment, gave such impulses free swing. Vice
flourished there, vice rude and robust, always brutal, and
insatiable. "It is said/ 3 writes Aelian, "that the Byzan
tines loved wine so passionately, they quitted their houses
and rented them to the strangers who came to live in
their city, in order that they might establish themselves
in taverns. They also left their women to the foreigners
and thus committed two crimes at the same time,
drunkenness and prostitution. When they had become
inebriated, they took the greatest pleasure in playing the
flute; the sound of that instrument being in closest accord
with gayety: they were not titillated by the thrill of a
trumpet, a thing which will enable one to sum up their
skill in arms and their fitness for war. . . . During the
siege of Byzantium, Leonidas, their general, seeing they
had abandoned their posts on the walls, which were then
being heavily attacked by the enemy, and that they
passed their entire days in their accustomed haunts,
ordered taverns to be established upon the ramparts.
That ingenious artifice held them, although a little late,
and they did not again abandon their posts. There was
no longer a reason for doing so. M
"Byzantium/* writes Menander, in a fragment of an
unidentified play, "Byzantium makes all the traders
tipsy. The whole night through for your sake we are
drinking, and, methinks, 5 twas very strong wine too. At
any rate I get up with a head on for four."
Everything in Byzantium announced it to be a city
in which brazen-faced debauchery and drunkenness were
normal and universal. Even the coin of the realm bore
on its faces the mark which characterized the national
94 THE INNS OF
morality: and, circulating throughout the ports of Hellas,
confessed through the Bacchic emblems stamped on their
faces the genuineness of the Byzantine orgiastic rites.
The images thus represented, we must suppose to have
been copied from the signs of certain Greek inns and tav
erns, though it would startle Reform to see a cabaret
with a sign flaunting such advertising as this. These
were no grapes clustered on their slender stems, nor
were they pot-bellied amphorae, with huge handles, nor,
finally, were they heads of Bacchus crowned with ivy
wreaths.
The detestable addiction of the Byzantines for drunk
enness was later on to be the cause of their downfall and
end. We have already spoken of the defense of the city
by Leonidas, and the ruse by which he prevented them
from falling victim to their enemies. Their fate was
reserved for a later time, and it was the destiny of the
Spartan Clearchus, who had resolved to conquer them,
to base his strategy upon their dissolute habits, succeed
in his military ambition, and ensnare the Byzantines by
using their own vices against them.
Let us then cite Polyaenos, who, in his work in Strat
egy, has furnished us with a full account of this curious
affair, probably the most interesting episode in the entire
history of Greek inns and taverns.
"When the Byzantines revolted, Clearchus was fined
by the ephors, and fled to Lampsacus with four ships.
He dwelt there in such a manner and made such an ap
pearance that it would be thought that he drank and
lived merrily and sumptuously. Meanwhile, Byzantium
was besieged by the Thracians, and they sent the com
manders of their forces to demand assistance of Clearchus.
He affected to give the impression that he was steeped
in drunkenness, and it was not until the third day that
they were able to gain an audience with him. Having
GREECE & ROME 95
heard their prayers, he told them he pitied them, and
promised them aid.
"In addition to his four vessels, he armed two others,
and made sail to Byzantium; there he convoked the as
sembly, and advised that they embark on his ships all
the troops, foot or horse, for the purpose of attacking the
Thracians in the rear. That plan was executed, and the
pilots were already under orders from him to proceed
immediately to sea and lie to under arms, as soon as they
saw the signal of battle raised on high.
"When this had been carried out, Clearchus, staying
ashore with the two commanders, said: *I am thirsty/
And, finding himself near a tavern, he entered with them,
then, with the guards which he had posted in this am
buscade, he murdered the two leaders. The tavern was
closed immediately afterwards, and the keeper ordered
to hold his tongue; thus, having removed their com
manders, and having succeeded in getting their forces out
of the city, he was able to march his own guards in, and
remained master of the place/* (Polyaenus, Lib. n,
Let us then bring this curious history of Greek inns and
taverns to a close with this no less curious episode, as
when a tun is broached, the wise do not remove the bung
and faucet, after having drawn off a huge bumper, and
taken a long pull at it. But having thus finished with
these hostelries of ancient Greece, with the taverns of
Athens and Byzantium, which none of the scholars, not
even Barthelemy, or Scaliger or Casaubon have known,
or at least, have not discussed at any length, disdaining
the subject, Athens was noted for many things, and not
the least lovely among them were the violets which
crowned the city s beauty; Hymettus was famous for its
honey, and the murmurous humming of the myriads of
bees which gathered it, yet the penetrating and haunting
96_ THE INN-S OF
fragrance of the wild thyme with which the slopes of the
eminence abounded and with which they still abound is
a memory that time itself cannot destroy; an ethereal
haze of perfume, the very spirit of Hellas, the Hellas of
Theocritus, and Bion, and Moschus* It charms even the
wild and picturesque loveliness of a scene hallowed by the
associations of centuries, and the tributes of great poets,
and seen, alas, through the mists of antiquity. Still, let
me hope that I have been able to diffuse a little of the
freshness and spirit which permeates the traditions of
Greece, to distill for moderns a little of the perfume which
almost intoxicated me when writing of this subject, and
finally, without infraction of the law, to perfume, alas,
but faintly, our own dry atmosphere with the fragrance
of those fine old tuns from Biblos in Phoenicia, or with
the exquisite bouquet of the vintages of Lesbos, Rhodes,
or Herachia.
The need to be complete and exact has, perhaps,
forced me to introduce many dry details, some disserta
tions of critical dullness, some philological curiosities,
but I have striven to blend them with other details more
absorbing and so retain the interest of my readers. Let
him accept this work as the Greeks did their wines: the
acrid pitch was necessary, and when a tun was found full
of sea water, they merely tossed it back into its natural
element.
GREECE & ROME 97
CHAPTER VH.
Rome Wealth brings its attendant ills Tavern keepers still held
in contempt Not admitted to military service Hospitality tokens held
in high respect Amusements and festivals wild and brutal The circus
and its bloody games Helwgabalus Nero Claudius, Vitellius and
Otho, frequenters of vile inns Nero the author of the worst enormities.
We come at last to Italy, and the western civilization,
for by that, and all it implies, we mean Rome. In Italy,
we shall find that publicans and their establishments were
held in as great and abiding contempt as in Greece. If
anything, the Italians detested such innovations even
worse, and the reasons are not hard to discover. First of
all, as among the Greeks, was pride of race, the outstand
ing characteristic of the Roman from the days of Romulus
to those of Ammianus Marcellinus. One may, without
difficulty, imagine the attitude of Appius Claudius toward
hospitality which was bought and paid for; and the rude
and virile enemies of Pyrrhus, who scorned to remove a
foe that had proved his superiority to valor of the highest
type, would have also scorned anything savoring of
commercialism in the matter of a tired traveller s neces
sities. In a short time, however, we find an increasing
internal trade making demands upon conditions unfavor
able to increasing travel, and when we reach the age of
the most polished of the Latin dramatists, we find Ter
ence, at twenty-seven, unknown, poorly clad, a manu
mitted slave, in the house of Caecilius, at that time the
popular dramatist of Rome, whither he had been sent by
the Curile Aedile, that the author of reputation might
pass upon the Andrian. So excellent was the work that
the poor foreigner was invited at once to share the dinner
of his host and to lodge in his house. In the interval
98 THE INNS OF
between Plautus and Terence the great Roman houses had
by degrees assumed more and more of the tone of princely
character. The conquests had begun, and the inhabi
tants of the peninsula were brought more and more into
contact with the outside world and with manners and
usages foreign to their culture and their way of thinking.
Wealth flowed in incalculable profusion, and it brought
all the attendant ills in its train, Syrian and Greek,
Egyptian, Jew and barbarian migrated to the center of
things and each found a fertile field for the exercise of his
own particular calling. Although the ancient rigid
standards had weakened materially at the beginning of
the first century before our era, the tavern keeper and
the petty tradesman were held in no less contempt than
had been the case in earlier times, and we shall find this
true almost without exception for a period of over a
thousand years in the history of the greatest of the ancient
seats of culture and power. Numerous forceful passages
from the works of Roman writers could be cited in proof,
but it will suffice to show the position held by such trades
in the eyes of the law, and from that evaluation, we can
easily estimate their position in the social life of the time.
In the eyes of the law, the innkeeper, the pander, and
others of like standing were on the same footing, and the
wife or concubine of a tavern keeper was so lightly
esteemed that she was exempt from the provisions of
legislation against adultery and other problems of do
mestic triangulation: her position was so lowly that the
law might have been offended if she failed to break it,
or even if she heeded it at all. Innkeepers were not
admitted to military service, nor so far as I have been able
to ascertain, did they form a gild, as did other tradesmen.
This may have been accidental, but I am inclined to
doubt it from one or two fugitive passages in Petronius
and the Theodosian code. It need not seem strange to
GREECE & ROME
us when we find the consensus of classical opinion almost
unanimous upon the evil repute and the dastardly char
acter of the publicans generally. Furthermore, most of
them were probably of foreign extraction; the kind we
in the Pacific littoral designate as the "kind that can t
go back"; and down until the very end of the Republic
no man having due regard for decency and honor would
frequent such a place or even enter it. On the other
hand, under the empire, the finest gentlemen could enter
with impunity the various schools maintained for the
purpose of instructing budding genius gladiatorial, and
accumulating a competence sufficient to purchase a cosy
little tavern not too far from the arena, even as the
sailor s fondest hope lies in getting a pay-day large enough
to enable him to purchase a public house in Wapping, or
Limehouse, Paradise Street, or George Street, and live
at his ease the rest of his days. As among the Greeks,
shelter and nourishment were provided for among the
Romans as a right rather than a necessity from which
to wring a profit, and as a general thing a stranger or
traveller of importance had hospitable or friendly con
nections in the city which made him independent of inns
and lodging houses. There were also current among
the Romans those tokens of hospitality such as we have
seen amongst the Greeks, and they were as scrupulously
honored until the time of Marcellinus. Nor did their
virtue expire with the death of the original holders of the
parts; they could be bequeathed as a valued inheritance
from generation to generation. The circulation of such
tokens was of course greatly increased after Rome had
begun her march of conquest; the conditions governing
hospitality were then transferred more and more to
foreigners; and sometimes to entire cities and even states,
and almost without exception, the powerful patrician
families at Rome belonged to the municipal council or
100 THE INNS OF
S
was in some manner associated with governmental affairs,
and had in their clientele whole provinces which had the
right to look to them for necessities. Naturally, when
such individuals came to Rome they were never thrown
upon the tender mercies of an innkeeper, and it is probable
that such travellers formed a large percentage of the
number of transients visiting the city. Foreign ambas
sadors, unless the intention was to neglect them, were
never dependent upon inns and taverns; it was customary
to welcome and entertain them either in the house of
some prominent Roman, or to lodge them in some mansion
which was the property of the state itself. The reception
and entertainment of the Rhodian ambassadors were
examples of the former, that accorded the Carthaginian
envoys, of the latter. We shall have occasion to speak
of both a little later.
The free Roman citizen was under no such necessity
to go to a tavern for recreation, festive enjoyment or even
variety, as was, until a short time ago, the case with us.
His everyday life was not so largely occupied as ours with
the struggle for a living, and he consequently had more
leisure on his hands. The authorities met such a dan
gerous condition as this in the same manner that their
preceptors the Greeks did: by festivities, entertainments,
and military service. The more prominent among the
Roman citizenry, if they were not in camp, and as a rule
practically everyone spent many of his younger years
there, were continually active in their political interests,
as magistrates, senators, consuls, aediles, and the like.
The demands made upon such officials were frequently
crucial, but, unlike the exactions of modern business,
wearied but at the same time stimulated; it rarely caused
the individual to "break," as we today understand the
term. Neurasthenia was not common at Rome. The
sum and total of the philosophy of political activity was
GREECE & ROME 101
the oral treatment of problems, public participation and
discussion; and a play of the emotions, perhaps sometimes
too free, but more frequently restrained and constructive,
and, by their very nature, they did not dull the mind
because they compelled the individual to exert all his
faculties, while the demands of the military service com
pelled him to keep in excellent physical trim. Whenever
a Roman of the class described above had time to get
away from his political fence building, he generally
lavished it upon agriculture, at least during the republican
period and the early empire, but as culture became more
general, he divided his spare time between agriculture
and literature. Such was the noble otium of the Roman
statesman. I regret that I know of no word in our lan
guage which can define the term I have been compelled
to use, but John Morley s life is the best example among
the moderns.
Great patricians and men of wealth who had more
predilection to sensuality than to agriculture or literature
had in their villas and country places every means for
the gratification of their inclinations whatever they might
be and, until a very late age, there is little to be said in
such circles of inns and taverns.
The public life and civic interests of the masses were
in their way almost as rich as that which fell to the lot of
the patricians, and the amusements and pleasures lavished
upon them were on a scale not to be found in any capital
in the modern world, with the possible exception of Spain.
The Roman commoner annually elected his magistrate,
often amid scenes of factional warfare; he could listen to
the pleaders such as Hortensius or Cicero or Papinian;
his tribunes, who were well versed in mob psychology,
played upon the emotions and passions of the proletariat,
by biting sarcasms and stinging repartee. He was an
interested witness to all that passed before his eyes, and
102 THE INN S OF
Rome was the maelstrom of the civilized world; infinite
variety; an ever changing panorama for its citizens to
examine, criticize or praise: he was nothing if not hyper
critical, cynically so, and captious. This magnificent
city that ruled tie world held many beautiful things in
its powerful grasp; the varied throngs from every prov
ince, barbarian or semi-barbarous, furnished an unending
pageant of living and gorgeous color as inexhaustible as
the combinations of a kaleidoscope; and no matter where
her nationals might be, it was sufficient for them to pro
claim their nationality and fealty; these were their pro
tection and their refuge. "I am a Roman citizen," said
Paul, in the hands of his enemies; "I appeal unto Caesar/*
Many of the spectacles were at times too wild and brutal
for modern standards, but they were probably never dull,
and they were always full of life and movement.
An elastic religion, a cycle of festivities and holidays
that extended through the entire year, processions and
festivals of every sort, some for all the populace, some for
special sects and cults organized for liturgical purposes
there were many of these latter in ancient Rome. The
circus offered its pageants and games for their amuse
ment; the chariot races, so much a part of the national
character that the various political factions came to take
their names from the colors of the drivers: riots and street
battles often had their origin in the differences in course
of settlement between the various factions and their ad
herents: well might the Roman commoner cry "Bread and
Games* as the sum of the blessings to be extracted from
life itself. In the theatre he could enjoy the attempts of his
dramatists and poets to confine the fluid ease and airy
elegance of Greek fantasy in a Roman setting; an attempt
doomed at the very beginning to failure; even as French
and Italian opera will always fail in English because of
the impossibility of reproducing the psychology of the
GREECE & ROME 103
Italian and the Gaul along with their meaning. Among
the Romans, however, the theatre was never so highly
esteemed as was the circus and its bloody games. Huge
carnivora fighting to the death, the net thrower pitted
against the heavily armed gladiator, duels & outrance
between heavily armed antagonists of equal skill; such
spectacles served to amuse the leisure and cultivate the
lusts of a populace cruel by nature; a populace that in
later ages was better qualified to view such spectacles
than to take an active part in them; a truism graphically
illustrated in the bull fights of Spanish splicing coun
tries, and among our own captious baseball writers and
fans, who boo at the so-called age for hitting a homer,
but who, alas do not write like one.
The games of the circus were of frequent occurrence
but they were not held daily, and the Roman sought the
Campus Martius to while away a little of each day s
leisure. On this wide plain on the bank of the Tiber
the young engaged in athletic games while the elders
talked of affairs which ruled the destinies of all the world
between Britain and Parthia. As with the Greeks, so
also were the Romans favored in the matter of public
baths, which served the people as places of assembly and
amusement.
Some of these institutions, called thermae, were splen
did establishments, erected by the wealthy to prevent the
consequences of serious thought and concerted action on
the part of a populace no longer capable of either. Booths,
shaded arcades, promenades, even libraries were found
here; and the miserable ministers to appetite were
specialists in their callings. They had need to be; then
as now it was survival of the fittest, and a Commodus
would not have hesitated for an instant to order a bath
attendant to be thrown into the furnace if the water was
not hot enough, nor would a Heliogabalus have refrained
104 THE INNS OF
from ordering an unfortunate caterer, whose new fangled
sauce was not piquant enough to titillate the jaded taste
buds of the parvenu, to eat nothing but that sauce until
he had compounded another which met the requirements
of the imperial taste. Under conditions such as these
one may assume that the standards were at least as lofty
as the capacity for enjoyment. Why, then, should the
Roman have desired to confine himself within the four
walls of a pot-house or a cabaret?
The everyday life of Republican Rome was charac
terized, until the last century of its existence, by an aus
tere and provident simplicity which regarded extreme
wealth with contempt and suspicion, and which relieved
poverty in just moderation. There are many inns and
taverns mentioned in Plautus and there were probably
many such places in Rome and Magna Graeca, but after
all, Plautus was writing from Greek originals and may
have overstated the facts slightly.
It is worthy of note that in the reigns of the succeed
ing emperors public activities gradually ceased, and the
populace, having no longer important and more worthy
occupations to fill their days, began to frequent inns and
taverns; and, as the city declines and public character
decays, we shall find that these places will become more
and more the haunts of the quasi-respectable, and even
of the patricians, and no longer, as was formerly the case,
be patronized largely by the slaves and vagabonds. Not
withstanding the degradation of national character, the
standing of the publicans was not improved; on the con
trary, it was even rendered more contemptible by direct
legislation and by action of the courts. Claudius and
Nero were frequent visitors in the taverns, Vitellius and
Otho were also guilty of the same indiscretions. Let us
cite for our purposes the favorite author of Mark Twain;
I mean Suetonius: "Often/* says mine author, in speak
ing of Claudius, * c of ten he showed such heedlessness in
GREECE & ROME 105
word and deed that one would suppose that he did not
know or care to whom, with whom, or when or where he
was speaking. When a debate was going on about the
butchers and vintners, he cried out in the House: *who
can live without a snack, I ask you/ and then went on
to describe the abundance of the old taverns to which he
used to go for wine in earlier days/* (Chap. XL.)
Both Claudius and Nero were wild, and Nero was
more dissolute and abandoned than his father-in-law, but
as both were base at heart, Nero, being the younger, had
better opportunities. Claudius was a dullard and his
welcome would be in proportion to his ability to spend,
and in direct ratio to the terror with which his name in
spired those in the tavern. Nero had a personality which
could be very pleasing, and his character has been some
thing of an enigma to writers of history. In him was
combined an artistic sense of some discrimination, an
ability to appreciate good literature, and latent tendencies
toward ferocity that had, in some cases, the added stigma
of refinement. A character which had been restrained
and guided by Seneca and Burrhus, suddenly threw off
all restraint and went the limit in gratifying the ferocious
appetities that drove it on until, as was the case with
other and better tyrants such as Aurelian, and still more
dissolute despots, such as Commodus and Phocas, the
unknown designs of the emperor became a menace to his
familiars, and led them to take such measures as should
prevent the consequences of satiety, or of that morning
after feeling which has so often led to the downfall of the
most trusted ministers and officers. Tacitus has left us
an admirable sketch of the times of that odious tyrant
Nero:
"The consulship of Quintus Volusius and Publius
Scipio was remarkable for the tranquillity that prevailed
in all parts of the empire, and the corruption of manners
that disgraced the city of Rome. Nero was the author
106 THE INNS OF
of all the worst enormities. In the garb of a slave, he
roved through the streets, visited the brothels, and
rambled through all by-places, attended by a band of
rioters, who seized the wares and merchandise exposed
to sale, and offered violence to all that fell in their way.
In these frolics, Nero was so little suspected to be a
party, that he was roughly handled in several frays. He
received wounds on some occasions, and his face was dis
figured with a scar. It was not long, however, before
it transpired that the emperor was become a night-
brawler. *
Yet, dissolute as Nero was, such as he would scarcely
have frequented such places in earlier times, and we base
this contention upon a passage in Cicero in which he de
nounces another Roman no less dissolute than Nero, but
much more courageous, and abler. I refer to Marcus
Antonius.
" Judge then of the nature of this fellow/* says the
orator, in speaking of Antony s arrival in Italy. "When
he arrived at Bed Rocks at about the tenth hour of the
day, he skulked into a petty little wine-shop, hid there,
and kept on drinking until evening. From thence, get
ting into a gig, he was driven rapidly into the city and
came to his own house with his head veiled."
In another passage the great orator speaks of the
humiliation which he suffered at the hands of Piso, and
excoriates the latter for his love for such places.
"Infamous fellow/ 5 says the sage of Arpinum, "do
you remember that when I came to you with Caius
Piso, about the fifth hour of the day, you came out of
some hovel or other with your head wrapped up? And
you were wearing slippers, too, were you not? and when
you had suffocated us with the vile stench of that cook-
shop, with which your foetid breath was loaded, you
made the excuse of your health because you said that
GREECE & ROME 107
you were compelled to have recourse to some vinous
remedies? and when we had admitted the pretense, (for
what else could we do?), we stood a little while amid the
fumes and stench of your gluttony till you drove us
away by filthy language and still more filthy behaviour? 3 *
In concluding this introduction to everyday life in
Rome I wish to state that it was disgraceful for a family
of even moderate means to be without its own cellar,
bakery, and elaborate cuisine. In support of this I quote
again from Cicero s speech against Piso:
"In his house there were no dishes of silver, only
very large cups, and these are in fact all from Placentia,
due to his desire to avoid the appearance of scorning
his countrymen. On his table one sees no oysters, no
fish, only large chunks of meat which is almost tainted.
Dirty slaves wait on the table, and among them even
old men. With him the cook and serving man are com
bined into one person; he has not his own baker, and no
cellar. Bread and wine he buys from the dealer and
from the inn/*
Thus we see the attitude of the upper class citizen
toward petty dealers and especially towards inns and
taverns. And there is also a lesson to be learned; not
that we have ever shown much ability to learn from the
past and thus forecast the future; the lesson is this: in
ancient times it was not necessary for the citizenry of
character and ability to frequent roof -gardens or taverns
in order to exchange social obligations and discuss ques
tions of the day. On this account, the Greeks and
Romans could leave such dens to their proper denizens,
the slaves, the rabble, and that general class which
neither toils nor spins but which, like the lily and the
green bay-tree, flourished then, but fared never so
sumptuously as now.
108 THEINNSOF
CHAPTER VUL
The era of the Roman emperors The great highways The growth
of the Persian Post Service The menace of the imperial public houses
The Roman Diploma (diplomata tractarium) necessary for travellers
Landlords in Italy in the times of Polybius Petronius and Trimalchio
Cicero and Macula, the inn-keeper Horace and, taverns Inns dan
gerous places of refuge.
Let us, then, reverse the hour-glass of eternity, that
the sands of time may filter backward until we have
reached the era of the emperors of Rome: Augustus, or
the timid and inhuman Domitian, Marcus Aurelius, or
that stern disciplinarian Aurelian, who lived two cen
turies too late. Rome was then the sovereign city of
the known world, bound to every province by those
wide and solid roads, the number and ruins of which
astonish us to the present day, and which, after the
ascendency of barbarism, were still the arteries of such
transportation as existed through the dark ages. It made
no difference in what country the traveller found him
self, if he was bent upon leaving Gaul, or Germany, or
Greece, or Iberia, the highway he followed led him to
wards the Eternal City, and aU roads lead to Rome.
The stages of travel were so admirably calculated
that the end of each day s journey found the traveller
at a station where fresh horses and pack animals could
be obtained, and where food and lodging were procurable.
The post-houses were, in reality, great imperial inns
which served as ration depots and halting places for
military details, as well as the putting up of travellers,
when otherwise unoccupied by imperial missions or
other official guests. The entire system was an out
growth of the Persian Post Service, but in many ways
the Roman aggressiveness improved upon the model.
GREECE & ROME 109
Officials, known under the collective term frumentarii,
were assigned to the administration and inspection of
these great public houses: in addition to which they
also maintained a system of espionage which was useful
in keeping the authorities informed as to everything
going on in the neighborhood. Some of these official
delators were by nature so meddlesome that they placed
this duty even above their actual official calling, using
every means in their power to overhear the conversation
and plans of those lodging with them. If these plans
appeared to them treasonable, no time was lost in
denouncing the culprits to the emperor or to the prae
torian prefect. It is to be regretted that mere suspicion
was too often equivalent to condemnation, and Gibbon s
strictures were justified. Taking this interpretation,
these great inns were not so much a place of sanctuary,
a shelter from the storms of winter in dreary climes;
they were the lairs of espionage; in place of pleasant
lodgings offered free of charge, they were rather snares
perfidiously set and cunningly baited.
By virtue of such a system, the police, operating as
a huge organization could arrest and detain a far greater
number of criminals and malcontents than would have
been the case had these great hostelries been maintained
for official use alone. Gibbon has pointed out the utter
impossibility of escape under the emperors and has
cited one attempt under Tiberius, in which the fugitive
was apprehended and brought back. So perfect was the
organization, however, that even Tiberius saw nothing
to fear from the example and the matter was dropped.
In later times, however, this was not the case, as Aetius
probably owed his life to his escape from inimical author
ity, and Attila would probably have won the battle of
Chalons had Aetius been apprehended before he could
sue for pardon at the head of sixty thousand veterans
devoted to his interests.
110 THE INNS OF
As tlie institutions of which we are speaking were
imperial, it need not astonish us to learn that some
credentials were necessary in order to gain admittance
and procure the services of the master of posts and his
organization. The document in question was called the
diploma tradatorium under the earlier empire, but under
Constantine it came to be known as epistola evictionis,
a more specific term according to Bergier. The writ,
for such it was, consisted of two leaves, hence its name;
and the imperial couriers, who corresponded to what
the British call king s messengers, were of course always
provided with the diploma. Travelling emperors lodged
at these mansiones and held there a sort of local court
to receive the homage of local authorities and their
suites, and from this we may suppose that at times
these ions were accessible to all the world; they wit
nessed a ceaseless coming and going of nobles and high
officials, tourists of position, and even mere tradesmen.
On this account an official lodged there was always
exposed to danger no matter how carefully precautions
for his protection had been taken, and the emperors
therefore reserved for themselves the entire establish
ment when putting up there. The epistola evictionis was
the instrument used to clear the way for them and their
suites. All such documents bore the imperial seal and
were either issued by imperial authority direct, or by
some high official to whom that power had been dele
gated*
In spite of all the care taken to shield him, Titus fell
a victim to the dangerous and criminal enterprise of his
brother Domitian, in a mansio (post-house) in the Sabine
country, almost at the very gates of Rome. He was
taken with that raging fever which caused his death, and
tradition has it that the fever was the result of a poison
which set his blood on fire. The assassination of Aurelian
by his trusted general Mucapor in the post-house at
GREECE & ROME 111
Coenophrurium, between Heracleia and Byzantium,
proved yet again that notwithstanding the most pains
taking precautions, the gravest danger could still attend
and menace even princes in these imperial public houses*
Therefore we stress the fact that the diploma tradatorium
was a most difficult document to procure, and the reasons
for requesting it must have been vital and unavoidable.
Pliny the Younger, a powerf id minister high in the favor
of Trajan, begged the emperor s indulgence for having
granted Calphurnia post-horses without first having ob
tained imperial authorization, and this, notwithstanding
the fact that her business was so pressing as to admit
of no delay. The bearer of an imperial diploma was
literally able to command such service and attention
as not even Lady de Winter, in Dumas s Three Mus
keteers could have procured with Richelieu s famous
letter of absolution: "It is by my order and for the good
of the state that the bearer of this has done what has
been done.* 5 On the other hand, should an individual
or official present himself at a mansio and either seek
or force service from the imperial establishment, he was
liable to the most drastic punishment, no matter what
his station or influence. An episode in the life of Helvius
Pertinax, who later became emperor, will serve to illus
trate the severity of the regulations governing the post-
houses and service. Julius Capitolinus relates that when
Pertinax was praefectus cohortis, serving in Syria, he was
punished by the governor of that province for having
levied post-horses without the diploma, being ordered as
a consequence to proceed on foot from Antioch to the
place to which he had been ordered as legate. Under
the later empire it became very fashionable to apply for
this all powerful diploma, which was good for a certain
time and which became void automatically upon the
death or removal from office of the emperor or official
granting it. When such a request was honored, the
118 THE INNS OF
lucky recipient had great cause to congratulate himself
because of the prestige which the possession of such a
document conferred upon the bearer, whose importance
was at once augmented. He was empowered to take
any route that might suit his fancy. In special cases the
emperor granted a sort of perpetual diploma which was
good during the life of the possessor or during that of
the emperor whose seal it bore. In fact, due allowance
being made for the times, a diploma tractatorium was
equivalent to a pass good on any railroad or steamship
line, and in addition it granted the bearer carte blanche
in the diner and buffet car, as well as in the Pullman
stateroom, or for that matter, a special train, unlimited
service, and prompt and respectful obedience. The near
est approach which we know of is the katicherif, until
recently furnished to Turkish officials; a document which
carried with it most of the powers conferred by the old
Roman diploma, both as to hospitality and to horses,
supplies, and so on. King s messengers are also believed
to possess credentials almost as powerful. Upon the mere
presentation of the diploma, the bearer thereof did the
post-master the honor of receiving from him horses,
beasts of burden, and all the food and supplies of which
he and his suite might have need. Should the station
be short of supplies, a condition which did not often
occur, the stables empty of fresh beasts, the cellars dry,
the mansionarvus or stationarius would levy upon the
local inhabitants to supply his needs, and a requisition
such as this had all the weight of imperial sanction.
The rustics were ordered to furnish such animals and
stores as were enumerated in the diploma, and in num
bers, quantities, and quality, as specified therein. The
term used to denote such requisitioning was angariare, in
allusion to a usage prevalent amongst the Persians and a
saying current among the Greeks, of which we have
GREECE & ROME 113
spoken before. Marculphus, a Gallic monk, wrote a work
entitled Formulae, in which he compiled and preserved
the actual texts of many legal forms. To his industry
we are indebted for the text of one of these diplomata
tractatorium, or, as they were known in his time, circa
660 A. D., epistolae evictionis. The reader need not be
surprised at the munificence of the emperor in thus pro
viding for the needs of his legates, as they sometimes
travelled with an innumerable train of officials, secre
taries, slaves, and the like; and in some regions supplies
were scarce and had to be transported with the traveller.
(Name of Emperor), Emperor:
TO ALL OUR OFFICIALS AT THEIR POSTS OF DUTY.
Greeting:
Know ye that we have delegated ,
an illustrious gentleman, to be our legate or ambassador to
We therefore command you by
these presents to aid his excellency, to provide and furnish
his excellency with horses, to collect such quantity of
supplies as to him shall seem good and reasonable, in places
proper and convenient; furnish ordinary sumpter
horses and in addition; bread; hogs-
heads of wine; barrels of beer; sides of bacon;
cattle; hogs; suckling pigs;
sheep; lambs; geese; pheasants;
chickens; pounds of oil; pounds of pickle;
pounds of honey; of vinegar; of cummin;
of pepper; of coste; of cloves; of
aspic; of cinnamon; grains of mastic;
dates; .."... .pistache- almonds; pounds of
wax; of salt; of oils; ricks of hay;
of oats; and of straw.
Look ye that all these things are furnished him in full
and entirely < 9 in a place convenient, and let everything be
accomplished without delay.
114 THE INNS OF
From the foregoing, it is easily evident that life
under the emperors was full and abundant in all that
concerned their agents and legates, and we have reason
to believe that they acted with equal liberality toward
foreign ambassadors and august prisoners of war. Wit
ness the treatment of Zenobia by Aurelian and that of
Gelimer by Justinian, and neither of these princes was
noted for his liberality. Such profusion did not greatly
antedate the empire, however, and the complaints voiced
by the deputies from Rhodes, and of those from Mace
donia, inform the reader that Rome, during the period
of the Punic Wars, sumptuously entertained foreign am
bassadors of friendly states and lodged them in a house
owned by the government; but that representatives
whose home governments were of doubtful allegiance,
might possibly be subjected to some indignity. Legates
of the enemy were adequately cared for.
"Quintus Fulvius Gillo, a lieutenant-general of Scipio,
conducted the Carthaginians to Rome; and as they were
forbidden to enter the city, they were lodged in a country
house belonging to the state, and admitted to an audience
of the senate at the temple of Bellona." (Livy, XXX, 21 .)
In the case of the envoys from Rhodes, we find these
ambassadors expressing their displeasure at what they
considered a breach of diplomatic usage, as follows:
"In former times, when we visited Rome, after the
conquest of Carthage, after the defeat of Philip, and
after that of Antiochus, we were escorted from a man
sion furnished us by the public into the senate house,
to present our congratulations to you, conscript fathers,
and, from the senate house to the capitol, carrying
offerings to your gods. But now, from a vile and filthy
inn, scarcely gaining a reception for our money, treated
as enemies, and forbidden to lodge within the city,
we come, in this squalid dress, to the Roman senate
GREECE & ROME 115
house; we, Rhodians, upon whom, a short time ago, you
bestowed the provinces of Lycia and Caria." (Livy,
XLV, 22.)
A little later on, however, when the republic had be
come more conscious of its strength, it absolved itself
from courtesies other than those of wood and salt,
which were the least that even a parockus or an innkeeper
could have done; and we find envoys lodged very simply,
friend or enemy, in an inn of the street.
Wayfarers, however, unless provided with the diploma,
that magical charm that opened more doors than sesame,
would perforce be driven by necessity to apply to such
establishments as the inns for food and shelter when
travelling, but, as Marculphus would have us see, the
mere presentation of the diploma bearing the seal of the
reigning prince, (those of Augustus bore a sphynx), at
once procured the bearer a hearty welcome, excellent
fare, a comfortable lodging, and all the heart could
desire. The remains of the Roman mansio in the Great
St. Bernard have been excavated and examined, and I
take great pleasure in quoting from LancianTs Roman
Campagna, pp. 32 and 33, to fill in the details of the
picture:
"The Roman hospice (mansio in summo Paenino)
stood a quarter of a mile to the south of the present one,
and comprised a temple to the god of the mountain, a
hospice for travellers, stables, and watering troughs, and
store-houses for fuel and provisions. The mansio or
hospice was built of stone, with an elaborate system of
hypocausts and flues for the distribution of heat through
the guest rooms. The roof, made of tiles from the lime
kilns of the Val d Aosta, had projecting eaves in the
old Swiss style."
In the times of Polybius, almost contemporary with
the Rhodian envoys of whom we have spoken above,
116 THE INNS OF
inns were numerous along the great roads of Italy.
This is proved by an interesting passage in the works of
the great historian of the Punic War. He was a cul
tured Greek of good social position. His travels took
him well over Italy, and he commented upon what he
saw. After having stated that in his time the price of
wheat was four obols per Sicilian medimnus (about ten
gallons), and that of barley two obols, a metretes of wine
costing the same as a medimnus of barley, he goes on to
say "that the cheapness and abundance of all articles
of food will be most clearly understood from the following
fact. Travellers in this country, who put up in inns, do
not bargain for each separate article they require, but
ask what is the charge per diem for one person. The
innkeepers, as a rule, agree to receive guests, providing
them with enough of all they require for half an as per
diem, i. e., the fourth part of an obol, the charge being
very seldom higher." (Lib. II, 15.)
Unless human nature has undergone a very decided
change, we are forced to the conclusion that the table
set in such places must have been meagre and plain in
the extreme, and the landlord of classical Italy must
have been a blood brother to him of whom Gibbon said,
in his Autobiography:
"Under an air of profusion, he concealed a strict
attention to his interest, 5 * yet the master of sarcasm does
not complain of the table. The only difficulty in the
situation lies in the continual carping and clamoring of
the travellers who, if they paid no more than half an as
for a day s lodging en pension, could not be said to have
paid anything, and for that reason could not be accorded
the right to damn their dinner, as Fielding says.
In early times, the inns of this class were no better
than hovels, badly roofed and insecurely fastened. In
Petronius, the revellers return to their miserable sane-
GREECE & ROME 117
tuary at night and cannot get in because the old beldame,
their landlady, had been swilling so long with her custom
ers that you could have set her afire without her know
ing it. Trimalchio s courier rescued them from a night
in the street by smashing in the door. Many of these
establishments were mere sheds such as used to be seen
along the Appian Way, and which were called, according
to Festus, ceditae, because a certain Ceditius had been
the proprietor of a great number of them. As the rental
of such huts to an innkeeper assured the owner a good
profit, and, according to Varro, played no unimportant
part in supporting the cultivation of a piece of land on
which the house had been built, nearly every landowner
followed so common-sense an example and built such a
shed at the boundary of his property.
Wealthy landowners sometimes refused to lease to
innkeepers, reserving to themselves such rights, and
erecting little booths along the road which bordered
their property. Here they could break the tedium of a
long and tiresome journey, have a comfortable place in
which to rest, and avoid placing their persons and edu
cated palates at the mercy of innkeepers and their
scullions. The great patricians had many estates in the
various parts of the peninsula; these they visited, as
their moods dictated, and, as a general thing, they main
tained small establishments such as are described above
for their personal comfort and convenience. To institu
tions such as these, the name diversorium, or the dimin
utive diversoriolum, were given, Cicero wanted a lodge
of this kind on the road to Terracina, in order that he
might not always inflict himself upon Fabius GaJlus when
he visited in the neighborhood, but he either lacked the
means or the amount necessary was always spent in
advance on books and statues, and when he no longer
travelled as a governor, and no longer possessed that
118 THE INNS OF
title and the right to avail himself of free lodging such
as the parochi supervised and kept in readiness along the
great roads, he was always forced to fall back upon the
hospitality of his friends; accepting shelter with Gallus
whenever he returned from Sicily, or with Lepta if he
came from the other direction; but in the absence of his
friends he had no other choice than that of lodging in an
inn. In his case he was fortunate, for Macula seems
to have been a much finer type of innkeeper than was
commonly to be encountered. This innkeeper knew his
duties and appears to have confined his activities strictly
to them and to proprieties far above his own station in
life. The wine he served was good, he himself esteemed
it and drank it, though Cicero seems to have preferred a
mixture of this wine and a little Falernian; he had only
a few rooms in his inn, and they were so small that the
great orator, on his way to meet Caesar who was return
ing from Spain, feared there would not be room for the
equipages and attendants.
The inns along the great roads, then, were mere ordi
naries and such dining-rooms as they maintained were
small and few in number, in fact, a majority of such public
houses must have been huts where the individual could
obtain food and shelter, but often they were equipped
with neither stables for the animals nor sheds for the
vehicles. Others there were, however, in which condi
tions such as these did not obtain: they were stables out
and out, and travellers were obliged to bed themselves
down upon a "donkey s breakfast," among the horses
and mules. Places of such rustic simplicity were neces
sarily poorly constructed and probably lacked bolts and
bars to fasten their doors. There is a legendary episode
in the life of Severus which is said to have occurred in
such an inn. The future emperor at the time of this
adventure was serving as a centurion, and necessity
GREECE & BO ME 119
bedded him down on the straw of a stable. As he was
making the most of his situation a serpent glided in and
coiled itself close to his head. It did not strike him,
however, and, at the first startled outcries, it disappeared
and an adventure which for the moment threatened him
with grave danger was turned into an omen favorable to
his future. It was construed as a divine portent which
announced to Severus the lofty destiny in store for him.
The collective term used to denote an inn was deter-
sorium; this applied to an establishment with or without
stables, but when reference was made to the keeper the
term used was stabularius: should the institution be one
of those dingy, moth eaten, vermin ridden pot-houses,
the term used to describe it was caupona.
The taberna deversoria were slightly more pretentious;
here one could lodge and eat and drink; it is probably
one of these establishments which was conducted by the
hostess in the Isernian inscription.
The tabema meritoria were a sort of rooming house
and tavern combined. Their custom seems to have been
less transient than that of the taberna deversoria.
It is of the deversorium that Horace speaks when he
scolds his nag for turning in at every inn and tavern
along the road; poor habit-ridden beast, had your owner
had you long in his possession?
Baiae, Musa protests, will not do for my case,
And has caused me no little ill-will in the place,
Needs must, then, to change my old quarters, and spur
My mare past the inns so familiar to her.
" Woa, ho ! I m not going to Baiae s bay,
Nor to Cumae!" her choleric rider will say,
Appealing to her through the left rein, because
Saddle-horses, you know, have their ears in their jaws.
Epist. Lib. 1, 15, Martin s Translation.
120 THE INNS OF
There is no rancor in this passage, and Horace s ex
periences along the Baiae road must on the whole have
been pleasant. It is otherwise, however, in regard to the
inns on the road between Capua and Rome, and the term
employed by Horace to characterize them expresses the
contempt in which lie holds them, a term not to be liter
ally translated here, though the passage reads thus:
But surely, friend, the man who gains an inn,
Besplashed with mud, and soaking to the skin,
When on his way from Capua to Rome
Will not desire to make that inn his home.
Epist. Lib, 1, 11. Martin s Translation.
And with what care the refined taste of the poet
evaded the pot-houses on the road to Brindisium, when
ever possible. How cheerfully he said farewell to such
asylums; how easily he contented himself with the slim
and precarious hospitality of the little cottage near the
Campanian bridge and the meager rations issued by the
parochus. How worn out with boredom he was when
he paid his compliments to the swarming inns and
taverns of Caudium, Caudi cauponas, on his well pro
visioned way to the villa of Cocceius, so magnificent, so
well stored with luxuries of every description, and so
well found in necessities, plenissima villa! Then continu
ing his route, he tarried with the innkeeper at Bene-
ventum. Here the fiery ardor of the landlord had nearly
set the place on fire, for while that worthy was turning
some thrushes which were roasting over a hot fire of
grape vines, a blazing brand flew out of the brazier and
set the kitchen on fire. The scullions and guests were
greatly excited, the latter chiefly because their supper
was thus menaced; with one accord they rushed to the
rescue of their food and then put out the fire raging in
the kitchen:
GREECE & ROME 121
Hence without halting, on we post
To Beneventum, where our host
Escaped most narrowly from burning;
For while he was intent on turning
Some starveling thrushes on the coals.
Out from the crazy brazier rolls
A blazing brand, which caught and spread
To roof and rafter overhead.
The hungry guests, oh how they ran!
And frightened servants, to a man,
The supper from the flames to snatch,
And then to quench the blazing thatch*
The beds in such inns were not softer than sleep, and
the mattresses, as we learn from Pliny* were stuffed with
the largest tufts of a certain species of reeds, in place of
goose feathers. Horace knew by experience that upon
these narrow couches one was visited more frequently by
insomnia than by dreams.
For this reason, that he might charm away a little of
the dreary emptiness of a "white night/* which lay ahead
of him, he made certain advances to one of the strapping
slaveys attached to the establishment for the purpose of
rendering all manner of service to a none too discriminat
ing public. There were always several of these rustic
Hebes about the premises, and, in the eyes of the Roman
law, none shirked this double duty. This lass, it seems,
not looking forward with any degree of pleasure to a night
spent in such distinguished company as that of the poet,
preferred to rendezvous more pleasantly, and perhaps
more energetically, with that distinguished individual
who served Horace in the capacity of master of horse.
His night, therefore, came to naught. To naught, did I
say? Nay, let us read what the poet himself says, in
this, the only passage in all his works in which he can be
accused of absolute sincerity in speaking of the fair sex;
the sex, which, alas, he often found magnificently false:
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Twas there, O fool, O dolt supreme,
I waited for a lying jade
Till Sleep on me his finger laid,
And I, still panting with desire,
My pulse athrob, my blood afire,
Sank into slumber; and it seems
That I possessed her in my dreams.
Those whose associations had accustomed them to a
finer environment would have always missed something
in these inns: the kitchen was very likely to be carelessly
kept and was often ill provided. The wine was often
vile but in some parts of the country the lack of good
water was even more keenly felt; especially in Northern
Italy: and even in Rome, notwithstanding the marvelous
system of aqueducts, there were continual brushes be
tween the water porters and the publicans, who waged
a never-ending warfare over a matter of a pint| The
aediks were being constantly involved in such brawls,
which always spread to the rabble and roistering vaga
bonds whose ends were best served by fomenting disorder
to serve as a screen for their designs upon the money and
goods of those in the neighborhood. The officials, on
their part, were always on the alert to prevent fraud in
measures or by adulteration; to prevent trespass upon
the aqueduct system and damage to the same, with the
consequent waste, which might have interfered with the
supply which kept the fountains going. At Ravenna,
conditions were much worse; there it was sometimes diffi
cult to find even a single cistern which was not dry to the
deepest part. All publicans were reduced to the dreary
lot of him of whom Martial makes sarcastic mention:
Epigrams, lib. HI, 57.
In an inn at Ravenna, the other day
I was bilked by the wiles of a cheat;
When I ordered my wine mixed with water, the gay
Deceiver retailed me wine neat.
GREECE & ROME 123
and again mine author says in another pungent epigram:
I d rather own a cistern at Ravenna
Than a vineyard in a clime more favored still,
For I could then sell water
At a price that soon had otighter
Make me richer than the dreams wine could fulfill.
Their only hope of relief ky in the showers of rain
that filled the cisterns in succession: for them it was better
than a heavy crop of grapes and a plentiful vintage.
"My Dear Ovid/ 5 writes Martial, "you report that
the rains have made havoc with the vintage. What of
it? The rain is far more beneficial for wine than you
would think. Coranus, the innkeeper, was able to refill
a hundred amphorae or so/*
Wealthy travellers, who knew beforehand what the
penury common to inns had in store for them, took their
precautions far in advance whenever the chance of the
road obliged them to apply there for lodgings; in the
manner of the Epicurean Philoxenes of Cytheria, who
only travelled when preceded by a train of slaves loaded
with wines and everything proper and necessaiy for even
the most educated and delicate of tastes; it was probably
his example which prompted Sir Walter Scott to emulate
him in Peveril of the Peak: and Kegnard the subtle harp
of malignant indirection remarks :
Who are not always burdened by books of the law
Bear their pepper ground fine and their food in their maw.
When wealthy and powerful transients arrived at
such establishments, it was with an entire train of slaves
and sumpter mules, minions, kpdogs, carriages and all
the panoply of ostentation. They also carried with them
a complete culinary apparatus, and on some occasions,
when the highest caste was involved, portable garden
plots with growing melons and early vegetables were
transported, as was done by Tiberius.
124 THE INNS OF
Ordinarily, however, the wealthy classes, though hold
ing in extreme contempt the chipped and dirty cups and
the lame dishes of the inns and taverns, contented them
selves with merely carrying their own dishes and para
phernalia along with them. In this latter class we may
place Martial s Calpetianus (Lib. VI, 94) :
"Calpetianus is always served from golden vessels;
whether he dines in the city or at home; whether he goes
on a picnic or not. Thus also is he served at a tavern,
and thus in the country. Has he no other service? He
has none of his own/
Those who adventured with such spoils as these into
the clutches of the innkeepers frequently did so at con
siderable risk. The inns were generally isolated, some
times at some little distance from other habitations along
the great roads which themselves were but little fre
quented except by those engaged in repairs: they were
commonly under the eagle eye of an accomplished scoun
drel, the receiver and fence for all the robbers and night-
pads in the district: such hostelries were nothing if not
out and out Snug Harbors for the predatory classes whose
methods lacked the sanction of law if not that of com
mon usage. There were many such inns to be found
along the more deserted roads in Italy; the proprietors
doubtless chose their locations with due regard to cus
tom, immunity, and rapacity, and all the art of a specious
landlord could not detract from their aspect of sinister
purpose, at best it could be softened down: as an example
we have in mind the malalbergo on the long road between
Bologna and Ferrara, the only inn in the whole district,
or, yet again, the post house at Monteroni on the Roman
Campagna (Torre di mezza via), of which William Savage
speaks so eloquently and with such spirit:
"One abandoned enough to have ventured himself in
such a place ought to have gone to the gallows; a sen
tence merited ten times over/*
GREECE & ROME 125
Every dangerous refuge such as this was almost cer
tainly the sanctuary of vagabonds and criminals, and the
caupona of ancient Italy, and, I regret to say, the deter-
soria* as well, were closely allied in creed to the establish
ment of which Savage speaks.
Savage also speaks of the mal aria (malaria) which
aided the cause of the cutpurses, and which still infests
the Roman Campagna. It was a case of danger succeed
ing danger, and, as is easily seen, from the remarks of
Didier on the post-house at Monteroni, the ancient
Roman station (ad turres), the robbers which caused such
terror of old have yielded before the fever which today
has everywhere established itself:
"A great house of stone, in these reaches a rare thing,
rears itself from the edge of the road; it is Monteroni,
the only posting house between Rome and Civita Vecchia.
I enter, solitude reigns throughout; not a soul comes for
ward to receive me. I call, and a silence as icy and im
personal as death responds to my voice. At last I dis
cover two postillions lying on the floor on a filthy and
ragged mattress; two others are lying wrapped in their
cloaks, not before the fire, however, but in the center
of the hearth itself. Every one of them had the fever
and they were so weak that it would have been impos
sible for any of them to have mounted a horse. Of them
I was unable to obtain bread, and it was the same with
water/*
126 THEINNSOF
CHAPTER IK.
The fate of the Arcadian merchant Dangers lurking in inns
Petrvnius and Giton Drunken flute girls and Gaditaman dances
Scenes of debauchery Edicts grant absolution Liquor situation under
Domitian The Syrians and Levantines Looseness of their women
Courtesans and their arts of pleasing.
There would be little difficulty in citing a thousand
instances of thefts and murders perpetrated in the
cauponae of the ancient world, but we shall content our
selves with two, Cicero and Valerius Maximus shall sup
ply the narrative, and we shall reserve for ourselves the
easier task of the commentator. First, let us begin with
the tragic fate of the Arcadian merchant; a study in
telepathy and crude psychology. It is true that the thing
took place in Greece, but it might as easily have hap
pened in Italy. It is one of the selections from the works
of the great orator which in the past were used by the
instructors to give their pupils a thrill and to show them,
perhaps, that not all Latin classics were as dry as a too
thorough going knowledge of grammar and prosody would
have them seem.
"Two Arcadians who were intimate friends, were
travelling together; and, arriving at Megara, one of them
took up his quarters at an inn, but the other went to
lodge at the house of a friend. After supper, when both
had retired, the Arcadian who was staying at his friend s
house received a visitation from the apparition of his
fellow traveller at the inn, the specter besought hrm to
come immediately to the assistance of his friend, as the
innkeeper was bent upon murdering him. Alarmed at
this intimation, he started from his sleep, but, on reflec
tion, thinking it nothing but an idle dream, he lay down
GREECE & ROME 127
again. Presently the apparition reappeared to him in
his sleep, and entreated him, that though he would not
come to his assistance while yet alive, that he would not
leave his murder unavenged, at least. The spectre told
him further, that the innkeeper, after having murdered
him, had cast his body into a dung-cart, where it lay
covered with filth; and begged him to go early to the gate
of the town, before any cart could leave the town*
Much wrought up by this second visitation, he went early
next morning to the gate of the town, and met with the
driver of the cart, and asked him what he had in his
wagon. The driver, upon this question, ran away in a
fright. The cadaver was then discovered, and the inn
keeper, the evidence being clear against him, was brought
to punishment." (Cicero De Divinatione, Lib* I, 27.)
In commenting upon this passage it is my belief that
here is related one of those sombre and sordid chapters in
Criminal Law, used as an illustration common to human
experience: in other words, history of inns and taverns
was, in ancient times, an integral part of the history of
brigandage and thuggery; and many of the hospices in
Western Russia and the provinces bordering that great
frontier are strikingly akin to this little inn at Megara.
In another work Cicero relates an affair of the same
sort as an example of conjecture, or question of fact in
a criminal matter, and for that very reason it lends weight
to the case itself as a corollary thereof. The passage
occurs in the treatise on Invention, Lib. n, chap. 4 :
"At present, let us begin with the conjectural state
ment of a case of which this example may be sufficient
to be given.
"A man overtook another on his journey, as he was
going on some commercial expedition or other, and carry
ing a sum of money with him* As men often do, he
entered into conversation with his new acquaintance on
128 THE INNS OF
the way, the result of which was, that both proceeded
together, with some degree of friendship, and, when they
had arrived at the same inn, they proposed to have dinner
together and to occupy the same apartment. Having
dined, they retired to rest in the same room. But when
the proprietor (for that is what is said to have been dis
covered since, after the man had been detected in another
crime), after the proprietor had scrutinized one of them
closely, that is to say, the one who had the money, he
came in the night, after having assured himself that both
were sound asleep as men usually are when worn out,
drew from its sheath the sword of the one who had not
the money (he had the sword lying by his side), murdered
the other man with it, took away his money, replaced
the bloody weapon in its sheath, and returned to his bed.
But the man with whose sword the murder had been
committed, arose long before dawn and called his com
panion over and over again; he thought that because he
did not answer he was overcome with sleep, so he took
his sword and the rest of the things he had with him,
and departed alone on his journey. Not long afterwards,
the innkeeper raised a hue and cry that the man was
murdered, and in company with some of his lodgers, set
off in pursuit of the man who had gone away. They
arrest him on his journey, draw his sword out of its sheath,
and find it bloody. The man is brought back to the city
by them, and is put on trial. On this comes the allega
tion of the crime: " You murdered him" and the denial:
"1 did not murder him" and from this must be gathered
the statement of the case. The question in the conjec
tural examination is the same as that submitted to the
judges: "Did he murder him or not?"
This conjectural statement serves but to instruct us in
the dangers that lurked in ancient inns, more sinister, for
all their covering screen of creeper roses, than those gaunt
GREECE & ROME 129
and ill reputed hospices of Calabria and the Roman
Campagna.
Although nocturnal gullet slashers practiced their
calling until it became a crime of habit, the thief and
the fence were even more frequently guilty of derelictions
which savoured of habitude, and a rascally steward or
some slave trusted with the keys to cellar and storehouse
was the surest and best purveyor of supplies. Rarely
did the good host neglect an opportunity so opportune
to get such useful tools completely into his power; a
custom that still thrives in certain parts of Italy. His
larder was stocked with wines and supplies from the
estates of wealthy patricians who knew not the extent of
their holdings, but who would have unhesitatingly pun
ished robbery with flaying, if not with actual crucifixion.
In connection with expert methods in buying, let us again
cite William Savage.
"The innkeeper at Tavolato," says he, "serves no
vintage other than that which the waggoners smuggle,
or frequently steal from their masters and carry to the
town; this is well known to every Roman. In exchange,
the landlord gives them food. The innkeeper at Porta
San Pancrazio furnished his cuisine in that way with fish
brought by the fishermen who stole them and smuggled
them into the town."
Should we then wonder that the tavern-keepers of the
ancient world gave such commodities a welcome none the
less cordial because of the sources from which they came?
And then, they were very cheap ! Did not the Romans
have a market for stolen goods, and did not Ascyltos and
Encolpius determine to sell there the mantle which they
had come by in the same devious manner in order to
redeem the ragged tunic with the gold pieces sewn into
its hem, and thus at a small sacrifice, procure for them
selves a handsome profit? What difference if they knew
130 THE INNS OF
themselves forced to buy back their own property.
Ascyltos plumbed the situation when he manifested so
little stomach for the law, and the night prowling shyster
lawyer who would sequester the spoil in hopes that the
owners would not dare claim it for fear of being charged
with crime, is a final touch as eloquent as it is penetrat
ing. Let us not hesitate to speak the truth of these lowly
financiers, in any case they cannot invoke the law of libel.
As their profits were never equal to their avarice,
they invoked other expedients to eke out their gains,
expedients not more elevated than the natures and indi
viduals whose needs they were to satisfy; thus a lucrative
sideline was added to their vile calling and served to
accentuate it, as they were always ready, for a price, to
lend their assistance and establishments for purposes of
entertainment. It is at the door of an inn at the corner
of a deserted cross-road that Petronius has Encolpius
discover Giton, that classical prototype of all the fairy
god-children who have come after him, it is in an inn
that most of their relationships are consummated, it is
in an inn that Giton confesses to Encolpius his suspicions
of Ascyltos, and his reasons for them, pressing the tears
from his eyes with the balls of his thumbs; and that narra
tive furnishes us with proof positive that the deversorium
was an excellent counterpart to the lupanar of Sotades.
The boys attached to the inns were ordinarily accomplices,
though sometimes the victims of these frightful debauches.
On this account we find in Plautus that the puer caupon-
arius has all the attributes of Hylas and Giton, and out
of the fullness of experience one might have spoken for
the other.
Much is to be said of the different kinds of hospices
and inns, their arrangements, and the life which went
on in them, but the best source of information lies in the
names they bore. Of the deversorium we have already
GREECE & ROME 131
spoken; it was a stopping place. There is little doubt
that these institutions catered to demands other than
mere lodgings and food (which was generally bought by
the guests themselves), but their principal custom was
probably derived from transients and strangers, rather
than from the natives. The caupona and the taberna
meritoria, in addition to sheltering transients and
strangers maintained bar-rooms and restaurants as well;
it is therefore probable that the bulk of their patronage
came from the natives who forgathered here to drink
and gossip, amuse themselves with singing girls or flower
girls, and drive away dull care generally. The caupona
were at least partly furnished, and this was certainly
true of the dabulum, in proof of which we quote Pe-
tronius, chapter 97:
"Eumolpus was speaking privately with Bargates,
when a crier attended by a public slave entered the inn
(stabulum), accompanied by a medium sized crowd of
outsiders. Waving a torch that gave off more smoke
than light, he announced: * Strayed from the baths, a
short time ago, a boy, about sixteen years of age, curly
headed, a minion, handsome, answers to the name of
Giton. One thousand sesterces reward will be paid to
anyone bringing him back or giving information as to his
whereabouts. 9 Ascyltos, dressed in a tunic of many
colors, stood not far from the crier, holding out a silver
tray upon which was piled the reward, as evidence of good
faith. I ordered Giton to get under the bed immediately,
telling hi to stick his hands and feet through the rope
netting which supported the mattress, and, just as Ulysses
of old had clung to the ram, so he, stretched out beneath
the mattress, would evade the hands of the hunters. 5
A traveller of the better class would have found only
a mediocre standard of comfort here, however, as we
shall see from a further scrutiny of Petronius and Horace,
182 THE INNS OF
to say nothing of Hadrian s biting criticism of such
places, and the numerous tenantry who lived at public
expense but paid no rent.
"The public servant, however," again the Arbiter is
speaking, "was not derelict in the performance of his
duty, for, snatching a cane from the innkeeper, he poked
underneath the bed, ransacking every corner, even to the
cracks in the walL Twisting his body out of reach, and
cautiously drawing a full breath, Giton pressed his mouth
against the very bugs themselves."
Innkeepers were necessarily privy to all the disorders
originating in their neighborhood. If they happened to
be old, as was the case with the hostess in Apuleius, they
were go-betweens as subtle as they were shameless. An
excellent example of such a character is seen in that mime
of Herondas in which the old woman whose guile has
long since taken the place of beauty and charm, is brought
to bear in favor of the rich young suppliant who desires
certain little favors at the hands of the young wife of a
soldier away in the wars.
The younger members of the sorority of coparum did
not place insuperable difficulties in the path of a mutual
understanding, and money or other valuable considera
tions rarely failed in making easier the path of conquest.
The deversorium and the caupona were sometimes denoted
by another term, ganea, a word which old Calepin renders
in his archaic manner taverne bourdeliere & pimp s pot
house.
If, on the other hand, we adopt the etymology pointed
out by Pestus, the term ganea should mean a subter
ranean tavern, hidden away in the rocks and woods, such
as bordered the banks of the Tiber almost to Ostia, and
the coastline of the Gulf of Baiae. The Roman women,
who> in obedience to Nero s orders, changed the austere
stola for the vestments of tavern singing girls, were com-
GEEECE & ROME 133
pelled to establish themselves in these grottos of revelry,
and comport themselves in a manner natural to their new
calling. Suetonius has pictured them, standing at the
thresholds, hailing all the passing boats with their cries,
and inviting sailors and passengers alike to land and par
take of their hospitality.
It was guttlers (heUuones) such as these that Cicero
flayed so savagely because of their social habits, their
everlasting readiness for an orgy; and when one of them
answered an appeal such as this, and entered the low
and narrow door of the ganeum, the comessatio began,
and, after having been prolonged for days on end, re
sulted in a horrible mess of broken cups, upturned tables,
sodden serving-boys sleeping off the effects of their wine,
drunken flute girls, and Gaditanian dancers exhausted
with drunkenness and with the voluptuous contortions
of their native dances.
The ganea, then, were generally the abodes of clandes
tine debauchery where License veiled itself in impene
trable mystery and shadow. Sometimes they were known
as lustra (a den of some animal, sometimes a stew)
because of the secrecy in entering them, even as an
animal will not betray its den; and those forgathering
in such places took the greatest precautions against being
seen and recognized. Swaggering roisterers pursuing new
sensations entered the ganea with covered heads, as did
Antonius the tavern at Red Rocks, and their exit was as
well screened as their entrance. The law required that
women of the town be registered on the rolls of the
aedile, but the number of clandestine evaders probably
equalled, if it did not exceed, the number actually regis
tered, and a large percentage of these evaders were in
some way associated with the ganea.
The extreme caution which was exercised in regard
to these establishments was due then to two causes: the
134 THE INNS OF
desire of the frequenters to escape the obloquy which
would certainly have followed detection and publicity,
and the necessity which drove the entertainers to avoid
the aedile s register and the exile which would have
resulted from discovery of their actual profession. No
noisy arguments or drunken laughter were loud enough
to be heard on the outside and attract unwelcome atten
tion and curiosity, nor were brawls permitted to menace
the sanctuaries frequented by the wealthy and influential
classes. The Roman police were not the dupes of these
deceptions, they kept a tolerant watch more for effect
than anything else, although it is highly probable that
the question of refined blackmail often came up for
settlement. The real difficulty lay in the fact that the
classes frequenting the more sumptuous of the ganea
were beyond the reach of police regulations by reason of
their wealth and influence.
In the taverns and inns, however, no such caution
was necessary, as the very calling which tavern girls
followed absolved them from the penalties imposed by
laws against adultery and prostitution. When edicts
were issued the authorities generally granted absolution to
such entertainers of this class as had come into their net.
"Such persons," it is the formal language of the code
of Theodosius, "such persons shall be held as being im
mune against the judicial proceedings of the law against
adultery and prostitution, as the very indignity of their
life is an insult to the laws they should observe/ 5
Nor were the innkeepers dealt with severely by the
law makers. It is true that they were responsible to
guests for belongings and property stolen or misappro
priated, unless they could prove that due care and dili
gence had been exercised to preserve the property and
protect the owner. But in those cases which we, with a
well developed genius for evading responsibility, lay at
GREECE & ROME 135
the door of the Almighty, no ancient landlord was respon
sible. He had no such blanket alibi. It was due to the
calling they followed, their penchant for prostitution,
their professional hospitality, their substitution and
adulteration of wines, that they were denied the free
enjoyment of their goods. They could not act as guar
dians for children, they were deprived of the right of
taking oath, and, except in special cases, they were not
permitted the right of accusation in justice. Let us
contrast the situation of these Roman innkeepers and
procurers with that marvelous Pornodidascalos in Heron-
das. Here indeed is hardihood untrammeled by the
slightest scruple.
Unfortunately, laws had their loop-holes then as now,
and were generally ineffective in restraining rascally inn
keepers because the latter, by their very birth and calling,
were below the law and, as Gibbon says, " beneath con
tempt. * The only punishment which could legally have
been inflicted upon gentry such as these was to expel
them from Rome and its environs, and thus striking at
the very root of their calling. Such a proceeding was,
of course/entirely out of the question because of the great
inconvenience, not to say actual hardship, which would
have beset a multitude of innocent bystanders in a
center of population as great as Rome.
Under Domitian, another method of dealing with the
liquor situation was briefly tried out. It is interesting
as constituting what is probably the earliest chapter in
the history of what the kte B. L. Taylor loved to call
"The League For Making Virtue Odious," and is related
by that amiable old pagan Suetonius, in his life of that
odious tyrant. Imperial Caesar dropped his fly swatter
long enough to sign an edict forbidding the planting of
any more vines in Italy, and decreeing that half the
vineyards in the provinces must be uprooted (Chap. 7).
136 THEINNSOF
In chapter 14, we learn the sequel, we are informed
that, due to the subtle propaganda contained in a clever
Greek verse which was scattered broadcast, Domitian
was led to moderate his aquanacreontic ardor and set
aside his decree* We append a translation of this little
verse: a translation freely made which is still as literal as
it is exact:
Though you devour me to the root
Sufficient wine I ll still produce
For every sacrificial use
When Regal Caesar is the goat!
What shall we say of the citizenship of these inn
keepers, these pestilential pot-house peelers? Ordinarily,
they were f reedmen who had emancipated themselves by
one method or another and refused thenceforth to place
themselves under communal law, but more frequently
still, they were strangers, of a servile race which had
been conquered by the Romans in the Levant. They
had emigrated to the city and came, at last, to infest the
whole of Italy. These are the wages of conquest: the
women of a more sophisticated but less virile race will
play no unimportant part in avenging the infamies of
their country upon its conquerors by expert instruction
in new and more demoralizing lessons in social manners
and morals, and new sensations. So it was with the
Vandals in Africa. In like manner the men of the sub
ject races play into the hands of their female allies, and
the final result is a civilization literally bled white finan
cially and physically. Horace had much of this in mind
when he wrote his Hymn to the Romans: that grand and
stately lamentation which, viewed in the light of what
later came to pass, seems to have been of the very stuff
of which true prophecy is made prophecy indeed, requir
ing centuries for its fulfilment:
GREECE & ROME 137
How Time doth in its flight debase
Whatever it finds ! Our fathers* race
More deeply versed in ill
Than were their sires, hath borne us yet
More wicked, duly to beget
A race more vicious still.
Martin s translation.
The Syrians and other Levantines, "nations born for
slavery," as Cicero cuttingly says of them, were especially
numerous at Rome, and preyed upon her vitals by the
exercise of the vilest professions. They bound themselves
to the service of the overseers of the games, sprinkled
the sand of the arena, watered the horses, had the care
of the great awning which shielded the spectators from
the rays of the summer sun. They competed with the
untutored labor of the city and introduced problems which
California understands better than the Eastern portions
of our own country. They even entered the service of
rich patricians and matrons; they delivered notes and
letters, in a word, they supplied the needs of the most
infamous callings, and frequently at some little peril to
their own skins. In the fragments of Menander (The
Arbitrants) we have a Syriscus (Syrian), a charcoal
burner and tenant slave; and, strange to relate, he is one
of the finest characters in the play; he is good through
and through. In the Adelphoi and the Self Tormentor of
Terentius, we have a Syrus.
Levantine women likewise entered service, even as
did the designing Syrian in the Mercator of Plautus;
but when circumstances permitted them to follow their
inclinations and choose freely, they reverted to that con
dition to which their oriental surroundings and habits
of life had accustomed them, debauched adventuresses,
worshipping their figures, lascivious dancers like the
Gaditanian gypsies of the present day, players of lyres,
138 THE INNS OF
singers of obscene odes and Fescennine verses at the
cross-roads and taverns; in a word, ambuniae, as Horace
calls them, in one of his Satires which is never translated;
flute players whose lack of morals and restrained decency
were compensated for by physical beauty and an in
satiable desire to please in any way that might yield a
handsome profit.
Even at Rome the name they bore had a popular
significance closely allied to that which is the heritage
of the gypsy of the present time, and the ambuniae came
to be associated with that class of sinuous and supple
Syrians, adepts, dodae puellae, if you will, in every phase
of the finer and more sensuous varieties of such enter
tainments.
The greater part of them, and they had a gild, or, as
Horace calls it, a college, the greater part of them to
lend an air of refinement worthy of their calling (call it
an artistic background if you will), had opened, either
in Rome itself, or in the immediate limits and suburbs,
inns and taverns in which music and dancing were usual
and a part of the entertainment; the ancestor of the
nautch girl of Algeciras or Cairo or Bassora. Her ex
quisite discernment prompts her naturally to choose the
raiment which will add most to the advantages with
which a benevolent nature has endowed her: if she be
of exceeding loveliness, her strophium will be Grecian in
simplicity; if her beauty has reached its acme and begun
to wane she will adorn herself with colors of Syrian
gorgeousness, a confession that she can no longer afford
the simplicity that scorns adornment and relies solely
upon its own excellence. In her are combined all the
attributes of all the courtesans, all their arts of pleasing
and entertainment, yet the strophium is always there
because it is an integral part of Syrian cultus, an em 1 ^m
sacred to Dionysus. On the occasion of orgies and dances
GREECE & ROME 139
they are unwound by the expert fortune tellers, imported
along with other superstitions from the Levant. If, at
times, they drop their clacking castanets, whose sexy
clucking punctuates their dancing and makes their
audience more pliant to their demands, it is but to take
up the sceptre of the seeress, to roll the threads of a
thousand colors around the magic rhombus, or, better
yet, with herbs of secret virtues, to compound philtres
to restore lost love and virility, philtres such as have
cost many a husband or flagging lover sick of an old
passion, his life. One of the herbs of which they made
continuous use took its name from their cult: ambujea;
and, if Horace, in his second satire has classed them with
the pharmacopoliae or poisoners, it is surely because he
was well informed as to their empiric practices. Lysis-
trata was not a name common among them.
The atmosphere of mysticism which surrounded them,
their fortune telling, the utter lack of knowledge prevalent
in those times, caused the common people to regard them
as witches, and popular imagination endowed them with
strange and horrible attributes. Fingers were placed
softly upon lips when they were passing by; their dances
were regarded with secret terror, and the more timid and
superstitious dared not go near the places where they
lived, or take a guest and dine in an inn conducted by
one of them. It was said and believed that they served
travellers with a kind of cheese which immediately
changed those who had eaten it into beasts of burden.
St. Augustine has an interesting passage in which he
satirizes popular ignorance on such a subject, and the
terror with which the ignorant regarded the witches of
the inns.
The sensible man, however, saw in such gossip a sure
protection, and permitted it to go unchallenged; although
he would never have permitted himself to be caught in
140 THE INNS OF
such company, any more than he would have dreamed
of associating with the common lot. Such patricians as
Piso and Antonius furnish illustrations as to what is
meant; then, too, there was a fraternity, if such I may
venture to call the unsexed of Cybele, who were fully
alive to the possibilities of advantage and profit which
were to be extracted from miracles a<nd sorcery; they
stood in no awe of the ambuniae. The poets also fre
quented the rustic taverns kept by such charming hos
tesses; the strange charm of these women, so subtle, so
beautiful, and finally, so mentally able, attracted the
bards, and drunkenness forged the chains that held them
captive.
Lucilius made a famous journey from Rome to Capua,
and from Capua through the Straits of Messina, a long
and charming voyage. Horace, in his trip to Brindisium,
followed as closely as possible in the footsteps of his
predecessor, and his account of his own trip was probably
based upon that of Lucilius*
Lucilius made one of his happier halts at an inn kept
by one of these Syrian hostesses: who or what she may
have been, we do not know. Was she the counterpart
of the toothless old crone whom Apuleius describes, or
was she a lithe and lissome ambunia? The unique
hemistich which preserves that little episode in the poet s
excursion tells us nothing of this except by inference,
"However, she was a Syrian tavern-keeper/ 5 That
is all the fragment tells us, a mutilated remnant of what
was the third book of the Satires of Lucilius. If only
he had informed us of the place and manner in which
he met that Syrian! But no; the word "she/ 5 cannot
explain or amplify what followed the meeting, and one
may only infer, from the place which the fragment occu
pies, that Lucilius was almost at the end of his journey
when he met her. The word "however," might cause
GREECE & ROME 141
the reader to believe that inns were not numerous at
the place, and, though the inn may have been sadly
lacking in comforts, he saw possibilities in the nation
ality and person of his hostess which might, in a measure,
annul the other disadvantages, although he had for some
time sought for a resting place to his tastes, and that
his arrival was in the nature of that of a providential
guest. Was he well entertained? Did he find there a
crackling fire and a cosy hearth? Some authors would
have the reader see, in that Syrian s tavern, a wretched
establishment like that of which another fragment makes
mention, and which, on a par with the inn in which
Horace was so well smoked at Beneventum, could supply
Lucilius neither faggots, oil, nor asparagus, "nothing
which he wanted," but, as far as we are concerned, know
ing what we do of the inns kept by the ambuniae, we
will give the preference to that exquisite little pastel of
the ancient poet which delineates a Syrian; a pretty
house with a well filled larder of which he speaks in yet
another fragment of the same book. She it is whom
we prefer to see at the head of a table loaded with food
well cooked and tastefully served: "an exclamation of
starvation, 5 * as Labitte remarks, "we will open our jaws
and devour the profit/ 5 And, if, on that trip, more
famous for fasting than feasting, he might well make the
most of such an opportunity for an orgy as is indicated
in still another fragment, and write, in its honor, that
verse of lively jubilation, "the jugs are standing on their
heads, and our sober senses with them," which surely
ought to be the case during that same dalliance at the
shrine of the Syrian hostess.
Such an hypothesis would be utterly without meaning
in a tavern which was sordid, a dirty and smoky lodging,
and I find myself in full accord with what the poets
have told us of these oriental inns.
142 THEINNSOF
CHAPTER X.
The cabaret dancerBanquets of the Patricians Voluptuous
dances Gallus describes the charms of a siren Dice throwing and
gambling The murder of Claudius The Appian Way The first
Christians.
Happy and fortunate in finding a little gem of an
tiquity less mutilated than the remains of Lucilius, we
will attempt a translation or paraphrase of Virgil s Copa:
the most charming and the most authentic of all the
fugitive poems attributed to him under the collective
title Catalecta. A famous French savant has described
this bit of realism as a beautifully cut cameo. The charm
and grace of this figure have left their impression, and
the deftness of the hand that chiselled her is unquestioned.
THE CABARET DANCER
"Copa Syrisca, caput Graeca redimita mitella,"
A Grecian head-band binding her hair,
The wine-flushed Syrian siren sways
To the titillating clack of her castanets,
La the spell of the dance that Passion begets
Of smouldering Desire that seethes to flare
In the smoke of her tavern: sinuously fair
She sings her appealing lay:
"Ah, why wilt thou broil in the dust and heat,
When wine awaits in a cool retreat,
And a couch of grass, or a garden nook
Treflised with roses? A shepherd s flute
Murmurously twitters, a brawling brook
Writhes on its way to the strum of a lute:
Ktch-covered puncheons of beaded wine,
Chaplets of crocus and violets blended,
Garlands of buttercups studded with roses,
Wicker-work baskets of fresh lilies, tended
By water-sprites: yon osier hamper discloses
A CABAEET GIRL
GREECE & ROME 143
Cheeses and chestnuts and plums ... all are thine:
Apples that blush with the vigor of Fall,
Mulberries blood-red, grapes in great clusters,
Bice-colored melons that hang from their stems,
Ceres her daintiest gifts for thee musters,
Handmaids of Venus to fly at thy call,
Bromius waits, and all kill-joys condemns.
Priapus guards with his sickle this spot,
Heavy his attribute, but maids fear him not.
Enter, Sir Falstaff,* spare thy jaded ass,
Vesta s delight . . . nay, nay, thou shalt not pass;
The thickets resound with the katydid s song,
The lizard has lurked in her cool retreat long,
Come! Lie on a couch and recline at thy ease,
Slake thy thirst with new wine, in surroundings that please;
Come! Weary One, rest in the shade of the vine
And thy heavy head quickly with roses we ll twine;
Aye, kiss while ye may yon tender young mouth,
While the tide of thy life sets strong from the South;
Away with those grim puritanical ways,
Mere dregs of those ruder and earlier days;
Wilt save these fragrant wreaths to mourn thy dust?
Or crown thy tombstone? Nay, that were not just! *
" Bring wine and dice ! Tomorrow s cares for them that are so dumb,
Death tweaks mine ear and whispers low, Live while ye may, I come/*
Not a detail is lacking in this picture, nor is there
the slightest forcing to render it cheerful and true to
life* We can see ourselves in a dining-room, a shady
arbor of creeper-roses festooned with leafy vines; from
such a sanctuary, simple in its elegance and taste, we
can look out into the glaring sunlight and see the heat
waves tremulous in the air while we quaff our cool wine
or acidulous beverage in the fragrant shadows of the
arbor, and lazily watch the dancing and listen to the
*Exception may be taken to an anachronism in rendering Caly-
bita by the Shakespearean Falstaff, but those who are jjifted with
penetration may applaud. The others matter nothing to the
translator.
144 THE INNS OF
music: tlie mid watch lookout on a sailing vessel in the
tropics offers no finer opportunity for philosophical intro
spection than we have here, where everything attracts
to rest and repose. Rare indeed is the intellect that has
the power of divorcing itself from its immediate sur
roundings, or the memory of those which have oppressed
it, and thinking deeply and constructively, following the
course of a thought from its birth to the effectuation
of the plans it has germinated. Propertius has written
delightfully of "tables set under an arbor of vines," and
in another pointed passage he makes allusion to the
suspicions with which the mind of his mistress was
charged: if the text be in order* Propertius was a fre
quenter of taverns:
"Learn what this night struck panic through the
watery Esquiline; when all the neighbors ran headlong
through the New Fields, when a noisy brawl broke out
in a secret tavern, and brought shame on my fair name,
though I was not there. 9 (Eleg. Lib. IV, 2 and 3.)
Cups of every size, amphorae, chalices, flutes, stringed
instruments, all were tossed in a heap upon the violets
and roses with which the floor and tables were strewn,
but alas, the wine which spouted from these vessels was
not generally of the finer vintages, it was probably vappa,
a product which the discriminating Spaniard or French
man would contemptuously term "corked. 35 Such a
product as this stood in need of all the fortification which
pitch could give it.
The hostess of Virgil is the prototype of her to whom
the Abb6 de Bends paid troubadour compliment many
centuries later, nor were her wines more potent than her
eyes:
The mistress of the cabaret,
A sweet enchantress sans her comb:
The god of Love designed this fay,
A lissome Hebe, in her home.
GREECE & ROME 145
And Bacchus, seated on his cask,
Mistakes her for a water-sprite;
Were water all her world could ask,
Twere still the same: her eyes are bright.
Here will never be found tlie luxury and the succu
lence that characterized the banquets of the patricians,
the infinite number of dishes and delicacies, and the
rarity and age of the vintages. The charm that en
chanted genius and enthralled the limpid soul of a Virgil
or a Theocritus, given naturally to a gentle melancholy
induced, perhaps by frail health and an extraordinary
insight into causes and effects, lay in the utter and
poetic simplicity of nature. Here such a rare personality
could dream, his brain could teem with harmonies and
nocturnes too beautiful for expression: melodies unheard
are sweetest, says Keats, who, perhaps of all moderns,
had most in common with the Mantuan, whose sombre
spirit, which imbued whatever it touched with exquisite
delicacy, found at last in the shade and soft atmosphere
of Parthenope a peace and a requiem such as Stevenson
must have dreamed of when he wrote his greatest poem:
"Under the wide and starry sky/
Little remains to be said, except that the tables were
always set, the latch-string was always out, and the
larder was always full. It is almost as though one were
present at the repast with which Philemon and Baucis
regaled Zeus and Hermes, or in the rustic cottage of
Hecale when Theseus partook of her hospitality; flowers,
dairy products, fruits: here we have the soul of all that
is hospitable: the gifts of Flora and of Ceres:
The linen, decked with flowers, with dainties piled high,
A little milk, fruit, garden stuff, that Ceres don t deny.
Whether it be Ovid, or Butilius, it is still a commen
tary upon Virgil or Theocritus!
146 THE INNS OF
As with Baucis, so with the Syrian hostess, the little
cheeses, so fresh that they smear the wicker work osiers
in which they are to dry, the plums, the late fruits of
autumn, the chestnuts, the sweetly blushing apples, the
melon with its coloring of the tropic seas, where sound
ings are not too great, and when clouds and sun are
right, the blood red mulberries, the choice grapes on
their vine cuttings: it is a repast true in every way to
the standards of the Georgics, to those of the elder Cato,
or to those of Columella; and the writer remembers well
many such repasts served in the patios of Spanish hachen-
dado s houses in happier climes under a canopy of cadena
de amor, and to the music of harps ! Mantua, your son has
done you greater service than even Shakespeare! The
only factor that jars is that he also wrote the Moretum,
which could not have been served in such surroundings
as these.
As we have invoked the genius of things as they
ought to be, let us also strengthen the illusion by imagin
ing, in the distance, that we can hear the twittering of
the rustic pipes, in the hands of a master worthy to
compete with Marsyas, swelling from the dim and cool
aloofness of a Menaelian grotto, and mingling its dulcet
complainings with those of the clear, cold, twisted stream
as it foams and chatters through its rocky bed, leaping
in cascades that caress the verdure with their vapor, and
that enchant the ear with the witchery of nature: pebbles
roll along and the water foams deliciously around them,
the very source of the water of life and certainly one of
the finest opportunities to enjoy its most ethereal mo
ments, "Whose limpid sweetness seems to speak of love,"
as only a Frenchman could have said.
Now the guests are coming, they laugh in merriment
as they cross the threshold of the little Roman roadhouse;
some of the gayer address some pointed pleasantry to
GREECE & ROME 147
the worm-eaten wood god, serving the cabaret as guar
dian genius and sign: formidable still because of the huge
attribute with which he is endowed and which was often
used to club trespassers and thieves, or otherwise to
coerce them. Truly a most picturesque mirror in which
to see ourselves and the place into which we have come!
Then, too, our hostess has greeted an arrival in a
manner which outdoes the finesse of the Widow Wadman :
"Welcome, Calybita (Falstaff)," the guest has much of
the rogue about him, but alas, nothing of that hardi
hood which appeals most subtly to women; "It is easier,"
says Quartilla, "it is easier nowadays to meet a god
than it is to meet a real man!" Falstaff, you are older
than one could have imagined, but no, I seem to recall
the melancholy destiny of Abishag, a doubtful comfort
in so dark an age!
Yes, that fat rascal who has just arrived, and is even
now dismounting from his puffing mule, is one of the
priests of Cybele, one of that curious fraternity immune
to half the ills that human flesh is heir to, a peripatetic
evangelist who trains the fat of laziness with drunken
sprees in every tavern in country or village. The worn-
out mule is tied to a tree near the gate of Rome, along
with the relics sacred to the ritual, relics which some
times include a simulacrum of the goddess. Apuleius
has described such a pilgrimage and the palmers who
took part in it, their slow progress through the country
districts, punctuated by the clash of cymbals and the
clucking of castanets, the lying prophecies that distilled
alms without in the least instructing the superstition
of the inhabitants. They danced their way into a scanty
and doubtful competence, but their real goals were the
drinks and larder of the tavern where their style would
be less cramped. Here such a bonze could dance him
self into the stupor of exhaustion, recuperate himself,
148 THE INNS OF
and, if necessary, hypothecate his tambourine or cym
bals to pay his score and obtain the means of returning
to the city.
We shall follow the fat satyr into the interior of the
establishment. The odors of the kitchen will appeal
more to his senses than the fragrance of the garden, and
the smoky atmosphere of the little inn will furnish a
setting more in keeping with the proprieties to which
he is accustomed than the clear and clean air of the
country. He has come to this place to get away from
himself; he would never admit this, he is probably un
conscious that it is true; he wants to dance, to drink,
to sing, and perhaps it is not too much to say that he
even has a flair to experiment at close range with the
few active sensual possibilities which still remain to him
after an outraged nature has exacted her inexorable dues.
Through half closed eyes he watches the lithe and har
monious play of the muscles of the ambunia, in her
bacchantic posturings. She is a past mistress in the art
of the cordax, and at last, as a tremulous shiver, an
erotic tic, runs through the length of that slim lithe
figure, as the yellowish eyes open slowly, voluptuously,
the lambent flame in their depths scorches the onlookers,
as the nostrils twitch, and a crooning sigh comes throbbing
from a bosom charged with all the passions of all the
ages, as this descendant of Semiramis, this cousin of
Artemisia and Rhodope, this Roxena with vigor and
skill enough to exhaust a dozen Alexanders, this human
leopardess as impersonal as a sphinx stands mute before
her audience, her little hands grasping convulsively the
firm little breasts whose nipples protrude through the
apple green silk netting which confines them ah, the
charm, the subtle appeal that lies in their artificially
colored tips, so deeply ruby if under twenty, so golden
after twenty, her head thrown back until every cord
GREECE & ROME 149
and muscle of her symmetrical neck stand out, and give
a tonus to her entire being; verily, in the words of Field
ing, the favored among her audience must have had very
much or very little of the hero about them if her appeal
proves unavailing! Now she has rested, and wearily,
automatically she dances the dance of the Maenad; a
little wine, a little ripple of applause, her color heightens,
her eyes grow brighter; her movements become more
and more spirited, the thyrsus has been tossed aside,
and the cluck cluck of the crotals in her hands stimulates
her audience as though they were being flagellated with
a sprig of nettles; more and more abandoned becomes
the dance; through a dark opening which leads to the
garden advances a troupe of Pans and Satyrs under the
leadership of Dionysus himself: as they intone the hymn
to Bacchus: "Etoe, evoe" chants the infatuated rou6,
and as the tones wax higher and higher they roll their
heads, and as they wane their heads droop: faster and
faster becomes the movement, the eyes of the dancer
sparkle with a brightness unhealthy and destroying, the
postures fade one into another like the everchanging
patterns in the brilliant skin of some viper that writhes
as it charms its victims: the tones ascend in a shrill
crescendo, a rocket of passion that expires in a thousand
brilliant sparks, and silence, exhaustion, and satiety! As
the dancer falls, she is caught by an attendant and carried
from the scene. Soon another will take her place: bring
stronger wine, on with the dance, let joy be unconfined.
Thus do the emotions of the audience rim the entire
gamut of titillation, and soon, too soon, will vigor be
replaced by a softer and more treacherous substitute, and
the nation, suddenly confronted with an enemy that
knows only the ritual imposed upon those who are the
lawful spoils of war, will find its manhood impotent and
cowardly, and its daughters the willing prey of those
150 THE INNS OF
more worthy to work their will upon them- Thus did
Genseric glut his barbarian hordes, and thus did they in
their turn pay the ransom to an enemy more cunning
and virile than they. Thus and thus only has civilization
paid the wages of justice; the fittest survive, but the
term needs a proper definition* In the Occident, three
dances such as we have described have come down
through the ages: they are the French chahut, the
Neapolitan tarantella (in its most abandoned form), and
the baji of the gypsies of Iberia and Balkan Europe.
Many of the poets of antiquity were smitten with the
charms of these sirens, but one citation from Gallus,
whose tragic fate has colored poetic legend, shall suffice:
" There was a young woman named Blanche; fair as
a lily was she, and her black hair was curled with an
artistic witchery, I saw her one day, and she had a
number of musically chiming little bells attached to her
garments, at her every movement they tinkled and the
tinklings multiplied themselves. When she snapped her
white fingers, or strummed upon a lute, she imbued the
chords with a sweet and haunting harmony foreign to
the instrument. She danced, and I was lost: I loved,
but in loving, I despaired. I suffered agonies from a
secret wound, but the agonies were sweet as the hope of
life itself. I have carried with me the memories of the
day I first saw her, every detail is perfect in my mind,
and the thought of her has filled my heart unceasingly,
I dream of her, day dreams too enchanting for expression,
and at night . . . ah, at night ... I feel the fancied
touch of lips softer than the wing of sleep. I invent
imaginary conversations, intimate little confidences with
her, and yet in this dialogue, there is but one: question
ings, doubts, fears; all that might have been, and I hum
to myself the soft airs she was wont to sing."
The dance is ended, and the Syrian follows it with
GREECE & ROME 1L51
other diversions to amuse the wearied senses of an au
dience no less insatiable than she.
" Bring wine and dice," cries one, and now pure wine
is served, "bring on the dice/ is cried; " Death tweaks the
ear and whispers low, live while ye may, I come!"
The dice are brought, they are contained in an ivory
box, and in the hands of the revellers, hands no longer
quite steady, they begin to roll and bound over the stone
table top. The game, once begun, may continue without
interruption for many hours, probably for two or three
days and nights with varying fortunes and chances in
the game of senio (game of six), and of canicula or canis,
(game of the dog s ace), one of those games of chance
in which the stakes were often enormous, and in which
the Romans took such keen delight. The dullard Clau
dius was by nature a gambler, as both Suetonius and
Seneca relate, and that the dice might not be disturbed
by the movements of his litter, he had constructed a
gaming table (alveum) so arranged that the dice combi
nations were not disturbed by the gait of the bearers.
It is also reported that he wrote a treatise on dice games.
On this account Seneca, in his Apokolokintosis, can
invent no keener punishment with which to plague the
dead emperor than that of condemning him to an eternal
game of dice with a dice box full of holes.
We need not occupy ourselves with the gambling
propensities of emperors, however, nor with the weak
nesses of the senators nor prostitutes: Seneca has dealt
with them in a manner better than we could hope to
rival:
All ye, who owe your wealth s advance
To games of skill and gambling chaace,
Though weighted down with treasure;
Yea, iron-nerved gambler, risking all,
Take heed, lest Death and Fire recall
Your gold, at grim Fate s pleasure.
152 THE INNS OF
The scene depicted above is meant to represent a
gambling party in one of the common inns: the players
are probably knaves to a man; they have taken to
gambling after having had a drinking bout, and will do
the best that in them lies to cheat their way to victory,
and the matter will presently end in a free for all fight,
Plautus in the Curcullio has left us a graphic scene of
this description. His hero was tempted to throw dice
with a soldier, but he had not the slightest intention of
losing; he relates his prowess and dexterity to Phedromos,
another rapscallion of his own complexion:
"\Vhen we had eaten well and drunk our fill, he pro
posed a game of dice to me. I put up my mantle as a
pledge, he places his ring in escrow, then he invoked
Planesius . . . He brought in four blood-suckers. I
took the dice for my turn and I invoked my wetnurse
Hercules. "The Royal Throw," I whisper to the dice,
"I present the soldier with a large throw, and his head
falls heavily on the instant he sees it, and he falls asleep.
I, I slip his ring off his finger and, for fear he may awaken,
I slip under the bed, very quietly."
In 1877 archaeologists at work in the ruins of Pompeii
uncovered a wineshop of the sort of which we have just
spoken. The contemporary life is illustrated to admir
ation on the plaster in one of the front rooms: there are
four scenes in all.
In the first scene, on the left, a young man is furiously
kissing a slavey dressed in garish and hideous yellow
garments. She is fighting him off and the legend belong
ing to the scene reads: "NOLO CVM MVRTAL" (I
don t want you to, play with Myrtalis). In the second
panel we see the same slavey in conversation with
Myrtalis. Both are pointing their fingers at a third
woman who staggers in under the weight of an immense
wine jar; she also carries a glass. The legend says:
GREECE & ROME 153
"QVI VVLT SVMAT OCEAXE VEXI BIBES* Let
him who wants take, I am here, Oceanus, drink). In
the third panel are seen two gamblers. They are seated
on opposite sides of a board which rests upon their
knees. There are several latrunculi (counters) in rows
upon the board: these counters are of different colors,
some yellow, some black, and some are white. One of
the gamesters has just thrown the dice: "EXSIS* I
have won), he cries. The other points to the dice and
says "AUV TRIA DVAS EST," (Xot three, it is two).
In the fourth and last scene the battle is in full swing:
"I did not throw two but three, I won," and the other
answers: "You s...o...b...I won." The
landlord has entered and is shoving both brawlers out
into the street: "ITIS FORAS RIXATIS" (Outside to
fight) is his valedictory*
Gambling was frowned upon by the authorities, except
during the brief season of the Saturnalia, which cor
responded more or less roughly with our Christmas holi
days, except that the period was longer.
"Betrayed by the rattling of his dice-box," says Mar
tial, "and dragged from the inn, the fuddled gambler
begs mercy of the aedile." Great license was permitted
slaves during this period of the Saturnalia; and unpal
atable truths were told to masters under the immunity
conferred by the season, infants were allowed the game
of nuts, the game that ordinarily symbolized the tem
porary emancipation of the Roman patrician from some
of those six unnatural things and his espousal of a relative
degree of normalcy in his relations with society.
"When the aedile sent his lictors to pay a call upon some
tavern-keeper, it followed naturally that the master of
the place was the first arrested, as he was by his very
calling on the wrong side of the law; then there was the
eternal suspicion of loaded dice. Martial speaks of one
154 THE INNS OF
individual whose addiction to such lucrative pastimes was
chronic: "Gambling with one or more loaded dice."
The society of the time was faced with the necessity
of choosing between two evils: the villainy of the inn
keepers was traditional, but the inconvenience which
would have resulted from the abolition of such establish
ments would have resulted in a still greater injury to
society and commerce.
When Tarquinius Superbus decided that the knowl
edge and influence of Turnus Herodinus of Aricia might
be fatal to his own interests, he bided his time with such
patience as he could muster; waited until after the latter
had denounced his imperialism and lack of faith to the
allies, and then accused his intended victim of plotting
his death. Witnesses were suborned and weapons se
cretly conveyed into the inn where Turnus lodged. By
the treachery of slaves and circumstantial evidence his
guilt was established and the Latin Assembly condemned
him to death by drowning: he was confined in a basket
weighted with stones and thrown into the Aqua Ferentia.
(Livy, I, 50-1.) It goes without saying that the inn
keeper must have been one of the principals in this busi
ness, otherwise it would have been very difficult for his
establishment to have been so well prepared as to entrap
a man so honest and fearless as Turnus.
The murder of Clodius by the followers of Milo took
place in an inn at Bovillae, but in this case the inn
keeper was also a victim without having been in the least
involved in the affair- The wounded Clodius took refuge
in this inn and the retainers of Milo attempted to force
the doors. The place was well defended, however, but
the besiegers finally forced their way in and murdered
the innkeeper, who died toe to toe with them, fighting to
the last. Clodius was dragged into the open, hacked into
pieces, and left on the road. These details are mentioned
GREECE & ROME 155
by the scholiast on Asconius, but Cicero passes over them
in silence; they are, in effect, a terrible indictment of
Milo, who, if he had no actual part in the butchery,
nevertheless gave the orders to force the barricades of
the inn, that he might have Clodius at his mercy. His
enemy was already seriously wounded and the result
desired had been attained: it therefore looks as though
the entire plan was the result of cold blooded malevo
lence, and Milo must have thought the campaign out and
left the details in the hands of his officers. Nor does
Cicero make mention of the fate of the innkeeper who
died more gloriously than the majority of the members
of his calling: he goes even further, for when Milo was
placed in jeopardy by the evidence of Licinius, the tavern-
keeper of the Circus Maximus, who had overheard the
slaves of Milo plotting the death of Pompeius, the orator
takes his revenge and makes light of the importance
which might attach to evidence from a source so pol
luted, and ends by wondering how anyone can place the
least credence in the word of a restaurant keeper (popae
credimirabar).
On this great road built by Appius Claudius, the same
down which we have already chaperoned Lucilius and
Horace from inn to inn and from tavern to tavern, we
come at length, twenty-three miles from Rome itself,
midway between that city and Capua, to a village in
which three taverns were for many years the chief at
traction, and probably the first buildings on the site.
This hamlet bears today the name Tre Taberne, in clas
sical times it was known as Tres Tabernae (Three Tav
erns). Because of its happy situation, a short distance
from Lanuvium, and at most, ten miles from Aricia, at
the crossroads where one could take carriage for Antium,
it was an ideal situation for a post house, and it
was the last stop of importance before the traveller
156 THE INNS OF
reached the limits of the Eternal City itself. We need,
therefore, manifest no surprise at learning that many an
illustrious traveller stopped at Tres Tabernae, and that
more than one plan of action which had a profound in
fluence upon later history was outlined and developed in
this little village named for the three taverns. Cicero
made many stops here; rarely did he leave the Antium
road to travel the Appian Way without first stopping to
receive his letters or posting such as he had ready, and
it is in this village, so little in keeping as to name with the
meeting which follows, that we witness the first interview
of the apostle Paul with the members of the new sect at
Rome. After a vexatious journey, the apostle had ar
rived at Tres Tabernae, where he was greeted by the
faithful of Rome, apprised, by rumor, of his arrival, and
there he gave thanks to God for his care and protection
as is related in the Acts of the Apostles. One must be
struck with the singular destiny which gathered there,
in the presence of their apostle, in a village of taverns,
the first faithful of a sect whose God, born in the stable
of an inn, reckoned Rahab the innkeeper or harlot among
his ancestors, and whose first temple, as we shall see,
was raised upon the same site as that of an inn at Rome,
the violent objections of the tavern-keeper to the con
trary notwithstanding. Could any illustration serve
better to show the reasons that prompted the first Chris
tians to subject themselves to that law of humility ex
tending sometimes even to ignominy, and the observance
of which was one of their first duties?
But this village, sanctified for cause, was later on to
become the bloody theatre of signal crimes. The ruin of
Maxentius and the fall of the pagan empire were to make
this historic shrine a shambles, and its last days were to
be as cruel as they were infamous.
GREECE &RO ME 157
CHAPTER XL
Death of Sererus Tarern signs The gardens of Saecenus
Intemperate drinking and religious festitals Bear steaks Corn mitts
Tarerns and trap doors Theodosius purges Rome of thieces and
harlots The splendor and wickedness of the Roman Baths.
Flavins Severus, an obscure Ulyrian adventurer, was
invested with the purple in A, D. 305. He was the rival
of Maximinus and Maxentius, the son of the former, and
after his decisive defeat he fled to Ravenna for refuge,
looking forward in terror upon the gloomy prospect of
captivity or death. Maxentius, to expedite matters,
came to an understanding with Severus and the latter
surrendered under the most solemn promises of amnesty
and protection. He was conducted to Tres Tabernae by
the retainers of his captor and, without the slightest re
gard to promises, he was held in close captivity and
finally offered the choice in the manner in which he would
meet the grim reaper. He followed the example set by
Seneca and many others, and opened his veins.
There was also a quarter named Tres Tabernae in
Rome itself, and this is the probable reason for the error
in Victor the Younger, who has reported the death
of Severus as having taken place in Rome, despite the
evidence of Zosimus and others. Not a few of the quar
ters of the great city took their names from inns or tav
erns. The quarter known as the Vicus Ursi Pileati (The
Quarter of the Bear of the Skull Cap), for example,
which, according to Sextus Rufus, was found in the Es-
quiline, and which must have taken its name from the
sign of some itm or from some street performance with
a trick animal* The cap carried with it the implication
of freedom, and the curious antiquarian may easily sup-
158 THE INNS OF
pose that the original owner of such a tavern may have
been known by the name of Ursus (Bear), and that he
was probably a freedman. Neither would it be difficult
to conjure from such a sign a picture such as may have
inspired Phaedrus the Fabulist to write his Battle Be
tween the Rats and the Weasels. It is also of interest
to note that today in the same quarter, there is an Osteria
del Orso (Inn of the Bear). The curiosity of the pass
erby would naturally be piqued by a sign so promising,
and rival establishments would scarcely remain long in
ignorance of the commercial value of such a tocsin. It
is therefore not improbable that other Skull Capped
Bears were born in remote wards of the city, and other
signs no less piquant soon made their appearance. Ar-
temidorus mentions an inn which had a camel for a sign:
could he have anticipated that this grotesquely malodor
ous animal would, one day, come to play so important a
role in the national life of the greatest of republics? The
inn of Sittius at Pompeii had for a sign an elephant in
the coils of a serpent, and the behemoth is led by a dwarf.
At Narbonne there was an inn which had a cock (gallus
gaUinaceus) for an emblem, a fact that throws a little
light upon the continual employment of the same ex
pression by Petronius. Such an emblem was also used
by one of the stations between Utica and Carthage.
There were the Great Eagle, the Little Eagle, the Ser
pent, the Great Crane, the Sword, the Wheel, the Olives.
Such establishments often advertised their merits (or
lack of them) through the mouths of their owners and
sometimes such matter appeared upon the sign, or upon
a tablet which also set forth the prices demanded. In
Italy the slogan was " service after the Roman fashion
and standard/* One heavily patronized commercial
hostelry at Lyons had Apollo and Mercury on its sign
board and the inscription deserves quotation:
GREECE & ROME 159
MERCVRIVS HIC LVCRVM
PROMITTIT APOLLO SALVTEM
SEPTVMAXVS HOSPITIVM
CVM PRAXDIO QVI VEXERIT
MELIVS VTETVR POST
HOSPES VBI MAXEAS PROSPICE
Mercury promises gain, Apollo health, Septumanus
hospitality; whoever enters here will be the better there
for; stranger, watch where you lodge.
The fifth region of Rome, which was probably the
Esquiline, was abundantly furnished with taverns be
cause of the institutions in the vicinity: The Amphi-
theatrum Castrense, where the legions mustered to parade
and drill and where gladiators sometimes trained them
selves for their combats with man or beast, the vivarium,
that huge menagerie where a number of slaves were always
on duty looking after the animals destined for the games,
and last of all, the praetorian camp with its perpetual
garrison of well paid soldiers. The immense barracks in
which the guard was quartered had been constructed
under Tiberius, and they must have furnished the tav
erns with a steady custom which yielded the vintners a
good profit. In addition to the foregoing, the gardens
of Maecenas were situated on the summit of the Esquiline
Hill, the loftiest site in Rome. From this lovely eleva
tion the entire city was spread out to the view in a grand
panorama. The idlers and transients in the city would
necessarily visit a place so famous and their difficult climb
would have made them ready and eager for refreshment
in the taverns of the district, a factor which must also
have weighed with the innkeeper when choosing his site*
Lastly, a short distance outside the walls, there was
a temple of Bacchus. Many years later, Constantino
erected on its foundations the mausoleum of his daughter
Constantina, but at the time of which we are speaking,
160 THE INNS OF
the devotees of the god of drunkenness would have
naturally paid their compliments to the taverns after
having taken part in the ritualistic rites of the cult. With
all the foregoing information before our eyes, we are
probably justified in assuming that of all the fourteen
regions of Rome, the fifth being most densely populated,
contained the greatest number of inns, because of economic
reasons furnished by the institutions grouped there.
In the earlier years of the city s history, such curious
sightseers as flocked thither from all over Italy at the
seasons given over to public jollification were unable to
secure quarters in the inns as there were not enough of
them for the purpose. On this account it was customary
to erect tents in the public spaces and in the inclosures
of the temples. Dionysius of Halicarnassus tells us of
an encampment of the Volscians in similar circumstances.
They could find shelter only in that manner. On their
return to their own country, they went into camp along
the road as the inns were also scarce in the country*
But the sites around which the taverns and inns would
cluster most advantageously would, of course, be those
on which the temples stood, and wherever there was a
temple, there was almost certain to be a number of tav
erns, and why not, one would ask? Did not intemperate
drinking have its origin in religious festivals? According
to an authority well versed in ancient lore "it was not
the custom of antiquity to indulge in wine, or any other
luxury to excess, except, indeed, on the occasion of some
sacred festival: which is the origin of the terms thoinai,
thaliai, and methai.* Thoinai means that men thought
it right and proper to drink wine on account of the gods:
thaMai they assembled and met together in honor of the
gods, and the term methai is derived from the custom of
using wine after having sacrificed/ 5 *
*Athenaens, Lib. I, 61, Yonge s translation.
GREECE & ROME 161
Another reason for the close relationship which
throughout antiquity subsisted between the public houses
and the temples was that peculiar taste which the gods
never failed to manifest in preferring for their ceremonies
those parts of the sacrificial victim which were unfit for
human consumption. The priests and their cronies,
however, labored under no such handicap and merrily
complimented Jupiter with the guts and garbage, in
complaisant obedience to his orders. The meat, there
fore, must be eaten, but before being eaten, it must be
cooked, and an understanding and sympathetic inn
keeper and his menage were of the utmost service to the
clergy in attending to this part of the ritual. This
arrangement was equally convenient for the priesthood
and the tavern-keepers, as the one was assured of
the finest joint and the other of excellent meat at a
moderate price. A funeral inscription preserved by
Fabretti has perpetuated the name of a freedman of
Q. Critonius, who made a business of carving such ani
mals, and of his concubine Philenia, who, in her tavern,
situated on the Isla de Tiberi, next door to the temples
of Jupiter, Aesculapius, and Faunus, served her patrons
with the meat from the animals slaughtered for her lord
and master. The term popa (a priest s assistant), not
withstanding Forcellini s objections, must be taken as
representing in its meaning the entire relation sub
sisting between the clergy, the innkeeper, and the victims,
and Martial and Cicero furnish many passages in sub
stantiation of this. As for popina (an eating-house) it
is impossible that it should admit an etymology other
than that inherent in popa.
If the modern reader could only place entire credence
in certain of the writings of Tertullian, which perhaps
are but moderately tinctured with hypocritical sancti
mony, the innkeepers set up shop in the vicinity of the
162 THE INNS OF
circus with more than one end in view, and not because
the crowds flocking to that institution would be certain
to give them much patronage. Their reason, according
to the Christian father, was that thereby they would
be near an excellent source of supplies and raw material.
Our devout and rigorous censor of Roman morals and
manners implies that the savage beasts of the arena,
for all the majesty of their ferocious presence, had after
all an ending no more poetic than that accorded to the
common alley tom-cat, and garnished the stew-pans of
the Roman cooks. What an ending! And, to the felines,,
at least, what a satisfactory and poetic climax! Bear
steaks are by no means a modern conception: Scintilla,
the mistress of Habinnas the stone mason, ate some
before coming to Trimalchio s table. It is true that she
indulged herself without knowing what she was eating,
and it must have been equally true that her reaction
when suffering from better information would, under the
circumstances, have pleased the victim best of all. These
inns and taverns near the circus were scarcely more than
booths or stalls, many of them being mere sheds in the
vicinity of the institutions. Such also were the cenabae
in which, later on, we shall see the wine merchants of
the Forum Vinarium establish their headquarters. There
were also the cenabulae, rustic ordinaries, located along
the banks of rivers; they were generally constructed
from light tiles and were covered with creeper roses.
Sometimes the cenabulae were also known as tdb&rnulae.
It was in an ordinary such as this, close to the temple
of Concord, that, in the year 664 A. U. C., the? praetor
Sempronius Asellio perished, a victim to the fury of the
debtor classes, and the precedent which is as old as time*
Inasmuch as the thing is exceedingly curious we shall
permit Valerius Maximus to relate the occurrence. After
having spoken of the period of reaction and deflation
GREECE & ROME 103
which followed in the steps of the Marsie War, when
property values fell and there was little money in circu
lation, when debtors were unable to discharge the claims
of their creditors, and the situation was more dangerous
than the authorities seemed to realize.
" Their animosity broke out with horrible fury against
Sempronius Asellio, the praetor, for having favored the
interests of the creditors. Infuriated still more by Lucius
Cassius, the tribune, they fell upon the praetor when he
was sacrificing in front of the temple of Concord, drove
him from before the altars of the public place, ran him to
cover in a little tavern, and mercilessly tore him to
pieces." (Lib. IX, 7, No. 4.)
While it was to be expected that the taverns would
nestle around the great public establishments, such as
the circus, temples, and barracks, they were also par
tial to a site near each of the two hundred corn mills
where the common people came to grind the corn issued
to them from the granaries. The work incident to
turning the huge mi]] stones, which beasts of burden
found it difficult to move, was exceedingly trying and
fatiguing, and the citizen was naturally averse to doing
more than necessary. For this reason, the mills were
sometimes idle because of lack of help, and the master
millers were compelled to find such remedies as the
situation afforded, often sentencing culpable slaves to
serve out their time at the task of turning the TniH stones.
As one experience was generally enough for even the
hardiest sinner, other means of supplying the demand
had to be devised. In this forced recruiting of labor
the irms and taverns played a very important part, and
were out and out accomplices of the millers. Let us cite
a passage from the Historia Ecclesiastica of Socrates the
Scholiast which informs us as to the expedients which
were invoked and, at the same time comments upon the
THE INNS OF
justice of Theodosius in dealing with the conditions
brought to his notice :
"Although the emperor Theodosius did not remain
very long in Italy, his stay was nevertheless productive
of great and solid advantages to the city of Rome, not
only because of the profusion of his pardons but also
through the repressing of disorders and the rooting out
of their causes. One infamous custom he abolished which
had been in force through a long period of years. The
great establishments where formerly the bread had been
made which was distributed to the people had, as the
years passed, become the haunt of thieves. A number
of taverns had been built adjoining the mills, and the
foresight of the tavern-keepers provided a number of
abandoned women to attract custom and patronage.
Trap doors were installed to permit those who had come
there for diversion to be taken by surprise, and by means
of a certain contrivance, such unfortunates were dropped
into the place where the corn was ground. There, help
less and in confinement, many slaved away their whole
lives without their relatives or friends ever being able
to get news of them. It so happened that a soldier
belonging to the forces of Theodosius was trapped in this
snare: he drew his dagger, wounded those who attempted
to secure him, and made his escape. The emperor, when
apprised of the situation, punished the officials of such
establishments, pulled down the lurking places of the
thieves and harlots, and purged Rome of that filthy
infamy/*
To enable the reader to grasp the details of the pic
ture which we are tracing of the places of public enter
tainment, which, by the way, were always subject to the
authority of the aediles empowered to arrest trouble
makers (loca aedilem metuenda), as Seneca terms them,
we are compelled to give some little space and attention
to the baths of Rome.
GREECE & ROME 165
During the earlier times of the Republic, the aedile
had little cause to make official entry into such estab
lishments: he contented himself and the public conscience
by merely seeing that they were clean and comfortable,
and kept himself informed as to the character of the
patrons who came there. The latter cause was relatively
unimportant because of the fact that luxury had not
invaded the system. The bath keeper in those times
was an honest man exercising an honest calling and one
of some importance to the public weal, as Rome was
never swept with such epidemics as those that scourged
the boorish uncleanliness of the Middle Ages. The baths
and the water supply were the causes of this long im
munity.
But the corruption of manners was not long in eating
its way through the social fabric and involving the bath
ing officials. From them it penetrated to every depart
ment of the institution, and whatever it touched, it
corroded. The balneator became a fornicator, a word
which indicates with sufficient force and precision the
disorder which had invaded the baths and the calling
which the expert had come to exercise so complacently.
Respect for the law of decent propriety which had
ordered the separation of the sexes in these institutions
had long been a dead letter, and the law itself, a grisly
spectre of the past, a nemesis no longer invoked by
aedile or censor, had come to be regarded by the favored
classes with that amused contempt which a later gener
ation has held to be the just reward of a too zealous
paternalism on the part of the authorities: it must have
produced on their minds an effect similar to that produced
on our own by the faces of the older and more barbarous
reformers, and when one had the misfortune to be born
in an age too crude to appreciate his merits at their
true worth he might well have found himself in Dennis s
shoes:
166 THE IXXS OF
But Appius reddens at each word you speak,
And stares tremendous with a threatening eye,
Like some fierce tyrant in old tapestry.
Usage is one of the most potent factors in affecting
the moral status of a community, whether for good or
for evil, and prostitution ran rife through the baths
soon after people began to be admitted to them in a
state of complete nudity. Instead of baths, they were
transformed into immense lupanars, equipped, in later
times, with every aid to comfort and to sensuousness.
With the arrival of night, which cast a kindly shadow
upon conditions such as these, licence raised its ugly
head, and a troup of women of pleasure, well skilled in
every specialty and refinement in their calling, arrived at
the baths, loitered in the corridors and inside the doors,
and the bath attendants, on seeing them, opened the
cells and extinguished the outside lights. The thermae
were open day and night, and the noise and bustle about
them reminded an observer of the clack and clatter of
a great restaurant. Here the soft and insinuating whisper
of lust was heard, and the caressing blandishments of
self interest had unrestricted play. The orgies carried on
here were of every kind, and while Cotytto may not have
presided in person, her pupils were scarcely less aban
doned than their preceptress. The curious reader is at
liberty to consult Boulanger for the particulars, and the
works of Guido Pancirollus for the entertainment and
dancing. All the world might have forgathered here to
dine, and nearly all the Roman world did. The emperors
were patrons, and Caligula was one of the most enthu
siastic supporters of the comessationes, as well as one
of the first to set the fashion by which he perfumed from
head to heel, his body carefully depilated, and left
reeking with the odors which exuded from his pores, for
it was then the fashion to perfume the wine and thus
GREECE & ROME 167
enhance physical appeal by temporarily overcoming un
pleasant body odors. Some of the essences used in this
manner were cold, others were in the form of vapor
which was inhaled and did away for a short time with
the stench of impostumated lungs in a close atmosphere.
Our modern Lysistratas have much to learn in the arts
of the toilette. In the times of which we speak, particular
and expert slaves were assigned to the care of every
orifice and every feature, and they all had special terms
to designate them and no others. A Roman dandy or
even a Roman lady, preparing for a comessatio, might
have even taught our own society misses a little lesson
in the gentle art of waiting. Some of them took hours
over the toilette.
After the death of Caligula the customs of the baths
took on a more sombre tone; in the times of Seneca they
were less abandoned, but the philosopher remarks scath
ingly that although the baths were now sweet and clean,
the populace was only the more foul. Under Commodus,
Caracalla, and Heliogabalus, however, they reached a
state of depravity and luxurious refinement to which
there is no parallel. It was in the course of one of these
entertainments that Caracalla delivered himself from
the menace of his brother and co-ruler, Geta, as well as
dispatching Sammonicus Serenus and others hostile to
his power.
Fastidious men about town often arranged love trysts
with the kdies, and the scene of such tender encounters
was generally laid in the baths: they used them as
moderns do the institutions of our times, Ovid advises
lovers to meet at the baths, in his Art of Love.
A check system was in force but theft of clothing
was frequent nevertheless. Catullus mentions it, and in
Petronius we find a skve serving the rarest vintages to
Encolpius and his friends because they had intervened
108 THE INNS OF
to rescue him from the fury of the steward whose cloth
ing had been stolen through the carelessness of that
same slave. Eumolpus philosophizes on the same sub
ject. He had the greatest difficulty in getting possession
of his meagre wardrobe and had to be completely identi
fied before the officious bath attendant would surrender
possession, although a rogue of a more sinister character
got attentive service almost at once by virtue of the
natural charm of his person proof positive to Eumolpus,
that it was less advantageous to polish the mind than it
was to massage the body. All bath attendants were
soon regarded in the eyes of the law as either prostitutes
or procurers. The reason for such discrimination lay in
the demands to which their calling made them heir.
One of Martial s characters was "unable to return home
sober from the baths/* and Seneca has not a little to say
upon the same subject. Nor have we yet reached the
most distressing phase of the situation. In order that
every possibility might be discounted and every taste
accommodated, huge dining-rooms, called Nympheae,were
maintained. Here women emancipated by marriage
from the restrictions which had bound them while still
under the parental roof, amused their wearied and
voracious leisure by inviting all the gluttons and long
nosed parasites whom previously they had hankered after
in vain, probably the most striking manifestation of the
utter depravity which had invaded and corrupted the
entire fabric of the Roman civilization. A newly married
couple, on the day after the bride had been lifted across
the threshold of her husband s door, would celebrate
their nuptials in one of the magnificently sumptuous
dining rooms attached to the baths, amid surroundings
and schemes of interior decoration of the most "graphic
and elevating kind, and amid scenes of artistic nudity
which we have no words to describe, although Juvenal
GREECE & ROME 169
has done very well in the passage which he devotes to
this subject* It was as though one were to enter an
establishment in which the women, chosen for beauty,
blondness, mentality, and the most exquisite and minute
knowledge of all the demands to which their profession
subjected them, and the most complacent skill in cater
ing to these demands, were to entertain their guests
between silken sheets of the deepest black! The practice
has much to recommend it as man has been relatively
blind since Lynceus, but such cannot be said of the state
of mind which evolved so sensational a complex and
studied with deliberation to solve it, Roman culture was
little concerned with anything but the quasi-artistic at
mosphere of such ritualistic orgies, and the time had long
passed since Horace wrote the little ode to the simple
country maiden, Phidyle, whose modest soul had felt
misgivings at the poverty of her sacrifice:
TO PHIDYLE
If thou to heaven thine upturned palms shall lift,
Sweet Phidyle, when glows the crescent moon
With virgin splendor, and thy simple gift
Shalt offer to thy gods and ask thy boon,
Nor scorching drought shall smite thy fruitful vine,
Nor blight attack thy harvest in the ear.
Nor shall thy flock for lack of pasture pine
When Autumn comes and chills the dying year;
Yea, Wealth s fat victims feed in pastures lush,
Or graze in lanes of ilex or of oak
To stain the ax, amid the solemn hush,
And die beneath the consecrating stroke;
Thy little gods require not such of thee,
For Innocence hath little to atone,
And wreaths of myrtle or sweet rosemary
Are all they ask to make thy lot their own:
170 THE I X X S OF
The rarest gift that Riches can confer,
From outraged heaven s justice less commands
Than does the humblest sacrifice of her
Who brings it to the fane with spotless hands.
A very curious passage in Pancirollus describes in
some detail one of these great nympheae: "Besides these
basilicae, there were also at Rome eleven other edifices
called nympheae, as Publius Victor informs us* They were
spacious halls, made use of for nuptials, by those that
had no conveniency of their own for such solemnities.
And for this end (as Zonaras declares in the Life of Leo
the Great) these nympheae (I suppose) were supported
with pillars. They were built with kitchens, parlors,
closets, and the like, wherein they kid towels and nap
kins, bowls and dishes, and other utensils, and were
called nympheae because the Greeks called the bride a
nymph, Capitolinus tells us the Gordian the emperor
joined baths to his nympheae, for the ancients did fre
quently bathe before supper; and tis easy to gather as
much from two laws of Theodosius and Valentinian.
Suidas saith, that the water was brought to these bridal-
houses from a fountain, called now, Enneacrunos, and
formerly, CaUirrhoe.
"These nympheae had also most stately and ample
piazzas, large enough to walk in; one whereof Augustus
built in the place where the house of Vedius Pollio (whose
heir he was) was ruinated, and inscribed it with the name,
not of Pollio, but of Livia, as Dion writes. And many
others built glorious porticos." In the 1715 English trans
lation of this old antiquarian is the following:
These were large and capacious Fabricks, designed for the cele
bration of Nuptial Solemnities, and us d only by those who had
no Houses of their own: But this is contradicted by Akiatus and
Beroaldus; who think it to be a very foul Error to imagine these
Nympheae to be Genial Apartments appointed for marriages.
GREECE & ROME
171
Some take them for Baths built by Princes for the sake of Pos
terity; wherefore Julius Capitolinus saith, that no Works of Gordian
are remaining, besides the Nympheae and Baths. So that these
Nympheae seem to be Tepida Lavacra, Warm Bagnios, and used for
Pleasure, but not for Health.
But where is the Absurdity, if we affirm with our author, that
Gordian did only adorn his Bridal-Houses with Baths adjoining?
And what Soloecism is it to say, that by these Nympbeae, we under
stand as well Baths for Women, as Nuptial Chambers?
Some say that brides were called Nymphs, apo to nun proto
phainesthai, because they now expose themselves to open View,
whereas formerly they appeared covered with a Veil, Nay, the
Greeks call Matrimony itself Nymphaeum, because (as f tis thought)
Religion and Piety were propagated by Nymphs to Mankind, in
regard no Rite or Worship was ever performed without their being
mentioned* The Deities that presided o er the Waters, were calTd
Naiades; and because these Naiades were Nymphs in Corpora
Tendentes, therefore Sobolis propagandae causa, New-many d Girls
were term d Nymphs.
172 THE INN SOP
CHAPTER
Caio and Ike Sumptuary Laws Contempt for the Law enforcers
Orgiastic dances Prices of foods and wines controlled More of Nero s
slumming escapades Julius Capitolinus, Commodus andHelwgabalus,
the most dissolute of a//, patrons of the low taverns Aurelian cleans the
Augean stables Virgil pays court to the divinities of hospitality
Horace the man about town.
We have already had occasion to speak of the gyne-
comus at Athens and the power invested in the office, a
power that prevented gatherings and picnics which com
prised more than thirty individuals: we now find the
Roman law favoring a regulation almost the same, but
applying it to the entertainments in the nympheae. With
the individual guests invited, the law did not concern
itself further than to limit the maximum number that
could be in attendance. But an ancient proverb, a
joyous and spirited double entendre, took a sprightly
revenge upon the rule limiting the number of guests to
seven:
Septem convivium . . . novem convieium
a play on sound and sense, signifying a convivial party
of seven, may result in anything from a new meeting
to a recognition of hostility, or nine critics. Varro was
a trifle more indulgent in his estimate, for Aulus Gellius
quotes a passage from the Menippean Satires in which
the following passage occurs: That though the number
of guests should not be smaller than the number of
Graces, yet should it not exceed the number of the Muses.
However, there was still another reason for the sur
veillance maintained by the authorities, an inspection
that often invaded the home and the tavern. Among
the Romans some of the more austere citizens, such as
GREECE & ROME 173
Cato, saw in the increase of luxurious appetites the seeds
of ruin, and for this reason, they passed certain sump
tuary laws designed to curtail the expenses which could
be incurred in private dinners. As prodigality would
increase the prices of commodities and place a hardship
upon the shoulders of the common people, such laws,
though opposed during their passage through the senate,
were generally passed, but, like many of our own, soon
fell into neglect, and were invoked and revitalized from
time to time. Such powers were placed in the hands
of the censors, who were better prepared to enforce them
because of the nature of the office they held. One of
the first regulations promulgated after the passage of
the earlier sumptuary laws was to the effect that the
citizen must eat his meals in the first room of the house,
and leave his gates and doors wide open to make inspec
tion easier and more rapid. "And this," says Pancir-
ollus, whom we shall have frequent cause to cite in
dealing with the bypaths of antiquity, "was to enable
the censors passing by to ascertain whether the citizen
living there was complying with all the provisions of
the law and keeping within the limits prescribed. Accord
ing to these laws, it was not legal to serve more than
one hen; no poultry should be specially fattened for the
table; on wedding days not more than two hundred
asses could be expended on the entertainment, on certain
festival days named in the Fannian Law, one hundred
asses could be expended, on ten other days in each month
not more than thirty asses could be lavished, and on all
other days not more than ten asses could be spent. There
were several of these laws, passed at different times, but
all of them fell eventually into neglect."
The Licinian Law also provided that on ordinary
days not more than three pounds of fresh meat should
be served, and not more than one pound of salt meat*
174 THE IXNS OF
Extravagance in funerals tad been prohibited by the
Twelve Tables, and a law of the dictator Sulla revitalized
this ancient regulation and limited also the amounts
that could be expended upon monuments: precepts which
we today might imitate and follow to advantage.
Needless to say, the sumptuary laws were the occasion
of some dissatisfaction, and the pride of the individual
who successfully evaded them was commensurate with
that of our own citizens in dealing with certain of the
amendments to the American Constitution. In order
that they might have finer and more caustic sport at
the expense of the censor and his assistants, his living
effigy was present at entertainments during the saturn
alia, the seasons of the greatest licence and drunkenness,
and filled the role of master of the feast, a toastmaster
charged with the authority of regulating the drinks and
prescribing the rules to be followed under a satiric and
mocking exterior, the very personification of Folly in a
merry mood. The regulations prescribed by him were a
parody of the laws and mannerisms of the censor in
office. He was chosen by lot after a throw of the dice.
The so-called Cast of Venus (do not our own dusky
experts at African golf continually call upon Little Joe
from Kokomo or Little Dick from Boston?) decided his
election and crowned him king of the revels. Once
named, he threw himself heart and soul into his task,
he impersonated the censor to admiration, and if the
latter happened to be a martinet his vagaries and man
nerisms were imitated and the mirth ran high* With all
the gravity with which a little responsibility always
invests a light weight, this pseudo-censor would take
from the hands of the obsonator and the vinerius the
lists setting forth the dishes and the vintages, and should
they prove too numerous and extravagant, it boded ill
for the host! This little satire on manners and customs
GREECE & ROME 175
must have been highly diverting to the other guests
and might even be said to approach in subtle delicacy
our own "ain t prohibition grand/ heard so frequently
when the juniper and the coriander begin to get in their
insidious work. The principal charge, however, a thing
that occupied the serious attention of our toastmaster,
was fixing the number of bumpers to be tossed off by
each guest: the bigger the bumper the oftener it came
around, and they were good drinkers in those days. This
mock-heroic monarch, personification of contempt for
law, this index to a state of mind that considered nothing
but its own amusement and convenience, carried matters
to the very heights of sardonic banter by promulgating
outlandish orders among the guests, who were duty
bound to obey them with a smile even as the serious
orders of constituted authority provoked sorrow and
tragedy more frequently than joy. He could command
a guest to vilify himself, as being the best possible author
ity upon the subject; another would be ordered to dance
in a state of nature and to sing a song, a third would
take the nude flute girl upon his shoulders and lead the
orgiastic procession through the whole establishment, the
customary number of tours being three:
Thy praises shall be sung
By youths who thrice shall dance around thy shrine^
Happy in youth and full of this year s -wine.
Petronius, Hymn to Priapus.
Another might be called upon to blacken his face
with soot, another to leap into a pool of water chilled
with December s rigors- Those most successful in execut
ing the letter and spirit of the orders received were
awarded as a prize a magnificent sausage or other appro
priate trinket no less recondite.
Such is the nature of the "so-called human race,"
that so fine an example as that set by the wealthy liber-
176 THE INNS OF
tines would never have been lost upon the lower orders,
and burlesques of a more revolting character took place
in the inns and taverns, especially in those which lay
beyond the city walls, although the eating-houses and
pot-houses of such districts as the Esquiline, Velabri,
Suburra, Trans Tiber, and, on a more elaborate scale,
the Peace Ward (Ticus Pacis) must also have celebrated
the Saturnalia in a lively and lubricous manner. The
more the observer gets down to brass tacks with the
commoners, the deeper one descends through the various
social strata, the more he will encounter satire, acrid
and mordant, merciless to those in power; it is a very
natural revenge; they who suffer most and oftenest will
always be found ready and eager to pay off their grudges
when license and usage counter a temporary immunity.
When the Saturnalia had passed, however, the Roman
landlords were very chary of permitting the authorities
to be complimented In such a manner; freedom of speech
was punished severely whenever it became a menace to
official peace of mind, and even at that early day, it
was a case of the greater the truth the greater the libel.
The aedile and his four myrmidons were empowered by
the laws to inspect all places where food, wine, beer,
and other luxuries and necessities were sold- He could
order merchandise thrown into the river and the magis
trates would sustain him in all his official acts, though
there are instances on record where this official has per
mitted his zeal for reform to outrun his common sense,
and then he has become a trifle lumpy in spots, as when
the prostitute Hostilia drive the aedile from her estab
lishment when he had no right of entry. She used bricks
and stones with telling effect and the authorities repri
manded the aedile as being in the wrong in going to the
place with his lictor.
The taverns were always under the eye of the police
GREECE & ROME 177
and the regulation of >uch establishments was never a
task to be undertaken lightly. Some, which came within
the meaning of the term lupanar, he was not supposed
to enter because of the sacredness of his office and the
example he might thus furnish others* He could enter
the taverns and inspect them, however, see that the
prices were not too high, and cast the cold eye of official
formality upon the weights and measures to see that
they were not fraudulent, but conformed to the stand
ards kept in the temple of Ops or in that of Jupiter
Capitolinus, Measures found dishonest were summarily
broken in pieces on the spot, and the tavern-keeper or
retailer was in for a crowded half hour if his case could
not be compromised in some manner- This law per
taining to weights and measures was enforced in every
part of the empire; it applied in an equal degree to the
Roman landlord and to the poor scullion who conducted
a pitiful stall amongst the Volscians, as Juvenal informs
us, and, according to Persius, to the retailers even at
Aratium.
We do not know whether the official authority of the
aedile was broad enough to include wine in its scope;
thus permitting him to condemn adulterated or diluted
products and order them dumped into the river, but we
do know that the vintners from Gades to Cappadocia
were past masters in adulterating and diluting. In
Petronius, Trimalchio classes all the bartenders under
the sign of Aquarius, and Martial has something to say
of those who diluted and those who did not.
The vineyards are swamped with continual rains,
But my innkeeper, wilTe or niTe
Serves "wine undiluted and won t take the pains
To water my draught though it kfll me.
Although the vigilance of the aedile had little to
reward it in dealing with the subtlety of the Roman
178 THE INNS OF
landlords and adulterators, it could, nevertheless, take
certain indirect measures against the former. Several
of the emperors promulgated decrees empowering the
aediles to arrest those selling certain commodities men
tioned by name in the instrument, such, for instance, as
pastry. Some even went so far as to ban the sale of
every article of food except peas and pulse and other
vegetables, and this may throw a dim and flickering light
on the date of the Satyricon, as Encolpius and Ascyltos
had only a two as piece with which to purchase pease
and pulse when the necessity of redeeming the lost tunic
with the gold pieces in the hem suddenly confronted
them. Such decrees must have gravelled the tavern-
keepers especially when they had ready money in sight
if only they could furnish victuals; by feeding their cus
tomers they sold them drink, and by selling rum they
got the profits. Taverns were the perpetual cockpits
where the disorders and breaches of the peace had their
origin and frequently their solution. This would not
have been so bad, but unfortunately, such brawls were
carried out into the streets and resulted sometimes in
riots requiring the services of a maniple of praetorian
guards to quiet the mob and restore order. Tiberius
was the first to issue such an edict and it was extremely
severe in the penalties it provided.
The attitude of Claudius is more difficult to gauge.
At one time we find him confirming the severity of
Tiberius, as Dion Cassius reports, and at another he
speaks in the house in defense of these establishments,
and removes them from the surveillance of the aedile.
Nor was Nero less inconsistent than Claudius in his
persecutions of the innkeepers. He was one of the prin
cipal actors, in fact he played the stellar role, in the
orgies of the ganea at Baiae and along the coastline of
that lovely gulf; he spent his days in diversions such as
GREECE & ROME 179
these, and at night he covered his head with a freed-
man s cap or a mantle and made the rounds of the free-
and-easies in the city, insulting those whom he met
returning from supper, striking them and laughing the
while as they were stripped of their cloaks; entering the
smaller cabarets by force, pillaging wherever he went
and sharing his booty with his confederates. Yet this
same emperor who had roistered it merrily in every low
dive and cabaret in the city did everything in his power
to control the traffic of the innkeepers and keep them
within bounds. Xor were his marauding expeditions
the worst services he did the tavern-keepers; the decree
of which we had spoken above as from Petronius, was
of Nero s sanction and was signed by him; it prevented
the sale of any cooked foods in the taverns and restau
rants, save only vegetables, notwithstanding the fact
that usage had long compelled them to serve delicacies
of every sort before his time.
Vespasian s attitude toward public houses was no less
severe, but he was parsimonious and austere by nature
and when he levied war against these middlemen there
were none who could accuse him of double dealing.
Many of the emperors followed the examples set by
Claudius and Nero in their social habits and debauch
eries, but none exceeded these two odious tyrants in the
harshness and injustice meted out to the innkeeping
classes. These must have resulted from their orgies.
For example, we know that Verus was given to the fre
quenting of public houses, and spent his time there day
or night, but we know nothing of any decrees promul
gated by bim against them or their owners; those who
had amused his love of excess were safe from whatever
spleen he might feel as the result of a big head, and his
repentance, if he manifested any, did not take the form
of prescriptive edicts and cruel and unusual punishments.
180 THE INNS OF
Julius Capitolinus does not leave us in ignorance of
Verus s predilection for taverns and restaurants, nor does
the malignity of the chronicler gloss over the excesses
committed there.
"Emulating the examples set by Caligula, Nero, and
Vitellius," says mine author, "he frequented the taverns
and haunts of vice iat night, his head enveloped in a cowl
such as is worn by vagrant wayfarers; disguised in this
manner, he mixed with the brawling roisterers and
bullys, took part in their battles, and came home with
his face and body a mass of bruises and contusions. In
spite of his disguise, he was well known in these taverns.
Sometimes he amused his ennui by throwing heavy pieces
of money at the vases and porcelains, to break them."
By instinct, this emperor was devoted to low amuse
ments. The achievements of a Caligula seemed common
and ordinary to him, and he would have fallen asleep
over them. Caligula established a lupanar in his palace;
Verus set up a tavern in his. Caligula served his familiars
as bogau and water-boy; Verus beguiled his in his capacity
of tavern-keeper and entertainer: a sort of chaperone
to predaciousness, as it were: in other words, he exer
cised all three callings at the same time.
"His manners/ 9 to quote again from Capitolinus,
"his manners were so dissolute that on his return from
Syria he set up a tavern in his palace, whither he betook
himself as soon as he could leave the table of Marcus
Aurelius; here he rendered services and extended a
hospitality which out-rivalled all the infamies of Rome."
According to Trebellius Pollio, the habits and incli
nations of Gallienus were closely s*km to those of Corn-
modus, of whom we have just spoken* Of hi also it
was said that "he passed all his nights in the taverns,
and lived and amused himself with all the go-betweens,
mimes, actors, and actresses and witty rascals, 55 whom
GREECE & ROME 181
he could meet. And as for Heliogabalus, we need not
stay our progress to relate his exploits when Saltus In
his Imperial Purple has done us that favor. Had there
been no English translation of the Augustan History, we
might still have gone into his career, but the need, if it
exists, has been nobly met. Suffice it to say that Helio
gabalus was probably the most dissolute androgyne that
ever dishonored the throne of any nation. Compared
to him, Sardanapalus was an immaculate conception.
This emperor was a constant frequenter of caf6s and all
they stood for in an age whose unbridled viciousness has
never been approached in public, Commodus was the
incarnation of evil, a brutish and uninstructed evil, his
influence could scarcely have corrupted the minds of
those about him, on the contrary, he filled them all with
the most raging contempt, as is shown in the manner in
which his body was dragged with the hook: Heliogabalus,
however, more abandoned than the son of Marcus
Aurelius, had, withal, a certain refined charm; he could
appeal to the better feelings of strangers upon first meet
ing them; he was physically very handsome, and, on
occasion he had the capacity for wit without cruelty.
Such a character may be a frightful menace to an entire
city, especially if its owner is invested with absolute
power and inviolability. This is especially the case when
the individual is disposed to use his power to minister
to the self interest of others* Under Heliogabalus every
order of society was affected by the festering contagion
induced by an utter lack of all moral values, and it is
left to the melancholy historian who wishes his race well
and to the malignant chronicler who perhaps has suf
fered under a tyranny no less bitter in that its mandates
were couched in gentle terms and soothing phrases, to
comment upon conditions which surround them.
It is with relief that we turn this filthy page and
183 THE INNS OF
come at length to the age of Aurelian, that stern re
storer of character and discipline who only preoccupied
himself with inns long enough to instruct one of his
lieutenants to see that the soldiers did not lavish upon
the eating-houses and taverns the pay from the money
belts worn by them. The same thought must have ani
mated Hadrian in the sparkling retort courteous which
he sent to Floras. Aside from the fact that he was a
poet and a friend of Hadrian, we know nothing of Floras:
some authorities have been inclined to attribute the
Copa to him. He had written in a bantering style to
Hadrian:
No Caesar would I want to be,
Inspecting Britain s wastes,
Lurking in savage (Germany)
No Scythian frosts would suit my tastes. , . .
And Hadrian answered him:
No Moms would I want to be,
Inspecting bar-maid s waists,
Lurking in a hostelry,
No fat round insects suit my tastes.
The inns play a greater part in public life than ever
before, some are sumptuous, but the majority must still
have been tawdry and repulsive. Yet Floras did not
stand alone in paying his court to the divinities of
hospitality. Many of the finest poetical geniuses of all
ages were similarly smitten. We have already called
attention to Virgil s Copa, that lithe and sinuous pur
veyor of sensations; we have seen Lucilius react to the
advances of another of the same species; and Horace in
his writings speaks of many affairs with innkeepers.
The epithets which he bestows upon them are generally
sarcastic, auguring unpleasant experiences and dissatis
faction with their customary hardihood at impudent
GREECE & ROME _ 183
repartee, which was more in the style of the bludgeon
than the rapier. "Yon vintner, an exceeding knave,"
says our author, in instructing neophytes in the rhetorical
art of treating subjects in a manner natural to themselves
and to human experience. Elsewhere he speaks of the
greasy eating-house, though the passage may mean the
reverse as he is remonstrating with his steward who is
totally lacking in appreciation for the rustic life on the
Sabine farm, and has requested a transfer:
A wench,
The greasy luxury of a tavern bench,
*Tis this I see, that makes you long for town,
And you on that dear nook of mine look down;
Because the spiee of Eastern climes you know
As soon or sooner, theme than wine will grow;
Because too there s no tippling house hard by
To drop into whenever you feel dry;
No piping jade your heavy heels to set
Jigging and jumping to her flageolet.
(Martin s Translation.)
In another passage he uses the term caupona and
again it is to express dissatisfaction; he advises his friends
Scaeva to go to Ferentinum for rest and relaxation as
the noise of Rome is scarcely less nerve wracking than
that of an
If what you lack be sweet unbroken rest,
And sleep till after dawn; if you detest
Worry, and dust, and smother, and the din
Of cars and carts, and of a noisy inn. . . .
However, Horace was too much of the man-about-
town not to have regaled himself many times in the
taverns of a gayer aspect: more than once, as he tells
his steward, he had tasted the delights his steward craves,
but he was ever a critic denouncing the uproar of the
184 THE INNS OF
inns and taverns as one of the plagues with which Rome
was afflicted.
Martial expresses himself more freely; he delights in
taverns and avows it without the least restraint:
"An innkeeper, a butcher, baths, a barber, a well
furnished exchequer, a few books of my own choice, a
friend not too ignorant, a young lady who is pleasing
to my slave, a huge fellow of a slave, not too lively, but
of an age which will permit him a long life; give me these,
Rufus, and let them even be at Byzantium, but I will
cede you the baths of Nero with all my heart/ 5
Sometimes he wets his youthful muse with wine of
Crete, country of Minos, that wine which is the nectar
of poverty:
"The vines of Crete, country of Minos, produce that
liquor, the ordinary wine of the people/*
Again he may have felt impelled to take a meagre
repast from one of the peripatetic stalls which a yelling
cook pushed from tavern to tavern. This may not have
satisfied the inner man, but, nevertheless, he got some
of his finest touches from surroundings and contacts such
as these.
Syriscus has run at so rapid a pace
"IWeen the benches of tavern and stew
That he s now neck and neck in a bankruptcy race
And the million lie had is run through;
"A million devoured! What a glutton/* you ll say;
Aye, a gulligut glutton, to do it that way!
GREECE &ROME 185
CHAPTER
The literati Philostratus*s beautiful tribute to a cabaret girl Nero
as a cabaret singer Catullus flays the lewd taverns Juvenal* s descrip
tion of the lupanars Patricians liberal patrons, many being tavern
owners Trimalchio speculates in wine Plutarch tells of the baseness of
the inns,
The literati and declaimers of the times, the rheto
ricians and out at elbow philosophers and intellectuals,
made the taverns and thermopolia their headquarters:
here they gathered to gossip and discuss affairs of eveiy-
day life, and they were probably no vainer or more
verbose than the expatriated sophists who came from
Greece in the times of the Scipios under the pretext of
refining the local customs and social usages, and giving
a rhetorical and artificial polish to the rude vigor of the
old Latin tongue. In reality, however, they set a fine
example of tavern swilling and wenching, and the term
pergraecari (to drink like a Greek) was coined to describe
their cultivated avidity in this exercise.
Plautus, who was contemporary with them, has drawn
a picture which enables us to see them as they were,
enveloped from head to heel in their cloaks, which were
equipped with cowls to cover the head. They stagger
under the weight of the books they are carrying, on their
way to the tavern, there to drink themselves into a
state of philosophical abstraction which will make them
for hours immune to all the crudities with which they
are surrounded. Let one of them catch the scent of
wine and he becomes prudent, simulating the countenance
of a drunken man under a thoughtful mien of philosophy.
Under the emperors they are still the same, displaying
the same old vices and masquerading under the same
186 THE INNS OF
philosophy. One of them, however, has avowed his
intimacy and has immortalized the object of his adora
tion: I speak of Philostratus, a Greek sophist of the
deepest dye, yet who did yeoman service in refining the
crudities of a language already effeminate, a language
degenerating under the subtleties of a philosophy of
decadence. His example was one that others could
follow: he frequented taverns as he chose. If he per
mitted sentiments so exquisite to flow from his pen it
must have been because he was more moved by love
and artistic appreciation than by drunkenness. A girl
of the cabarets has attracted his glance; probably to
order something to drink: he sees her eyes, and, like
Catullus translating Sappho,
A-down my limbs flows subtle flame
My ears are ringing with her spell
My eyes see naught but night!
Yes, the glance of an eye weaned him away from the
fetishes of a lifetime; he ceased scoffing at chastity, and
wrote three little letters, one might almost be tempted
to call them madrigals, that contain the finest essence
of worshipful appreciation. These resulted from the
spell which the tavern Hebe threw over him and were
born of the inspiration with which she fired his soul.
They are sincere, they voice a refined passion, they
have survived the ages, and they are of the very stuff
of the gallantry not only of Greek antiquity, but of the
gallantry of all time.
Charmingly simple, they must have been addressed
to a character no less lovely.
TO A CABARET GIRL
"Everything about you delights me; to me your robe
of linen is the peplum of Isis; your tavern the temple of
GREECE & ROME 187
Aphrodite, your chalices so round and shining the eyes
of Hera, your wine has the bouquet of ambrosia itself,
and the three fingers you extend to take up the cup are
like the triple rose entwined in the sacred chaplet.
"I tremble lest the cup shall fall, but no, it is as firm
in your hand as a sun dial on its base, and reminds me
of a flower pushing out and growing from between your
fingers.
"If you would touch the cup lightly with your lips
and warm the wine with your breath it would be sweeter
than nectar. It would run through every vein and every
nerve would tingle. It would be more than wine ... it
would be a draught of kisses.
"Your cups are of glass. In your hands they become
silver and gold and your touch communicates to them
I know not what of softness and gleaming charm. Yet
it is a transparence dull and without reflection, like that
of a sleeping lake. Ah, how it differs from the radiance
of your eyes sparkling with the joyous spirit of your
countenance. What sweetness they convey to me, with
what a thirst for kisses they inflame my senses!
"The cup is fragile and easily broken, place it upon
the table; with such eyes as yours, I have no other need.
"Your glances alone intoxicate me even as do those
of the adorable child* the cupbearer to the god of gods,
under whose soft glances Zeus brings on his drunkenness.
"Yea, serve me no more with that flavorless nectar,
water alone shall suffice; bring but the cup to your lips,
implant thereon your kisses, and when I would drink
present it to me. Where is the man who could demand
wine, the gift of Dionysus, when Aphrodite offers him
her ambrosia?
"Your eyes are more transparent than the crystal of
your cups, and they mirror your soul. The color of
your cheeks is more brilliant than that of the wine itself.
188 THE INNS OF
The whiteness of your linen robe is reflected in your face,
and your lips are tinted with the blood of roses. Your
eyes, humid and lovely, are like those of the statues
adorning our fountains; they weep with the joy of living.
Yea, you are one of the nymphs.
"And they whom you cause to halt in their course,
who remain when their intention was to pass by without,
yea, you know how to invite them without speaking
a single word.
"As for myself, what a thirst I had the first time I
saw you. The cup remained immovable in my hand in
spite of my unwillingness. I could not bring it to my
lips. I drink to your eyes."
Any and all of these little pastels might have been
odes of Anacreon to the nymphs of the vintages, and
they have immortalized a hostess whose exquisite sim
plicity and loveliness could only detract from itself by
adornment. With such a subject poetic enthusiasm and
lyric rhapsody cannot be out of place, whether it be a
tavern girl or a geisha, and, as we have remarked, many
of the classical poets and many that have come after
them gained their finest inspiration from the girls of
the cabarets. The Syrian ambibia has danced for us,
we have been enthralled by the rustic flute that enchants
the echoes of garden and tavern, and, if we search dili
gently enough, perhaps we shall find the material with
which to complete our picture of the olden time, the
lyric and poetic side of the tavern life of Rome. It is
not our intention to introduce our readers to any ordi
nary songbird such as is to be met with in our own caf 6s
chantants; nor shall we inflict the falsetto screechings of
a cabaret lizard upon the unwilling ears of our patrons
and torture their patience with doubtful and obscene
double entendres. For lack of a performer more illus
trious, we shall introduce Nero himself; Nero, whose
GREECE & ROME 189
joy and pride lay in singing in the taverns, garbed as an
entertainer, and who decreed a fte day whenever he
thus distributed his largesse. Philostratus has related
a very curious fact. He is speaking of the exile of
Demetrius, a cynic philosopher contemporary with him
self, but less addicted to questionable places and more
restrained and austere in his manner of speaking and
writing.
"One day Demetrius was ranting in the gymnasium,
the object of his scorn was the institution of the baths.
He characterized them as places which catered to ex
travagance and which served all the effeminates who went
there for the purpose of polluting their bodies under the
pretext of washing them. It so happened that on that
very day Nero was singing in a cabaret next to the
gymnasium, and had surpassed himself. He was clad
like any innkeeper, in a pair of drawers and the rest of
his body was naked. Tigellinus, the praetorian prefect,
informed him as to what Demetrius had said and con
strued the words as a satire directed against Nero s
conduct in the cabaret. Nero was furious and deported
Demetrius, *as though, says Philostratus, the baths
might have tumbled down before the breath caused by
his words." This anecdote is curious not only because
of what it teaches us of Nero, but also because it bears
out what we have said of the understanding which existed
between the baths, gymnasia and the taverns. According
to Isadore of Seville (Origines, Lib. XIV, Chap. 2), the
taverns adjoining the baths went under the name popinae,
but Lefebre (Agnostiques Lib. HI, Chap. 28), remarks
that the cabarets operating with the gymnasia at Rome
were called ebeterwn.
We should not be astonished at the praise lavished by
Philostratus upon the cabaret girl: the Roman innkeepers
were not blind to beauty, nor were they oblivious to the
190 THE INNS OF
effect of exquisite loveliness upon trade. Twenty cen
turies later we shall see Madame Bourette, the Muse of
Lemonade Sellers, enthroned in her caf in the rue Bour
bon- Villenueve: the goddess who reigns in the caf4 du
Bosquet does so by virtue of her beauty and charm; and
many another Hebe shall officiate in establishments where
sherbet is sold, or chocolate, where the prices are high but
the buying public is more than anxious to bask in the light
of the beauty s smiles; to court her favors, and press a
fortunate moment for all it is worth. In them is the
origin of the charming cashier system.
They knew well that a pretty face, animated with the
joy of living, is a finer appeal to good- will than the most
subtle and piquant sign; a glance of the eye was more
potent than all the haranguing of an obsequious and
fawning predaciousness at the threshold of the tavern, as
for instance we find in Juvenal:
"And when it pleases Lateranus to go back to the all
night tavern, some Syro-Phoenician runs forth to meet
him some denizen of the Idumaean Gate perpetually
drenched with perfumes and salute him as lord and
prince with all the airs of a host; and with him comes the
venal Cyane with her robe tucked up, carrying a flagon
of wine/ 5 (Sat. VIII, 158 et seq.)
And then again we may take the case of Aulus Bin-
nius, the jolly tavern-keeper, of whom Cicero speaks so
slightingly in what is probably the finest defense for the
wild oat fields sown by the exuberance of youth:
"And it is also reported to us that you suborn an
entertainer of many guests, a certain Aulus Binnius, an
innkeeper on the Via Latina, to say that violence was
offered to him in his own tavern." (Pro Cluentio,
ch. 59.)
The women of the common people well knew what
success would wait upon their charms if they became
GREECE & ROME 191
cabaret girls: therefore, when they abandoned their status
of virtuous mediocrity where virtue was too often its own
reward, it was with full knowledge of what to expect and
a willingness to pay the price necessary; to marry a tavern-
keeper was the goal they set themselves to reach. They
generally consulted some oracle or other as to what the
matrimonial future had in store for them:
"The woman who displays a long gold chain on her
bare neck inquired before the pillars and the clusters of
dolphins whether she will throw over the tavern-keeper
and marry the rag man/ 5 (Juvenal "V 7 !, 589 et seq.)
Custom and good-will flowed into taverns such as these
where pretty young women were in attendance; but their
morality was in inverse ratio to their business and the very
nature of the calling augured complaisance. See what
havoc two beautiful eyes can make! How powerfully
they attract custom! When the mistress whom Catullus
loved so deeply ran away from her house to the tavern
near the temple of Castor and Pollux, see how the patron
age increased: two hundred customers at the very least,
but such customers! All more or less hardened. And
see how well the tavern deserved to be flayed by the in
dignant poet in the injurious epithet with which he
salutes it: Salax taverna lewd tavern:
"Lewd tavern, the ninth sign-post from the pileated
brothers* temple, and you, its frequenters, do you think
that you alone have the attributes of manhood? That
you alone are licensed to kiss the girls all and sundry
and hold all other men at naught, you rank he-goats?
Is it because you sit there night and day, a hundred
boobies or two, that you tliniTr I will not venture to tackle
the whole two hundred of you at once? Aye, but you
may think it, and I will write inscriptions all over the
front of your tavern. For my girl who has fled from my
bosom, my girl, whom I loved as woman was never loved
192 THE INNS OF
before, for whom I have waged great wars, has sat herself
down there; and now you all make love to her; pleasant,
comfortable fellows, and what is really too bad all of
you pitiful knaves, gallants of the by-streets, and you,
Egnatius, above all, one of the long haired race from the
rabbit warrens of Celtiberia, you whose merit consists
in a bushy beard, and teeth bleached white/*
Catullus complains bitterly of the injury done him,
but he makes no allowance for the fact that he had taken
her from a similar place when he came to an understand
ing with her. That was the usual custom, and all the
women who have been loved and immortalized in the
couplets of the Latin poets probably came from places
such as the one spoken of above. They were daughters
of lupanar or tavern. In writing of the Syrian hostess
Virgil did not stoop, he merely followed the example set
by Catullus and Lucilius before him. Horace flirted
with the mendax puetta (lying jade) in the smoky house
at Trivicum, and the calling she exercised made not the
slightest difference to him. Propertius had an inveterate
passion for intrigues such as these, and whenever his
trifling with Thais or Phyllis threw Cynthia into trans
ports of jealous rage her fury spent itself on his devoted
head: she would rush with dishevelled hair into the rustic
arbor in which Propertius had abandoned himself to
drunkenness under the charm of their dances and the
blandishment of their caresses. Where, then, could they
find sanctuary, except in the tavern that knew them first?
And Cynthia, or, if we are to believe Apuleius, Hostia,
was always too faithless herself to have been permitted
to exercise the rights conferred by honest jealousy.
Whither then could she betake herself when pride de
manded that she abandon her lover? To an iim on the
Appian Way, the retreat of others no less disorderly,
where she was free without reproach to enjoy the em-
GREECE & ROME 193
braces and lavish favors of some new admirer, or some
libertine who had introduced her into his silken litter.
Shall we longer remain in doubt that the taverns of
Rome were lupanars? Perhaps the only difference lies
in the fact that they were completely open to the public
gaze, they were located on the forum and in conspicuous
places where all the world could see what went on and
hear the brawls and uproar. The lupanars, however,
were hidden away on dark and narrow alleys which
Plautus calls angiporta. The taverns were entered openly
without attempt at concealment, and through the front
door; whereas in the case of the lupanars prudence veiled
its head and waited till night to glide into them. From
this the term latebricolae (they that dwell in lurking
places, or, if you prefer, friends of darkness) was derived:
it was used to characterize those who frequented the
lupanars. Aside from what has been said above, the
two institutions were almost identical; whatever was
found in one could be had in the other, good cheer and
luxurious debauchery. A passage in the Poenulus of
Plautus is very much to the point and furnishes a vivid
scene. I refer to the entry of the slave Syncerastus into
the house of his master the procurer. There is little room
for error here. He always speaks of tavern and lupanar
as synonyms, a propriety which would have included
the guests as well. Syncerastus arrives upon the scene
with his arms laden with vessels for sacrifice and orgy;
all this paraphernalia he has brought to Rome and he
begins by speaking of his worthy master and the estab
lishment conducted by him:
"It s very clear that gods and men neglect the benefit
of him who has a master with a character like my mas
ter s. There s not another person anywhere in the whole
world more perjured or more wicked than my master,
nor one so filthy and so defiled. So may the gods bless
194 THE INNS OF
me, I d rather pass my life either in the stone quarries
or at the mill, with my sides hampered with heavy irons,
than pass this servitude with a procurer. What a race
this is! What corrupters of men they are! Ye gods,
by our hopes in you, every kind and condition of men
you may see there, just as though you had come to
Acheron horse and foot a freedman, a thief, or a run
away, if you choose, one whipped, chained or condemned.
He that has got the wherewithal to pay, whatever sort
of person he is all kinds are taken in; throughout all
the house, in consequence, are darkened spots, Hiding-
places; drinking and eating are going on just as in a cook-
shop, and in no less degree. There may you see epistles
written in letters inscribed on pottery, sealed with pitch:
the names upon them are a cubit long, such a levy of
vintners we have got at our house." (Plautus, Poenulus,
Act IV, Scene ii.)
Were we to take a trip through our own cabarets we
would not fail to recognize the types of Plautus, and we
mention these types in order that we may fill in all the
details and make a complete picture.
With this in view, let us then cite a passage from
Juvenal, to give the finishing touches to the votaries and
the establishments we have been describing. The pas
sage is from Satire VIII, line 146 et seq.:
"The bloated Lateranus whirls past the bones and
ashes of his ancestors in a rapid car; with his own hands
this muleteer consul locks the wheel with the drag. It
is by night, indeed, but the moon looks on; the stars
strain their eyes to see. When his time of office is over,
Lateranus will take up his whip in broad daylight; not
shrinking to meet a now aged friend, he will be the first
to salute him with his whip; he will unbind the trusses
of hay, and deal out the fodder to his weary cattle.
Meanwhile, though he slays woolly victims and tawny
GREECE & ROME 195
steers after Xuma s fashion, he swears by no other deity
before Jove s high altar than the goddess of horseflesh, and
the images painted on the reeking stables. And when it
pleases him to go back to the all night tavern, a Syro-
Phoenician runs forth to meet him & denizen of the
Idumaean Gate perpetually drenched in perfumes and
salutes him as lord and prince with all the airs of a host;
and with him comes venal Cyane, her robe tucked up,
carrying a flagon of wine for sale. An apologist will say
to me, *we too did the same thing as boys/ Perhaps:
but then you ceased from your follies and let them drop.
Let your evil days be short; let some of your misdoings
be cut off with your first beard. Boys may be. pardoned;
but when Lateranus frequented those hot liquor shops
with their inscribed linen awnings, he was of ripe age,
fit to guard under arms the Armenian and Syrian rivers,
and the Danube, and the Rhine: fit to protect the person
of his emperor. Send your legate to Ostia, O Caesar,
but search for him in some big cook-shop. There you
will find him, lying cheek by jowl beside a cut-throat, in
the company of bargees, thieves, and runaway slaves,
beside hangmen and coffin makers, or of some eunuch
priest lying drunk with idle timbrels. Here is Liberty
Hall! One cup serves for everybody, no one has a bed
to himself, nor a table apart from the rest. What would
you do, friend Ponticus, if you chanced upon a slave like
this? You would send him to your Lucanian or Tuscan
bridewell. But you gentlemen of Trojan blood find ex
cuse for yourselves; what would disgrace a huckster sits
gracefully on a Volesus or a Brutus!"
At last the tableau is complete; not a thing has been
omitted nor a type overlooked. You have beheld every
variety of eating-house glutton or tavern parvenu; the
tricones, and, as Seneca has called them, in speaking
of their wine swilling, scordali. We have beheld the
196 THE INNS OF
priests of Cybele, fat and thick set, who fraternize with
the Syrian ambubia, and the thieves who are doubtless
as well received there as at the public baths, if we may
pkce credence in what Seneca has to say: and, in addi
tion, the pack of idle and slanderous slaves who have come
here in attendance upon their masters and who occupy
their leisure by getting drunk and gossiping. Who knows
but they may have been sent here to get them out of the
way?
"While the performance is going on/ 5 says Plautus,
in the prologue to the Poenulus, "you lacqueys make an
onset on the cookshops; now, while there s an oppor
tunity, now while the monogrammed tarts are smoking
hot, hasten there."
The tavern-keeper, well posted in every detail, knew
the secrets of every customer of importance who patron
ized him a splendid chance for blackmail and a fruitful
source of profit, favor, and immunity. Ammianus Mar-
cellinus remarks that no matter how haughty the pa
trician of his times was to provincials bearing letters of
introduction, no matter how studied his insolence to those
from whom he had nothing to gain, whenever he met at
the baths with any of the ministers of his pleasures, he
would become gentle courtesy itself and his condescension
was not that of noble to commoner or slave, but that of
friend to friend.
"Close the doors and windows," says Juvenal, "ex
tinguish the lights, stop up all the cracks, dismiss all the
witnesses, and though the noises of the neighborhood
prevent tilings from being heard, before dawn, before the
cock crows for the second time, the tavern-keeper will
know not only everything that was said, and everything
that was done; and not he alone, the cook, and the staff
of the establishment."
Thanks to Plautus and Juvenal we have been able to
GREECE & ROME 197
see the patrician in his relationship to the taverns and
inns, we have also followed the footsteps of other less
exalted disciples of the same cult, and why should we
manifest astonishment, when even the emperors set them
all an example? But we shall be astonished at learning
that the Roman nobles, not content with merely haunting
the taverns, sometimes turned taverner on their own
account. The thing is so strange, and the Roman pa
trician was so jealous of his standing, that we would not
believe it possible were it not for the testimony of such
a witness as Pliny:
"In the ninth year of the reign of Tiberius, the eques
trian order was brought together into a single organiza
tion. The formulae giving the right to wear the ring
were drawn up, in the consulship of C. Asinius Pollio
and C. Antistius Vetus, in the year of Rome 775, and, a
thing very remarkable, an instance of futility caused the
change.
"C. Sulpitius Galba, seeking to conciliate the good
graces of the prince by decisions of a young man, had
established penalties for the infractions to which tavern-
keepers were liable. He complained to the senate of
great opposition to his plans. The proprietors of illegal
establishments/ said he, * evaded these penalties, thanks
to their rings.* It was enacted that no person should wear
the equestrian ring, whoever he might be, unless his father
and his father s father before him had been free, and fur
thermore, unless he possessed 400,000 sesterces, and un
less he could be admitted to sit in the first fourteen rows
of the theatre, according to the provisions of the Julian
Law. 55 (Pliny, Hist. Nat. Lib. XXXHI, ch. 8.)
Such legislation would have been futile had it not
been fortified with other measures which nullified any
possibility of a tavern-keeper s being able to scale the
social and economic ladder and rise to a position which
198 THE INNS OF
entitled him to rank with the patrician. While these
measures dealt the whole innkeeping class a severe blow,
they were by no means prostrated; and though the lowly
wine seller might not aspire to the rank of a knight, the
processes of economy enabled him to sate his ambitions
along other lines: his vanity made him ape the fads and
fashions set by the nobles, and his wealth placed the neces
sary means in his hands. The most outstanding instance
of bigoted arrogance, yet kind hearted, withal, is the
character of Trimalchio. Martial in several of his epi
grams has summed this situation up and in one, especially,
he has left us nothing to be desired:
** Cultured Bononia, a cobbler gave you an exhibition,
and a fuller gave one to Mutina. Where, now, shall the
tavern-keeper give his?" (Lib. IH, 59.)
In Petronius we find Norbanus using this means to
political affluence and position, and it is well known that
Julius Caesar used the same device upon an unprece
dented scale in preparing the minds of the people to take
his yoke upon their necks.
The tavern-keepers and the callings allied to that of
innkeeping were prosperous, as a rule, as they tempered
their trust to the necessities of a given situation; where
credit would do them good they sometimes extended it,
where failure to extend credit was likely to procure mine
host a sound drubbing, he was liberal, but generally
speaking we believe the attitude of Cleoereta, the laena
in Palutus s Asinaria, is more in keeping with the tenets
of the past:
"Daylight, water, the sun, the moon, the night, these
things I purchase not with money; the rest, whatever
we wish to enjoy, we purchase on Grecian trust.*
"When we ask bread of the baker, wine from the wine
shop, if they receive the money they give their wares.
*Cash in hand.
GREECE & ROME 199
The same principle do I go upon, my hands always Iiave
eyes in them, they believe what they see; there s an old
saying: Trust is good for nought/ you know whose it is,
I say no more/* Act I, Scene iii.
There was great profit in selling wine: Trimalchio
remarked that he had laid the foundations of his fortune
by a lucky speculation in wine and foodstuffs. There
was also a fine profit in selling food products to be con
sumed where sold: although the landlord had the right
to retail all sorts of vintages, Falernian, Caecubian,
Setian, his real profits were derived from the sale of in
ferior products, and then, as always, the public suffered
as a consequence. Adulteration, artificial fortifying,
synthetic ripening: all these arts were generally practised
by the vintners and soon brought some of the finest wine
producing provinces into a disrepute which they little
merited. This was especially true with certain portions
of southern France.
As far as the innkeeper went, however* the beggars
of the Porta Trigemina and the Velabrum had a finer
opportunity to taste the wretched Laletanian vintage and
get from its cloudy harshness all the kick that could be
desired. Martial, who must have known this wine well,
recommends it to Sextilianus:
"Sextilianus, you yourself drink as much as five rows
of benches; you could get drunk drinking as much water.
Not only do you take the tokens of your neighbors, but
you ask, also, the bronze coins of those farther from you.
This vintage is not from Pelignian wine presses nor was
the grape juice born on Tuscan hillsides; you drain dry
a jar of ancient Opimian; Massic stores furnished the
blackened jars. If you must have more than ten drinks,
Sextilianus, go and get cloudy Laletanian from the inn
keeper/ (Epigr. Lib. I, 27.)
Tavern-keepers were so accustomed to serving base
00 THE INNS OF
and inferior vintages without discussion, and without
even ascertaining whether the customer had any prefer
ence in the matter of drink, that when some guest did
demand better wine it was the cause of some surprise and
sometimes got the would-be purchaser into difficulties.
Mine host was forward to require an explanation of such
an anomaly on the part of some slave or some lowly
commoner, and the rumor would soon filter out that some
lord or high official was lodged there for the time being.
The Roman orator Marcus Antonius, grandfather of the
triumvir, would not otherwise have been dragged from
his hiding-place in the proscriptions of Marius. And so
it has always been: the insatiable curiosity of a tavern-
keeper and the gossipings of some slaves have often been
the causes which have led to discovery and to murder.
Plutarch has related the episode with all his verve
and realism, and the facts speak for themselves in utter
condemnation of the baseness of the tavern-keepers, and
their addiction to delation; their malignant espionage,
and their perpetual league with the slaves and des
peradoes:
"Marcus Antonius the orator, though he, too, found
a true friend, had ill fortune. The man was but poor
and a plebeian, and as he was entertaining a man of great
rank in Rome, trying to provide for him with the best he
could, he sent his servant to get some wine of a neighbor
ing vintner. The servant, carefully tasting it and bidding
him draw better, the fellow asked him what was the mat
ter, that he did not buy new and ordinary wine as he
used to do, but richer and of a greater price; he, without
any design, told him, as his old friend and acquaintance,
that his master entertained Marcus Antonius, who was
concealed with him. The villainous vintner, as soon as
the servant was gone, went himself to Marius, then at
supper, and being brought into his presence, told him
GREECE & ROME 201
lie would deliver Antonius into his hands. As soon as
he heard it, it is said he gave a great shout, and clapped
his hands for joy, and had very nearly risen up and gone
to the place himself; but being detained by his friends,
he sent Annius and some soldiers with him, and com
manded him to bring Antonius *s head to him with all
speed. When they came to the house, Annius stayed
at the door, and the soldiers went upstairs into the cham
ber; where, seeing Antonius, they endeavoured to shuffle
off the murder from one to another; for so great, it seems,
were the graces and charms of his oratory, that as soon
as he began to speak and beg his life, none of them durst
touch or so much as look upon him; but hanging down
their heads, every one fell a weeping. "When their stay
seemed something tedious, Annius came up himself and
found Antonius discoursing, and the soldiers astonished
and quite softened by it, and, calling them cowards, went
himself and cut off his head."
The strangest thing about this murder is that the
facts as elegantly related by Plutarch are in exact agree
ment with Voltaire s relation of the death of Coligny in
the massacre of Saint Bartholomew s eve. Stranger still,
the manner in which the hiding place of Antonius was
discovered was identical with that of General Pichegru s
betrayal always in the place of a tavern-keeper who
may or may not be involved in the plot. As the story
of Pichegru s betrayal is an excellent commentary upon
that of Antonius we shall introduce it here, with apologies
to Merim6e. The speaker is Madame Leblane, the prin
cipal actress in the affair and one of the staff of the theatre
Clara Gazul:
"Ah, Elisa," says the spy, speaking to her daughter,
"in affairs such as these nothing can be neglected. It
was by means of a roasted chicken that I was enabled
to discover the hiding-place of General Pichegru; and
202
THE INNS OF
without boasting, the affair did me great honor, to say
nothing of the profit it provided. Here is how it all
came about. Your father was alive then, Captain Le-
blanc. He had returned from the army; he had wealth.
We had a good time of it and lived brilliantly. One day
I went to my caterer and demanded a roasted fowl of
him. *My God, madame/ he replied, C I am greatly dis
tressed, I have just sold my last one/ As for myself, I
knew the entire quarter and I wished to know to whom
he had sold it. * Who got it/ 1 demanded of him. * Such
and such an one/ he replied, *he treats himself very
well, too, and every day for the past three days he has
had a fowl of me for his dinner/ Note well that it had
been just three days since we had lost all trace of General
Pichegru. I turned the matter over and over in my head,
and I said to myself, The devil, neighbor, you have got
an appetite, you are famishing/ Finally, I came back
the next day and purchased some partridges which were
not yet cooked done, remarking at the same time that
I would send my scullion for them when they were
ready. Then my man of the great appetite entered and
bought a roasted turkey, and a fine turkey it was, too,
take my word for it. *Ah,* said I to him, *what a thing,
you surely have a great appetite, enough for two persons
for a week/ He winked his eye at me and replied, * Yes,
I have appetite enough for two/ A Frenchman must
always make the best of an opportunity for an epigram,
I watched him with both eyes; he turned away, mounted
his horse, and set off. He did not mislead me to his
advantage, I knew that he knew General Pichegru. My
man is apprehended and he surrenders up my general
with right good will as an honest recompense, and I for
my part, six thousand francs* worth of gratification/
Proof positive that even a conspirator should have
due regard to the finer points of diet and that one should
GREECE & ROME 203
by all means avoid transgressing the proprieties what
ever they may be locally. Eating roast fowl or drinking
rare wines in neighborhoods in which such luxuries are
not common articles of table or cellar is the very height
of stupidity*
As for the taverns and inns of classical Rome, we
have long held the opinion that the institutions which
resembled them most strikingly, were the cabarets of
papal Rome, and we have the evidence of William Savage
in our favor.
"The disposition of these cabarets," says he, "is uni
form, they are long chambers with a vaulted ceiling, a
sort of shed and kitchen combined.
"Long tables are found here, and the benches, mere
trestles, evilly constructed and crude in the extreme,
have little but strength to recommend them. The mas
ter of the place is seated upon a kind of chair or on a
platform, the serving boys are in the most complete
negligee, the walls are coarsely painted, some bearing
inscriptions such as the following:
QVANDO QVESTO GALLO CANTARA, AL-
LORA, CREDENZA SI FARA.
" When that cock shall crow then credit will be given/
Above the inscription is a rude likeness of the gallus
gallinaceus or dunghill cock, and the emblem is surely
the very pink of propriety; a pithy commentary upon
the honesty of the host and the trade which he has
gained."
That little platform on which the host is seated is
but a repetition of the older one on which the bar-maid
took her ease and the trestles or benches were also
copied from originals more ancient, as a well known scene
from Pompeii proves. Martial speaks of a bench ridden
tavern (seUariolae popinae), and the miserable mural
decoration might well have inspired Phaedrus to excel
204 THE INNS OF
himself, as we have said above. Catullus has spoken of
writing with burnt sticks upon the walls of an infamous
tavern, and Juvenal speaks of the awnings of linen in
scribed inscripta lintea. "When Savage speaks of the
negligee of the serving boys he means to indicate a pic
ture such as Nero must have made when harping in a
pair of drawers. The resemblance between the two
institutions so widely separated in point of time is strik
ingly close in every detail.
A little further on, Savage speaks of the signs of the
merchants and says: "Brandy and wines sell themselves
without any sign/ and this was generally the case in the
ancient world as well. Publilius Syrus, the mime, has
preserved in his Sententiae one ancient proverb which
does justice both to the situation and to human nature:
"Vino vendibili suspensa hedera non opus est" (a wine
good enough to be sold needs no garland of ivy to garnish
it), which is the same as the ancient French, bon vin
point d enseign and the biblical, a good wine needs no
bush* In connection with the term hedera (ivy) it should
be remarked that a tendril of ivy was an attribute
of Dionysus, even as the bush became traditional with
our own cabarets and taverns. Many a vintner dis
pensed with such a sign because of the truth of the
proverb, deeming a sign almost a confession of selling
inferior vintages. The ivy, however, sacred to the god,
was often used either as it was brought in or else in the
form of a painting over the door. Sometimes we find
bas-reliefs in which the ivy is the motif. A vintner s
establishment was found at Pompeii: it had a very
poorly executed sign on which were depicted two men,
probably slaves of the establishment, clad in drawers,
carrying an oblong amphora which hangs by a thong
from the middle of a long pinga pole the ends of which
are supported upon the shoulders of the two slaves.
GREECE & HO ME 205
CHAPTER XIV.
Display of foods in restaurants Profuse in their use of garlic
Kitchen utensils A Roman plebe All night taverns Romans fond
of mellow wines and sweetened liquors "A hot drink s as good as an
overcoat" Hot water drinks become popular The murrhine vase
Refrigeration Snow and ice An Athenian debauch Age of glut
tony Cooks and scullions.
The restaurants often displayed their wares in the
manner in which ours do today. Seneca uses the term
oculiferium in that sense. Here they laid out the finest
samples of their wares to catch the eyes and stimulate
trade. Eggs, goose liver pats, sow vulvas, fowls, game,
and the like, and they practised a refinement which is
not appreciated amongst us, in that their samples were
sometimes put together in a glass vase full of clear water
or other crystal menstruum. The optical effect, as it was
tortured by magnification or diminution, was sometimes
startling to say the least, and Macrobius has devoted
some little space and trouble to explain the various
illusions and effects thus produced. We come at last to
the quarters where foods, more or less fresh, were on
display. It may be a goat, and the customer would be
asked to believe that the poor beast had browsed in a
pasture of myrtle and eucalyptus leaves, and was satu
rated with that relish because the bleeding cuts of meat
are skewered with a branch of that wood, even as today
some of the rural butchers in France, and in modern
Greece as well, adorn with laurel some meat of dark
and doubtful ancestry, and retail it to their credulous
customers as the finest delicacy. Hence, in Greece, at
least, it is always well to insist that the butcher produce
the hide and hair of the animal in question, and thus
save future complications and dietetic regurgitations.
206 THE INNS OF
Bits of pork and cheese are also displayed by the
Roman eating-house keepers, even as was the case with
Philemon and Baucis, and in the Moretum of Virgil.
"Quarters of pork (hams) salted and drying hang
above the hearth, a rounded cheese with a blade of
esparto grass run through its centre hangs suspended
from the rafters and with it a bundle of fennel, well
tied," and we may add to this little picture the scene
from Petronius in which Oenothea mounts upon the
rotten stool to take down a piece of dried hog s cheek,
scored by a thousand slashes of a knife proverbially dull,
a commodity coaeval with herself*
However, let us pass by the display at the doors of
the restaurant and enter the interior where we shall
probably find little in keeping with the display outside.
"No regard should be paid to such displays," re
marks Seneca, "mere bait thrown to the buyer who
enters the place but once before he finds that the mer
chandise offered by the establishment is not at all in
keeping with the samples hanging from above the doors."
A glutton might have been well satisfied to have
dined upon what was shown outside, but only a slave
or some poverty stricken artisan would have been tempted
by what was served inside an excellent commentary
upon the character and commercial honesty of the exhibi
tionists. Everything to put up a front show without
substance. The kitchens of these restaurants were, of
course, under the supervision of slaves, and the menu
was neither delicate nor various. They served, for
example, lupines for the Greek cynics, a variety of coarse
peas which were boiled in a great quantity of water, the
resultant mess being an agglutinous substance of so
peculiar a consistency that the patron might have been
equally correct in his table technique whether he drank
it or whether he ate it. They also had deer (chick-peas),
GREECE & ROME 207
a variety of vegetable sold either in porridge or fried.
These latter were held in great esteem by the commoners,
and candidates for the higher political offices frequently
served them on the streets, hoping thereby to influence
the political destinies of their parties. It is probable
that from this custom we have derived that villainous
delicacy known as the campaign cigar, which, but for
the smell when ignited, might have been mistaken for
tobacco. Such services in old Rome were often provoc
ative of more black eyes than votes. The small peddlers
sold chick-peas under the arcades and porticoes and at
the games, as ours today sell popcorn and peanuts.
Horace mentions a fellow who devoured chick-peas and
nuts during a performance at the theatre. The customer
in the eating-house need not confine himself to the humble
chick-pea, however, he could have a plate of beans served
in their pods, raw cabbage, or even worse, cabbage which
had been cooked twice (crambe recoctd) or (repetita),
plenty of raw vegetables reeking with vinegar, and, on
days of splendid extravagance, he might even establish
contact with a boiled sheep s head. Delicacies such as
these, as Juvenal has informed us, were consumed in the
riotous company of cobblers, hog reeves, and the like,
characters of the sort to round out the society of the
place and give it the spice of infinite variety. Sometimes
there were beets, the unsavory tang of which had to be
tempered with a sauce made from pepper and wine:
"To give the flavor to the wallowisli beets, the food
of artisans, the cook always asks for wine and pepper."
Martial Epigr. Lib. XHI, 13.
Everything was highly seasoned, and rare indeed was
the occasion when one would not almost have gagged
himself with garlic and onions or some other garnish of
an acid or peppery savor; some used asafoetida to fortify
their meats, but all were profuse in their use of sauces.
208 THE INNS OF
Everything was prepared by the cook, the master
of the house, his woman, or by a special servant known
as the focaria (from /oca, a hearth), as the Digest in
forms us* A kitchen furnace, set up against one of the
walls of the establishment, served the purposes of a
modern range, while four great vases or urns of baked
clay were mortised into a space behind the table which
formed the front. They contained the cold foods pre
pared in advance and kept for any and all occasions.
Behind the furnace, where the focaria labored at her
tasks, were a series of stone or marble steps or terraces,
three in number: on these steps were ranged the vases
and measures used in the inn. The Digest contains a
list of these vessels in which are found the following:
Calices, round cups, ancones, vases shaped like a
cone, trullae, ladles or scoops, the sextaria were vessels
which contained the sixth part of a congeum; Plautus
refers to them in the Pounulus.
There were two back stalls in the establishment un
covered at Pompeii. Mazois has made an exhaustive
study of it and we avail ourselves of his labors and
scholarship. It is possible that these rooms were de
signed for vessels too huge to keep in the front, such,
for instance, as the dolia, congiaria, and the like; diners
were served there at two asses per capita, and all the
idlers loafing about the establishment and rendering the
proprietor an allegiance almost feudal had their reward
of virtue in sitting down to table, welcoming the end of
a perfect day, and spending a night in watching the
posturings of a demi monde demi blonde dancer, some
times to the harp, sometimes to the flute, or indulge
their imaginations with obscene stories and puns. In
the age of Ammianus Marcellinus (A. D. 360 circa),
the cabaret was almost the only pastime of the pro
letariat at Rome. "The populace," says he, "had no
GREECE & ROME 209
other shelter at night than that of the taverns, or the
awnings stretched before the theatres; they gambled
furiously with dice and made filthy noises with their
nostrils."
Let us conjure a picture of a Roman plebe out of the
mists of the past; let us strip him of the glamour with
which legend has invested him and see him as he actually
was: he spent his nights on the wet straw of the Vela-
brum, or in the Esquiline or the Suburra, and when
morning dawned, he came shambling along to the stone
benches at the gate, to shake off his dull torpor along
with his vermin. The heat in the inns and lodging-
houses was suffocating, and more comfort was to be had
in the streets; the plebe was insufferably filthy in spite
of the magnificent baths: here you see an exemplar of
the rulers of the world! What then must have been the
pot-houses which they frequented? The answer is easy:
they swarmed with flies and mosquitoes, kept in motion
by branches of laurel or palm, but the worst plague seems
to have been the fleas. The gentle and soft spoken Pliny
says, with becoming euphemism, "the insects jumping
so during the summer, rendered the taverns unendur
able," and of course he refers to the flea. Still, Pliny
would never have entered such sanctuaries as those that
shielded the proletariat. There were also "all night
taverns " which Juvenal designated by the term pervigiles.
We must remember that the ancient cities were unlighted
by night, and their streets were generally narrower than
civic pride of today would countenance: the satirist counts
the doors of these all night taverns, the lights of which cut
into the murk and bloom of the outside like a friendly
beacon on a rocky lee shore. Their watchful windows
saw everything that passed in the night, some unwary and
unsuspicious loiterer saluted with chambered bile from
a second or third story window; it is like the old times in
21 THE INNS OF
Edinburgh when garde lieu was the password to dry
immunity. Did Strap find it so, or had Smollett read
Juvenal s third satire? The taverns were always fur
nished with substantial shutters, as were also the other
shops at Rome; features which are still characteristic
of all the native shops in romantic countries and their
colonies- By means of these heavy shutters the owner
could make himself and his reasonably secure against
the night and the menaces it held over him. The doors
were exceedingly heavy and were fastened by means of a
system of chains and bolts: a small trap-door served as
a peep-hole. Juvenal has described these fastenings in
his third satire:
And all is silent
When the grating chains have clanked into place
And the tavern is closed.
Mazois, however, after an exhaustive study of the
Pompeian inn of which we have already spoken, is far
more minute in his descriptions: "The gate of the place,"
says he, "was made fast in a manner very like that in
which the storehouses at Paris are secured: by means of
a groove in the threshold of the door and of another
complementaiy to it in the lintel of wood, they intro
duced bars whose ends glided at once into these two
grooves; a wooden bar was then placed behind the other
bars to hold them immobile; and lastly, as the door
turned upon a pivot, fastened itself in that manner and
closed the opening into the place/*
There were certain police regulations which forbade
the taverns to remain open before certain hours or after
a specified hour. Ammianus Marcellinus cites one such
order issued by Ampelius, praefect of the city: in this
instrument, the tavern-keepers are ordered not to open
their places before the fourth hour.
GREECE & ROME 211
On days of religious feasts, joyous festivals, or occa
sions of public mourning, the taverns were compelled to
remain closed. We know of few particular instances in
which this was the case; we do not know the precise
terms in which such injunctions were couched, but we
do know that upon the occasion of an emperor s death,
or that of any member of his family, these injunctions
were especially severe and those who evaded this rescrip-
tion were sometimes punished with death for their pains.
Cassius Dio, the malignant historian of the senatorial
order, has informed us that Caligula thus rewarded the
supplications of a poor devil who had kept a hot drink
emporium open on the day set aside for the funeral of
the emperor s sister. The police made no distinctions
between the tavern-keeper and the keeper of a ther-
mopolium or hot water establishment. The regulation of
Ampelius makes not the slightest distinction between
them, and the restrictions which bound the tavern-
keeper were no less binding upon the hot water seller;
neither could open before the fourth hour.
The thermopolia which we have already seen estab
lished in Athens came to Rome along with the rest of
the Greek world and when they came they also brought
their own particular customs and usages. Their pro
prietors conducted a sort of acid drink emporium, they
might, in fact, almost be called lemonade sellers, sellers
of decoctions of liquorice or other sweet flavors, and it
is highly probable that there was a special local name
for each class of drinks and for the establishment in
which they were sold. A painting in color at Pompeii
represents one of these drinks and it is distinctly yellow
ish in color.
The Romans were always fond of mellow wines, and
also of other sweetened liquors, some of which were dis
tilled. From the beginning they were favorably disposed
THE INNS OF
towards thermopolia. In the time of Plautus such
establishments were heavily patronized, not only by
philosophers but also by all sorts and conditions of
society. Nearly every character in the old dramatist
may be said to have been at some time or other a guest
of one of the thermopolia. In the Rudens, for instance,
he makes one of his heroes, still dripping from ship
wreck, say: "By Castor, but Neptune is a bather of the
coldest. It s certain he had no hand in inventing thermo
polia because his drinks are salty and cold as ice/*
In the Pseudolus, a glutton cries out: "In drinking,
there is so much spiced wine, so much boiled wine, so
much must and hydromel that I commence to make an
out and out thermopolium of my stomach/*
And in the Three Penny Bit (Trinummus) another,
after having swilled the same beverages to excess, re
marks: "You have made a thermopolium of my gullet
(thermopotasti guttur) .**
These passages should suffice to show how the stalls
of the venders of hot drinks were patronized, but in
addition we may also cite one from the Cena Trimal-
chionis: "A hot drink s as good as an overcoat/* The
wines were often toned down with honey, perfumed with
myrrh and spices, or fortified with some feebly acidulous
excipient, as, for instance, the flavor of cedar, so much
in favor in the France and Italy of the seventeenth cen
tury. The lemonades still to be had in Naples, efferves
cent or flat, were also to be obtained in the ancient
thermopolia. While such beverages are not specifically
mentioned by the classical authors, there are passages
in Pliny and Martial which furnish inferential evidence
that they were sold, and we possess one bit of evidence
which is beyond challenge: the traces of liquor remain
ing on the stone steps and in the vases in a hot drink
emporium uncovered at Pompeii. Mazois speaks thus :
GREECE & ROME 13
"Just within the great gate of the building where
the traces of the vessels still remain upon the marble of the
counter, and the steps upon which rested the measures;
here we have evidence as to the real nature of the bever
ages sold. In bringing the services of chemistry to our
aid our doubts have been resolved. Such analysis points
to acidulous drinks. At the door of the thermopolium
are two benches exposed to the noonday sun to offer a
comfortable loafing place in winter to the frequenters of
the stall."
The innovation of hot water drinks had not been
long introduced in Rome before it became very popular
with both patrician and plebe. The patrician affected
to perfume his drink with spices, such as myrrh, cinna
mon, saffron, and the like, and a very curious passage in
Lucan s Pharsalia speaks of the jets of such perfumes
(saffron), which spurted out and perfumed not only the
air but also the breath of the theatre patrons. The
patrician wanted his water hot, and, though he did not,
and would not, demean himself by drinking from vessels
other than the most expensive and beautiful, the com
moner contented himself with the kernel of the matter
by having recourse to common clay. The patrician had
a decided preference for artificially cooled beverages and
made use of snow for refrigerating purposes. There is
a supposition that the rarest of these vases, I refer to
the murrhine, which Petronius Arbiter is said to have
smashed to prevent its falling into the hands of Nero
after its owner s suicide, had, within itself, the property
of communicating some exquisite essence to whatever
decoction was being digested in its opalescent depths,
and some are of the opinion that there is a connection
between the myrrh of antiquity and the properties said
to have been inherent in this vase. There seems to be
little doubt that the vase derived its name from the
214 THE INNS OF
myrrh of antiquity. It is composed of three huge
sections of opal: the first forms the cup, the second
the stem and the third the base. The cup is about nine
and one-half inches high and about six inches in diam
eter at its greatest measurement. An. exquisitely carved
swan s head dips into the bowl, a lovely allegorical allu
sion, and the bottom is chased with geometrical designs
perfect throughout. The Prince of Biscari has written
a monograph on the cup, which merits the study of all
experts in porcelains and vessels. If we are safe in
assuming that this exemplar is in fact genuine, the long
mooted question of murrhine vases may be regarded as
settled: they were of opal, and not of sardonyx or chal
cedony, and they may have been steeped for years in
tincture of myrrh to give them the exquisite qualities
with which tradition has endowed them. In bringing this
brief dissertation on murrhine vases to a close, I should
add that the base of the exemplar described is about
four inches in diameter, the stem about two and one-
half inches in length, and the greatest diameter of the
stem is about one and one-quarter inches.
Nor should we omit mentioning the liot drinks which
were served in the thermopolia at Rome as well as at
Athens, drinks which derived their names from Hellas.
This was one of the first indications of their commerce
and its scope. This hot drink service had not been long
introduced at Rome before it had become as popular with
the patrician as with the plebeian. The nobleman
affected to perfume his posset with spices such as myrrh,
cinnamon, saffron, and the like, and two very interesting
passages attest the importance which had come to be
accorded these adventitious excipients. Lucan in his
Pharasalia speaks of the jets of saffron which spurted
from devices in the theatres and perfumed the foyer and
the breath of the patrons of the establishment, and
THE HOSTESS op
GREECE & ROME 215
Petronius speaks of cinnamon as having displaced
essences far more worthy, if a trifle more domestic. The
patrician wanted his water hot and he rarely demeaned
his dignity by drinking from vessels other than the most
costly, whereas the commoner had to content his inclin
ations with mugs of clay baked to the hardness of tile*
The wealthy also had a decided preference for cool bever
ages and used snow for refrigerating purposes. Huge
pits were dug and the snow was stored up against the
arrival of the hot season. A Roman, to get the right
temperature, would mix very hot and very cold liquids, in
accordance with Greek usage, and he imagined that by
this technique, he was enabled to get the finest and
subtlest tang which could be extracted. Aristaenetus has
elegantly described the practice which, to modern tastes,
would seem to be unhygienic, to say the least.
Ice or snow was heaped up upon the tables beside the
steaming drinks, and Pliny the Elder, in one of those
phrases of ostentatious antithesis which he loves to use,
remarks, with epigrammatic force: "Snow they drink
as well as ice, and their voluptuousness imposes a punish
ment upon mountains/* Seneca, in his Questiones Natu-
rales, speaks in the same manner and to the same purpose*
"See them, they are feeble, wrapped up in their mantles,
sitting in the hall, pale and sick, not only drinking the
snow, but eating it as well, and throwing the lumps out of
their cups when they can drink no more."
With such a demand it was but natural that there
should arise at Rome a retail trade in refrigerants. They
had an excellent example on which to go, if we are to
believe Athenaeus.
" Charles of Mitylene, in his History of Alexander, has
told us how we are to proceed in order to keep snow, when
he is relating the siege of the Indian city of Petra. For
he says that Alexander dug thirty large trenches dose to
216 THE INNS OF
one another, and filled them with snow, and then he
heaped on the snow branches of oak; for in that way snow
would last a long time." (Lib. iii, 97.)
A passage in Seneca also deals with the early history
of refrigeration and refrigerants: "The Lacedaemo
nians," says he, "hunted down the perfumers and ordered
them to quit their territories without delay, because they
had spoiled the oils, they who had operated these store
houses, these snow depots, these beasts of burden em
ployed to transport the aqueous blocks whose savor and
color suffered from the straw that covered them ! So easy
it is to assuage the thirst of health!* 5
There is little doubt that the wealthy had their icemen
and their dealers in fresh sea foods who insured the quality
of the product sold, and we ought not to be astonished
that refrigeration had come to play an important part in
domestic life when we reflect that rare fish were trans
ported immense distances in the water of their native
haunts and arrived at the table alive and in perfect con
dition* What applied to the establishments of the
wealthy would also perforce apply to the sumptuous
dining-rooms which they frequented, and if we find scanty
mention of such refinements in the inns and taverns it is
to be attributed to the haughty exclusiveness of the
patrician class that entertained its cronies and the in
struments of its pleasure and lubricity in its own sump
tuous establishments where there were no ten command
ments and where the most voracious thirst could and
would be quenched temporarily by complete coma, an
utter disgust for food and wine, a feeling that included
women, and life itself. When a parvenu such as we
have in mind uses his peacock feather to permit further
exercise of the sense of taste it is either at home or in the
house of a friend or host.
Let us examine a portrait of the indulgence of a great
GREECE & ROME 217
noble, which Lycon has drawn for posterity. Our
Athenian, as was the case with many of the senators at
Rome, was what we would call in modern times a solitary
drinker, although he frequently debauched himself in
company. He would totter, from the chamber where he
slept to the chamber where he drank, and back again*
To have gone to a cabaret would have been wearisome
and a disgrace. He spared himself the trouble of coming
home, and by so doing, saved his vanity from the con
tempt and the grins of the populace as well.
** Stupefied by excesses," says Lycon, "the dreamer
slowly awakens from the torpor which indigestion and the
incontinence of his waking hours have prolonged until
noon; his eyes puffed with wine, clouded with humors, are
scarcely able to endure the light of day for some little
time after his discomfort has aroused him. He is sensible
of extreme f aintness as though his veins contained wine
instead of blood, and he finds it beyond his power to lift
himself up without support. At last, leaning upon two
slaves, faint as though worn out by his slumber, he dons
a simple tunic without an outer robe; clad in slippers as
though just getting out of bed, his head wrapped up to
protect hi from the cold, his neck stooped, knees weak,
color pale, he sets his yawning course from the bed
chamber to the hall in which he will recline to banquet
his friends and drink with them; there he will find certain
convivial familiars of whom he is the chief, and who are
animated by the same passions that move him. He
hastens to expel by drinking some of the collywobbles
with which his black melancholy has been deepened and
embittered; he strives to regain a little of the animation
and spirit of the rest, provoking them to drink and mock
ing their lack of capacity, believing that as much credit
is to be had from such an engagement as from one on the
field of battle. Time makes no account of drinking, it
218 THE INNS OF
comes and it goes, the fumes of the wine obscure all eyes
and sets them all to weeping; every guest is drunk, recog
nizing neither himself nor anyone else; without the slight
est cause one gets into an altercation with his neighbor,
another would sleep but is forced to remain awake, a
third, even as was the case with the heroes of Petronius/
attempts to make his escape and evade his troubles and
his tormentors only to be brought back by the porter who
has prevented him from leaving. By and by, another is
ignominiously thrown out of doors; he totters, but his
slave catches him and leads him off, and as he staggers
along, he lets his cloak fall into the mud of the street. At
last, our guttler is left alone in the room, monarch of all
he surveys, nor does he quit the cup until he falls asleep
with it in his hand or at his mouth, then weaving drunk-
enly, he has escaped from himself, and is asleep/*
Vastly different, this illustrious glutton who debases
himself in secret orgies, from the man of the people,
whether at Rome or elsewhere. The politician, if he
indulged himself at all, would do so in the taverns and
inns, where he could cater to publicity by treating* There
his wit and good nature would have free scope, his delight
lay in numbers, he is a past master at putting indigence
at ease and winning the confidence of the out-at-elbow
rabble; blustering and roistering fit well into his designs
and further his interests. Such a politician would hold
his daily banquets in the popinae, on the occasion of a law
suit, an election, and the like, to the accompaniment of
the thousand noises of the Forum. At night he might
indulge in one of the nympheae, in the name of the
republic or the emperor, and lastly, on those occasions
when the members of a century came together at table
the scene was usually laid in one of the fine and sumptuous
public halls set aside for the purpose. There he could
comfort his poverty by a brief sojourn amid scenes of
GREECE & ROME 219
decorative splendor, a willing worshiper of the god of
things as they ought to be. These were great days for
the commoner; his entertainment cost him nothing and
he revelled in luxury and riot at the expense of policy.
On occasions such as these, he could compare his lot to
that of the great patrician, and the silver from which he
ate and drank was but an added sop to political indirec
tion and expediency. There is a passage excellently to
the point in the Treatise on Rhetoricians, addressed to
Herennius, and attributed to Cicero, though it scarcely
seems worthy of the best powers of that orator. We
have here a very curious adventure, such an example of
ostentation and bigoted vanity as Shakespeare or Moli&re
might have envied. As a portrayal of Roman false
pretenses it has few equals and it must have been traced
by the hand of a master. In translating the episode we
wish to call attention to the fact that it is a mine of in
formation upon our subject and it may have been in
Quevedo s mind when he drew his Hablador. Hie char
acter is the true and unmistakable ancestor of all the
poseurs who have come after him. An advocate is speak
ing, probably one of the lumpy faced vulture species who
haunted the Forum or the Market for Stolen Goods*
Petronius has furnished us with an exquisite portrait of
such a lawyer in his story of the stolen mantle. He it is
who dresses down our fine gentleman, a debtor unable to
pay, and certainly in no frame of mind to discuss the
obligation, especially with such a specimen of humanity.
The battle between Shylock and D Artignan will ever be
one of the most amusing and instructive*
"Look at the fellow/* says the lawyer, "he wants to
pass for a rich man. How proud he is ! See how he looks
down on us, as if to say: * If it is not too much trouble
I may give you what you want/ And when he takes his
mantle up with his left hand he imagines all the world is
220 THE INNS OF
dazzled by the gleam of his jewels and the glitter of his
gold ring. Then he calls the only slave he owns, I know
this, but you do not, he calls .him first by one name and
then by another. Here, Saimio/ says he, "come here,
see to it that these barbarians don t annoy me by crowd
ing around ; he would have strangers think that he has
chosen his slave from a crowd of them. He orders him
to place couches before the tables, he tells him to go to
his uncle and demand an Ethiopian to accompany him
to the baths, or to lead a fine saddle horse to his door, or
to prepare some fragile and tinselled pomp for his false
glory. Then, in the hearing of all present, make sure
the silver is all accounted for before night, if possible/ and
the slave, well knowing the character of his master makes
answer, If your highness wants the stuff counted in a
single day, you should send several slaves/ * Very well,
go and attend to it and take Libanus and Sosia with you.
I want the thing done/ It once came about that certain
gentlemen waited upon him, gentlemen who had enter
tained him handsomely when he was travelling. He was
a little put out because of this, but even then he did not
recede from the evil propensity of his nature. * You have
done well to come/ said he, but you would have done
even better had you come to me straight away/ *We
would have done that/ was the reply, if we had known
where your house was/ That is easily remedied, come
along with me/ They followed him. In the meantime,
all his talk was taken up with ostentation and boasting.
He lectured them on the state of the crops and informed
them that he no longer went to his country places because
all the houses were destroyed and he had not ventured
to rebuild at Tusculum where he was even then restoring
an ancient villa on its old foundations. As he was telling
them this, he led them into a house where he was known
to the owner and where he knew there was to be a ban-
GREECE & ROME 321
quet. * Here s where I m staying/ he informed them*
Then he fell to examining all the silverware in sight, he
inspected the table which was ready set and expressed his
satisfaction with everything. A slave came and in
formed him privately that the master had arrived, and
asked him to go about his business. Well, come along,
friends/ said he, c my brother has just arrived from
Salernum, and I want to meet him on the road. Please
be good enough to return at the tenth hour/ The
strangers took their departure and he hastened away to
hide in his own house. Then, at the appointed hour, as
he had stipulated, they returned. They inquired for
him and learned who really owned the mansion. They
retired, in confusion, to an inn. Next day they found the
fellow. They told him what had happened. They ex
postulated with him. They accused him. He made
answer that they had mistaken either the house or the
street and that he had waited for them till far into the
night. He then commissioned Sannio his slave boy to
get vases, vestments, and slaves together. The Kttle
servant, who did not lack ability, acquitted himself nobly
and his master led his guests home. One of the finest
houses was being prepared for a wedding and he told them
he had loaned it to a friend who was to be the groom*
His slave demanded the silver, for he was terrified at
having acceded to the request. Away with him/ said
he, I ve loaned him my house, I ve given him my slaves,
does he want my silver into the bargain? notwithstanding
the fact that I too have guests? Well, let him have it,
we will be beautifully served on Samian ware in spite of
him/ " (Lib. IV, 50 and 51.)
Mention should also be made of the fact that the
caterers of such banquets as those of which we have
spoken were no less vain and boastful, no less difficult to
manage than the parasite whom we have described. For
222 THE INNS OF
many years they had little or no consideration, but with
the decline of republican severity and austerity, the calling
which had formerly been regarded as vile (vilissimum
antiquis mancipium is the expression used by Kivy),
came more and more into prominence with increase of
luxury and the questionable refinement of the standards
of living, and the haughty patrician was compelled per
force to put up with more abuse and insolence from his
cook and his caterer than would have been thought pos
sible. Insolence was the order of the day, but a good
cook, then as now, was difficult to obtain and it was
thought worth all the inconvenience if he could be held.
The stern age that had produced a Cincinnatus or a
Fabius was above giving the slightest consideration to
such matters, but when Rome had succumbed to the tastes
and refinement of Lucullus, and the age of gluttony had
dawned, slaves who were specialists in catering and cook
ing were very costly, more so in fact than those serving
as short-hand writers or copyists. One hundred thousand
ases was by no means an exorbitant price for a slave
with such qualifications, in witness whereof I would
cite the figure at which Sallust purchased the famous
Dama, who had formerly been the property of Nomen-
tanus. Whenever an elaborate entertainment was in
prospect it was necessary to procure the services of some
such caterer at once, and by any means necessary to
insure the desired result, and the host often had to bear
in silence the insolence of a specialist who knew his craft
was indispensable. It was never the custom to haggle
over the price which such a culinary artist set on his
services, and this was especially true if the prospective
employee had received the title "archimagirus," carried
in his belt the traditional carving knife, and commanded
a numerous horde of scullions. Those who haggled, or
refused to pay the amount demanded, were reduced to the
GREECE & ROME 223
lowest terms by some cook of nine days* experience, and
the waste accruing from his ministrations was staggering.
AsPlautushasit:
"That fellow s a nine-day cook; on the ninth day
He will go about his business cooked/ 3
The explanation lies in the Roman customs at funerals.
The scullions prepared the lentils and porridge on the
ninth day after a funeral, and another explanation a
trifle more recondite is that they were competent to
prepare the repasts during the nine days following a
funeral when their employers would not be so testy as
usual. On the tenth day, however, tragedy was certain
to stalk abroad in the land, and the consequences of red-
eyed fury suffering from indigestion could only be pre
vented by the hasty departure of the entire kitchen staff.
We need not speak of the cooks and scullions in the
establishments of the small vendors of sausages (botularii)
who ran hither and yon with their smoking ovens (toma-
cula fumantia), as Martial aptly calls them:
"You are a buffoon, Caecilius. You are like the fellow
who sells pea soup to the idle crowd, like the vile boys of
the sellers of salt, like the hoarse cook who carries smok
ing sausages in his pans." (Lib. 1, 42.)
Hawkers of short-order food stuffs went among the
crowds in the streets, in the porticoes and arcades, in the
tiers of seats in the amphitheatre, in fact, wherever there
was a prospect of business, and peddled their wares.
There were also portable ovens for bread, and one of the
keenest memories which the writer has of old Seville and
other Spanish cities is the high, resonant singsong cry
P A N, that echoed and re-echoed in the dim dark
ness of the narrow and crooked streets where the acoustics
were excellent and the echoes persisted long after their
cause had vanished in the distance* It is as much a
224 THE INNS OF
survival of culture as is the custom of advertising lodgings
by twining palm fronds or newspapers around the baran-
illas under Spanish windows; a usage which goes back to
the Middle Ages and which, in its primal simplicity,
meant sanctuary. Had one but the leisure and the space,
he could write an entire chapter on such survivals as had
their inception in taverns and inns.
As such peddlers continually encroached upon the
preserves of the proprietors of eating-houses and thermo-
polia there was perpetual hostility between the factions
they represented. No gathering could escape the atten
tions of these peripatetic hucksters, who promptly betook
themselves and their stocks in trade to the meeting.
The eating-house keeper and his vassals would then make
a sortie upon the enemy and attempt to drive them to a
stand in front of the inn or tavern. It might have been
thought that these petty dealers were in Seneca s mind
when he coined the term " institores popinarum," hawkers
of the eating-houses. The strident cries of these retailers
in merchandising their wares were among the causes
which contributed to the perpetual noisy uproar of Rome.
And in all this garish hurlyburly not the least strident
were the cries of the ragged old hags who sold herbs, she
who led Encolpius into evil ways, as described by Petro-
nius, and she of whom Persius speaks en passant crying
her herbs to attract the slaves.
GREECE &RO ME 225
CHAPTER XV.
The adventure of a Roman parasite The age of gluttony Hawkers
of food everywhere Caesar Germanicus suppresses the traffic The
wines of Italy sold by the slave* of the producers Lucullus distributes
100,000 casks of wine Roman rogues Aurdian takes charge of wine
markets Dilution of wines Women condemned for drinking during
Early Republic Barber shops as meeting places.
The baths were always in a state of turmoil and up
roar, due to the limited space and the numbers congre
gating there. For a long time Seneca lodged in the first
story of one of these establishments, and, amongst a
myriad of discordant sounds, he was never able to forget
the cries of the eating-house keepers and their rivals, and
he has informed us with a certain touch of grim humor
that their calls topped the very gamut of discord. " There
are," says mine author, "the diverse clamors of the
pastry sellers, the pork butchers, the confectioners, and
also the yells of all whose trade was based upon tavern
patronage, and each and every one to sell his wares
affected a particular tone and modulation." These petty
merchants of ancient Rome have perpetuated their calling
to our own times. We see them in Naples, selling
macaroni, ravioli, and other food pastes; we see them
after nightfall in the British Isles, selling fried potatoes
and fish, each commodity in its greasy wrapper of brown
paper; but in some cases the peripatetic oven has been
mounted upon wheels. One who has lived in Naples,
especially in bohemian quarters in the art colony, needs
only to cast a glance at the picture reproduced at the end
of this chapter to see that, aside from changes in raiment,
Herculaneum and Parthenope (the ancient name for
Naples) differed but little from the modern city in the
226 THE INNS OF
matter of selling food stuffs. The dealer is seen, standing
in front of his smoking utensil which is mounted upon a
tripod; he is a macaroni vendor to the life in everything
except clothing, and, were his hands tied, he* too, would
be dumb.
We do not know whether the delicacies esteemed by
the inhabitants of the realm of Naples were a happy
importation, or were naturalized at Rome, nor do we
know whether the petty dealers held their stocks in
common, and sold them to the men on the street; nor do
we know whether they had a guild which would have given
them enough power to meet the competition of their
rivals; but one thing is certain: their industry was re
warded and their patronage extensive, their wares were
exhibited in every quarter of the city.
Some chose stations under the porticoes, near a pillar,
and, to advertise their presence, they garlanded the
column with bottles fastened to a chain. This, in im
pudent defiance of the tavern keeper and his modest
branch of ivy or bush. Others of greater hardihood, who
were not afraid to beard their enemies even more openly,
betook themselves to the Cupedinarum forum (the forum
of the confectioners) and braved without blenching the
fury of the greater merchants, laying hold of their cus
tomers like any Bleeker-street vendor of second-hand
clothing. They ran about in the crowds before the booths
of the fishmongers, butchers, sellers of sweetmeats,
poultry merchants, inviting their customers to come and
sample their wares, and, according to Terence, they
found, in each calling, a means to advance their own
interests.
There must have been cause for great rejoicing among
the tavern keepers and other retail dealers when, in the
times of Martial, Caesar Germanicus, under pretext of
clearing the streets of impediments to traffic, promulgated
\
RETURNING FROM THE TAVERN
GREECE & ROME 227
a decree which gave the death blow to all peddlers who
had fattened at the expense of established business.
Martial has addressed an epigram to Germanicus on this
occasion, and given us much information on Rome and
the conditions in that city:
"The audacious shop-keepers had robbed us of the
entire city, usurping even our thresholds. You, Ger
manicus, have ordered the narrow streets to be widened,
and former paths to become roads. Now, no pillars are
draped with chained bottles, nor is the praetor obliged to
walk in the midst of the mud. No razor is rashly wielded
in the midst of a crowd, nor are the public ways cluttered
with kitchens. Barber, tavern keeper, cook-shop -and
butcher-shop keep on their own thresholds. Rome exists
now: formerly, it was simply a huge shop." (Lib.
VII, 61.)
This epigram of Martial has been taken seriously to
heart by the authorities of other cities, and all have
profited by the example.
One usage there was, which has become obsolete in
France except in such wine producing provinces as
Champagne, but which persists to this day in Italy and
Greece, and that is a method of disposing of the vintage
by means of a slave or servant of the proprietor, at the
house of the latter, and under his supervision.
Such establishments are to be seen at both Naples and
Florence, often as an important adjunct to the most im
pressive properties. The servant stands in his little stall
and sells the wine which belongs to his master. You
do not enter as though it were a tavern, but come to a
wicket through which you pass your empty bottle and
your money; a few moments later your bottle returns to
you full. According to Savage, Leo XII was of a mind
to set this fashion of wine selling in Rome because of the
practises of the innkeepers, but the effort came to nothing
THE INNS OF
as it was bitterly opposed. The Romans under the popes
were not desirous of being reminded in that manner of
their republican ancestors and of those under the empire.
In ancient times the bulk of the vintages of Italy was
retailed in the manner which we have just described.
Many such places have been uncovered at Pompeii.
The booth communicated with the house of the owner
and the latter exercised his authority and superintended
the business carried on. The slave in charge of such a
booth was called "caupo" just as was the tavern keeper.
A wealthy property holder might have several such
booths on his premises, and the amount of the vintage
was considered in rating him commercially for credit.
In the case of the very rich landowners, inns were main
tained on an elaborate scale and in places such as these the
traveller could find food and lodging as well, and he was
safer than in establishments not under the patrician s
control. Martial, writing to Bassus concerning the
country place of a nobleman, adduces as a bit of evidence
showing the prosperity of the owner, that the slave who
sold wines had no leisure in which to pine away in sloth.
Hence it follows that such stalls must have been highly
profitable to the owner. The great proprietors rarely
permitted themselves to be annoyed with all the petty
details of business. It is true that Trimalchio s coadjutor
read aloud at table the various business undertakings in
course of completion, and the gossip pertaining to the
estates, but this was satire of the finest. Trimalchio did
not even know that the Gardens of Pompeii had been
purchased for his account and demanded to be kept
better informed in the future, a wonderful touch of real
ism. Nevertheless, the great landowners did take a keen
interest in property titles and heavy transactions in
wines and foodstuffs, and the procurer in the Pseudolus
of Plautus sends a wealthy merchant to his Hedyle to be
GREECE & ROME 229
fleeced, Alciphron has several such passages to the same
purpose. We are justified in suspecting that Crassus was
engaged in huge deals in which wines and commodities
were involved. The edict promulgated by him two years
before the death of Marius, during his censorship with
Lucius Julius Caesar, prohibiting thereafter the sale of
wine of Amineum, one of the finest vintages of Italy, and
those of Greece, at the low price of 8 ases the amphora,
bears eloquent testimony of the statement made above.
Whether the decree was inspired by local producers in
league with the authorities, producers whose products
could not compete with better merchandise at such a
price, or by farsighted political expediency designed to
enable the master politician to outrival the luxuries of
Lucullus after his return from Asia, is not known. We do
know that Lucullus distributed 100,000 casks of wine to
the people when he returned to Italy; and we also know
that Crassus was instrumental in having the import tax
law passed, and it is axiomatic that imposts are never
free from self-interest, at bottom*
Cato himself, notwithstanding his austerity, was in
volved in certain business transactions, but anony
mously; he acted through a freedman in his dealings with
the greatest rascals in Rome, and it is to be hoped that
his factor was their equal in finesse.
"And of old Cato the tale is told
That often his virtue he warmed with wine, "
says Horace. More power to him, says the author.
There are not lacking features of the traffic in wines and
foods that convince an impartial observer that the
Arbiter may have had two strings to his bow in satirizing
the aediles for their collusion with the bakers. Freedmen
acting in the interests of powerful patricians enjoyed a
degree of immunity which left them little to fear. The
230 THE INNS OF
churlish gate-keepers (portitores) of Rome took careful
precautions against inconveniencing such gentry by an
over-meticulous scrutiny of garment, person, or cart, and
the lure of gold quieted the uneasy suspicions of official
authority. One might almost compare an inexperienced
gate-keeper of old Rome with a young naval officer
exercising his first commissioned authority as officer of
the deck on a battleship. There the watchword is "do
not molest the admiral s domestics." Mercury was the
god of thieves and diplomats, and he had also enrolled
many officials in the lists of his priesthood. The spectacle
afforded by the rigid censor on the one hand and the
rascally vintner on the other, each, perhaps, playing into
the other s hands, each holding a club over the other s
head, must have afforded the keenest humor to any
bystander knowing all the facts. The wine sellers and
oil vendors suffered alike for their pains, although the
rigor of authority was directed principally against the
latter, as they had less protection. Their improbity has
passed into a proverb : they were hand and glove together.
"They all make a compact like the oil sellers in the
Velabrum."
The aediles punished smuggling, but the cultus of
Mercury also dealt with malefactors, and the penalties
imposed by the latter were inflicted upon all who trafficked
in flagrant and fraudulent offenses: on cabaret keeper
and oil seller alike, although the latter frequently revisited
their reputation for commercial malfeasance on the heads
of the innkeepers. A passage in the Captivi of Plautus
will enable us to judge of the punishment inflicted by the
priest of Mercury upon a rogue more indurated still. It
ended with a proverb which pilloried public morality,
and the ends of justice were rarely reached. The prac
tise developed the Lex Talionis to a high degree of effi
ciency. The punishment actually consisted of a denun-
GREECE & ROME 231
elation at the hands of the priest of Mercury. The
tavern keeper, a shameless adulterator, a vendor of more
commodities than the vintner, was punished, therefore,
because he had sinned. But the evil, the inadequateness
of the penalty, remained, and our retailer finds himself
purified after the ewer has been emptied over his head,
even as the sinner after baptism. He was then ready to
begin all over again. Ovid describes this purification in
his Fasti, and quotes the prayer of the penitent during
the imposition of the sentence. After having besought
Mercury to pardon him for having misrepresented his
wares, he begs the god to pass upon whatever he sells so
he can lie again:
"Purify me of perjuries past, that the gods may not
occupy themselves with my concerns if I lie but a little;
vouchsafe me certain profits, and when they shall have
accrued, permit me to enjoy them, and make my patrons
believe my words when they buy."
The public complained for years of the dearness of
wine and its vile quality. Mercury did not punish the
vintners. He found his godhead in a difficult situation.
To have penalized the guilty would have resulted in a loss
to his priesthood, as their emoluments would have been
curtailed. Under Augustus, matters such as these were
taken to the emperor, but little account was made of
them. The sarcastic banter of Octavian was equal to any
occasion and it is reported that he answered a thirsty
plebe that Agrippa, his son-in-law, had already taken
active measures to avert death from thirst in watching
carefully over the spouts of the public fountains, and
that consequently the complaint could not be based upon
fact. Tiberius, Claudius, Nero, and Domitian paid more
regard to the exactions of the vintners, and under Pescen-
nius Niger the legions voiced their complaints against
being deprived of wine. "What!" says he, with biting
282 THE INNS OF
sarcasm, "you demand wine with the Nile at your feet!"
The troops which were defeated by the Moors had met
the situation as follows: "We have not been provided
with our rations of wine; we cannot fight." The response
this time was more mordant still: "You should blush
with shame, because those who have taken your measure
drink only water."
During the reign of Aurelian these complaints per
sisted and that prince at last made it a point of law.
He decreed wine should be placed on the free list with
bread, oil, meat, and pork. He ordered the vast and
well wooded plains which extended to the maritime
Alps be acquired and cleared; that the hillsides
might be set with vines to be cared for by numerous
familia of slaves to be established in the country* The
wine produced by this experiment was to be disposed of
only by the public treasury, and disbursed, free of im
posts, to the people. After this, it was merely a question
of computing the daily rations, "facta erat ratio dochae,
cuparum, navium, et operum," remarks Vopiscus: when
Aurelian listened to the wise advice of his praetorian
praefect, who told him: "If we issue wine to the Roman
people today, we shall be forced to serve them with geese
and chickens tomorrow." The advice was prudent, and
the gratuitous distribution was thereupon suppressed.
Thereafter Aurelian contented himself with selling in the
porticos of the temple of the Sun such vintages as had
been exempted from imposts or seized by the Roman
customs officers as the result of fraud or smuggling
(fiscalia vina). Although his biographer tells us nothing
on the point, he doubtless sold the merchandise at prices
lower than the market. When an emperor puts the
government in business, the chief loser, aside from the
government, would, of course, be the tavern keeper,
and the people had every reason to be content, as they
GREECE & ROME 233
were thus able to purchase better wines at a lower price;
and Aurelian, to indemnify them for not making free
distribution of such commodities and thus putting a
premium upon nonproduction, issued to them white
tunics of African cloth and Egyptian linen, and, perhaps,
handkerchiefs, such as had not been seen until then.
The place given over to the sale of wines, in ancient
towns, in Italy and France as well, in Rome and in Lyons,
was a large empty space surrounded with little buildings
(cenabae), in which the merchants did business. The
wine market at St. Bernard, with its little booths, each
numbered and bearing on its fagade the name of the
merchant occupying the premises, is an ideal illustration.
The forum vinarium of ancient towns differed little from
this example. All that is conveyed to a Frenchman by
the term "March au Vin" (wine market) would have
been found in the Roman forerunner of that institution
of the middle ages, little larger than was necessary to
house the press.
The wine merchants, whose corporation was recon
stituted by Alexander Severus, upon what grounds we
do not know, used these little cenabae as the centres from
which they did their business. In them lay the origin of
those shops of Italy which we now know as canove or
cantine. An inscription in Gruter s collection informs
us as to their establishment in Lyons in cenabis con-
sistentium. In the same collection there is another
further along in which mention is made of the cenabenses,
the loafers around wineshops; the inscription deals with
a temple consecrated to the fortune of the emperor and
the protecting genius of the vintners* gild:
Fortunae Augustae sacrum, et genio canabensiuin
Sacred to the inperial fortune and to the genius of
the vintners.
234 THE INNS OF
The affairs transacted in these cenabae at Rome were
of considerable magnitude, for there was much wine
drunk in Italy, and the vintages numbered about eighty.
Without taking count of the synthetic products, such as
mulsum (a mixture of Falernian and honey), Italy alone
produced about fifty varieties of wine. We do not include
within our estimate the spiced beverages and aromatic
drinks, nor those perfumed with verbena, calamus,
myrrh, aloes, and the like, or even those vile mixtures
such as blitum which were made on the spot by the land
lord.
Some of these which we have seen flowing in torrents
in the taverns, where the art of the vintner had rendered
them even viler than they were before, were of a detest
able quality. Their bitter taste in the mouth, the tongue
thickened by their acridness, they could be freely damned
even as the Greek Cineas, in observing the loftiness of the
trellised vines by which they were produced, remarked:
"Hey would do well to hang the mother of such wines
as high/ Others there were, however, which differed
greatly from these vile plebeian vintages; among such
were the wines of Vaticani or of Nomentani, in which
qualities no less rare than exquisite were inherent; tart
ness, highly flavored and haunting bouquet, and a tempered
ardour. With Falernian every reader of Horace and
Martial has been long familiar; there was also Caecubian
no less generous and no less celebrated, although greater
pains had to be taken with it and it had to be aged more to
get the finest results; the true imperial wine of Italy, how
ever, was the Setian, which was also a better stomachic
than either of the preceding and was long the favorite
at the court of Augustus and probably of Tiberius and
Caligula as well. The wines of Sorrentum were long
esteemed as tonics for disordered stomachs and very
helpful as an aid to digestion, but which, worse luck, had
GREECE & ROME 235
to age for about twenty-five years before they were at
their best maturity; and lastly the sweet wines of Alba
esteemed for frayed nerves. They were dry wines and
were better than Falernian, and agreeable and gentle
tonics for the stomach and digestion.
These were the precious wines, the vintages which
required careful nursing, and which would bear not the
slightest neglect from the time of picking the grapes till
the moment when, gushing and foaming from the pressure
of the press and turned into the huge dolia, remaining
therein thirty days, stirred without intermission with rods
of elm to prevent the lees from depositing on the inside;
lastly drawn off to clarify and often rendered more limpid
still by the aid of pigeon eggs broken into them.
Thus prepared, thus placed in the best state for
preservation and keeping, they were decanted, not like
inferior wines into leathern bottles and wineskins (culei),
but into puncheons (cadi) of terra cotta which probably
had a capacity of about six and one-half gallons; into
amphorae of a like capacity, or even into little vessels
(graeca testa) as Horace calls them (Lib. I, 20) which,
on account of their elegant form, added on that account
to the price of the wine which they contained. Such
vessels were hermetically sealed with a cork which had
been first dipped into boiling pitch. There was usually
an inscription on the neck of the vessel which told the
year of the vintage, and usage gave the name of the consul
of the year in which the wine was made to the wine itself.
Petronius speaks of Opiniam and Horace of wine of
Manlius s consulate, incidentally giving us at the same
time the year of his own birth (Lib. HI, 21). After the
vessels had been carefully stoppered, the casks and
amphorae especially, they were deposited carefully on
end on a bed of fine sand in the cella vineria, a sort of
little cellar, or in a cool shed (horreum). If they were all
236
THE INNS OF
small and of equal capacity, of an elegant and graceful
form like the testa graeca for example, they were kept
under guard in the hall or house, disposed in niches
arranged in the walls, even as we have seen in the taverns
and pimping houses in Plautus, where we were reminded
that the pitch legends could sometimes serve as love
letters.
In the taverns, therefore, we need feel little surprise at
failing to discover such niches holding vessels such as we
have spoken of; because, ordinarily, such establishments
were not frequented by the classes who could afford to
purchase vintages so rare and costly, but by the poorer
elements who had little opportunity to taste the Setian
or Caecubian wines but who, on the other hand, were
habituated to the cheap concoctions and synthetic forti
fications which the landlord provided. The patrician
left the plebe to wallow in his own drunkenness and filth
in these public houses, but for himself, his house was well
furnished with everything his tastes could remind him of,
and his cellar abounded with the rarest and costliest wines
of Italy and the Grecian archipelago. His stock of wines
was not limited to his cellars but often took up more room
still and was stowed in ranks and rows even in the atrium
of the house. Rank and quality in wine was carefully
noted by ticket, pitch legend, and by the position in which
it was placed.
One apartment in the house there was, however,
where wine was interdicted. I refer to the suite occupied
by the women of the establishment. There it was not
only a vice to drink, it was a crime. It was always thus.
Under the kings and during the first years of the republic,
though Rome^was gross and barbarous, the severity with
which such drinking was punished and the horror with
which it was regarded was more severe than under the
civilized regime of the emperors. Romulus placed wives
GREECE & ROME 237
who drank wine in the first rank of culpable women, along
with those getting caught in adultery. In the opinion
of the ancient legislator both offenses merited the same
punishment. A husband who killed his wife drinking
or drunk would have been absolved by Romulus. It
was left to the women to have charge of the keys to the
storehouse or cellar and have access to them. A young
girl who placed them in her closet was condemned by
parental authority to starve herself to death. It further
appears that the Roman woman, according to Cato, was
supposed to embrace her husband, his parents, and rela
tives on first seeing them each day, and this not so much
in sign of love and amity as to assure them by her breath
that she had not tasted wine (had the temetum in mind),
for in ancient times this was the word used to convey that
meaning and the later derivation temulentia had come
to mean drunkenness.
The women, menaced by such severe precautions
depriving them of wine, made the best of the matter and
contrived to content themselves with liquors less stimu
lating. For instance, they were permitted to take pas-
sum, a wine made from dried grapes and thin anodyne,
which people used to garnish their delicacies and flavor
them much as we used brandy or hard cider to fortify
mince meat, or preserved fruits. Martial speaks of this
beverage as also does Columella, who intimates that it is
new wine copiously steeped and having its savor aug
mented by virtue of passing this produce through a bed
of raisins which have been dried by the sun. This must
have been one of the beverages which Plautus had in
mind when he puts into the mouth of one of his characters
the following words: " Prepare the honeyed wine (com-
misce mulsum); make ready the quinces and the pears,
that they may warm well in the pans; throw in the cinna
mon, 5 and so on* This must have been real pear cider as
THE INNS OP
that which is extracted from the same fruit in Asia Minor,
according to Artemidorus, and such as that made from
apples, of which Plutarch speaks.
Women, in addition to these beverages so innocuous
were also permitted a liquor called def rutum, which was
derived from the lighter vintages, adulterated with water
and reduced to a third of its original volume by long
boiling.
How many of the Greek wines were interdicted we
cannot say, but we suspect that the number was great,
and especially did this apply to those vintages which did
not arrive in Italy diluted with water in a proportion
which would render them, according to belief, improper
for secret libations. Notwithstanding this dilution, which
proves less, as we see it, the fidelity of the Greek vineyard
keepers for the ancient usage of sobriety, than that their
wine merchants followed an ancient custom of cheating,
they were, as we would have you see, the vintages pre
ferred by the gluttons; they were always dear, but their
high cost added only to the merit of the wine. The
impost (portorium) which they had to pay as luxuries,
elevated the price still higher. Always, one might say,
this was a contribution not excessive. It did not exceed
the fortieth part of the value of the object sold; but the
moderateness of the impost was not always the real
reason which caused the high price to be sustained.
Smuggling operations were very frequent many a mer
chant, even as we have pointed out in the case of Cato,
engaged in traffic of this sort with impunity; and you
must know that if the contravention required courage,
the Roman impost must have been rigorous.
All merchandise, and wine especially, which was im
ported in a province which also exported, whether by
land or water, had, without exception, no privilege to
evade the law.
GREECE & ROME 239
It is true that a traveller might import merchandise
for his own particular use and needs, but for more the
tax was applied always without prejudice at the toll
house, which as a general thing was located near one of
the bridges. One was bound to declare himself at the
bureau of customs the objects designated by the law.
If he made a false declaration and the misrepresentation
was discovered, confiscation followed.
Those who complained against the contribution were
not less numerous than those who avoided it, which was
the cause of the exaction, and especially when a collector
of customs bestirred himself, as, for instance, Verres or
Fonteius. These reclamations were not left without
authority. The latter was vehemently accused, for
example, of having unlawfully levied excessive contribu
tions on wines while in command of Gaul, and it required
nothing less than all the eloquence of Cicero to dissipate
the grief caused by the grave charges brought against the
governor. And what brought all this about? A levy of
four denarii at Toulouse on each amphora, under the
pretext of customs duties (portorii nomine) and of cer
tain other smaller imposts levied by the agents of Fon
teius, which seemed outrageous to the wine merchants
of certain French towns. Pletorius, the principal accuser,
would have it believed that this levy was but a link in a
system of fraud powerfully organized, and pretended that
Fonteius had not conceived in Gaul this detestable idea
of levying an excessive impost on wine; that he had
worked out the project in Italy, and that the plan had
also its agents and ramifications in Rome. Nothing is
more redoubtable, in an affair of thievery, than for one
thief to accuse another. Unfortunate Fonteius! to have
been placed in the position of having been accused by
vintners.
We have already passed in review a goodly number of
240 THE INNS OF
gluttons; we are able likewise to say that in our painstak
ing visits to the inns of the environs of Rome and to the
taverns of the great city which we have visited on foot,
we have seen all that was vile in the Roman dregs with
out having entered as yet the stalls more shameless,
which we shall later throw open to the light of the sun;
and we shall know intimately the elite of the vagabonds,
the fine flower of the ancient rascals. Some may resent
a graphic picture of the scenes to follow before the close
of this chapter, but we shall draw them still. It is no
part of our plan to describe to the readers those places
of public reunion, which people were accustomed to fre
quent without distinction to rank, but because of the
relation they bore to hospitality, we find ourselves com
pelled to introduce our readers to the barber shops where
the man about town, the beaux-brummels and the novel
ists, made their headquarters. Here luxury grew to an
unprecedented height and when we reach the age of
Julian, we find that emperor greatly incensed at discover
ing that society had so degraded itself that barbers had
become an important part of the cosmos. We shall begin
then with that institution of many professions, the female
barber, well skilled in her trade of hair-dresser, barber,
masseuse, manicure, and prostitute. In her shop gath
ered the slaves to homage and gossip, to sleep on the
benches while waiting to conduct their infant charges,
then at school, home when the master had terminated
his lessons; and we shall find here plausible scoundrels
working out their plans of campaign and preparing their
snares even as in the cabarets, effeminate sissies such
as Martial s Priscius who dreaded wind and dust, dandies
(belli) always occupied with comb and mirror (inter
pectinem speculumcue occupati) as Seneca has said so
spiritually.
The barber at least ought to be worthy of our observa-
GREECE & ROME 241
tion. TYhy, you will ask? Because he is a gossip and
for that reason alone is well worthy to figure in our
gallery. Have not gossips and curiosity always been
considered a crime, especially on the part of barbers?
Has not tittle-tattle always been the very letter and
spirit of that calling? And the anecdote of the barber
who demanded of an unknown customer "How shall I
shave you?" received in response these words of Spartan
brevity: " Without speaking/ Is this not vouched for
by no less an authority than Plutarch, and is it not always
as new as the latest gossip in the corner barber shop?
In connection with the barber shops, we are also
bound to mention the stalls of the perfumers (nyropolia)
and also those of the doctors (medicinae). There also
among the Roman empirics, who did not content them
selves with prescribing drugs, but who also prepared
those which they sold, with their own hands. There, I
repeat, in the stalls of the doctors, like those of our
apothecaries, dudes, dandies, and novelists congregated.
And we may also suspect that other frequenters, more
sombrely intentioned, were to be found there. . Did not
they sell, in fact, poisons which were sometimes used as
remedies, but which could bring death as well as health?
C *I will go to the doctor," says a character in the "Mer~
cator of Plautus," "and there with poison I will buy death
for myself."
242 T H E I N N S O F
CHAPTER XVL
Meritoria in relation to lupanar Inns respectable and otherwise
Nero again Apuleius* spirited account of an adventure in an inn of
the second century.
Next we shall visit the meritoria. They are places,
I assure you, which you will never be able to know well,
no matter how keen your curiosity, except at the expense
of your modesty. These are inns of which the most
respectable savor somewhat of our family hotels, but of
which the worst could scarcely be placed upon the same
level as the lupanars. In fact, the terms came to be
almost synonymous. A passage in the Digest enlightened
us completely as to the difference between the meritorium,
and the ordinary lodging house (by meritorium we refer
to the honest establishment). " There," says TJlpian,
"lodgers remain for a long time and are persons known
and respected, (in longum tempus, certisque personis)."
In the other the lodger is a transient from day to day
(feme in dies) and is a person unknown and uncertain.
Other places there were which belonged to this latter
class but which were of a lower order in which chance
guests could rent a furnished room for the night. These
places were almost invariably dangerous. They were
evilly constructed and were several stories high; more
crowded even than our tenements, and filthy beyond
description. The characters of their lodgers were usually
in keeping with the proprieties of the place. In these
meritoria, poverty stricken families were accustomed to
live from day to day, paying for their lodging for a short
time and at a high rate and when they were unable to
amass the funds necessary to maintain them, the pro-
GREECE & ROME 243
prietor ejected them without scruple, to rent another
lodging or to huddle in the streets or in the dank cold
passageways. There flocked always the vagabonds which
are to be found at all times in all the great cities a
class without fire or roof (sine lare certo) as Horace says
of them, who roosted where they could but lodged no
where. The women and the children of Vitellius were
reduced to such straits. According to Suetonius, ruined
by the gormandising of that glutton, abandoned by hniri
at Rome without other resource than the house in which
they lived, they left it and went to lodge in furnished
lodgings. They did not leave it until they went to live
in the imperial palace when Vitellius became emperor.
Tenants such as these, however, were rare in such
lodgings. Ordinarily, the classes who lived in the meri-
toria were so poorly dressed and so unsociable and so
pitiably degraded that the legislator implicitly declared
it fatal to propriety to live in such a situation, and in the
Codex a defence is based upon the premise that a house
was to be transformed into a meritorium or lodging house
with small bedchambers.
For us, and without doubt the legislator took the
same view, that law is more than a civil law, it is also a
moral law: the chief reasons for its passage were those of
propriety, as the population common to these meritoria
was degraded and good manners had to be safe-guarded,
which could be done by preventing the erection of estab
lishments where scandal and crime were sure to originate.
The meritoria were in effect infamous refuges where vice
and vicious practices flourished and crimes of luxury
found here the shadow of oblivion and the secrecy with
out which they could not flourish* Especially were such
lodging houses the ordinary refuges of adulterers. The
scandalous usage which was made of these commodious
retreats became at last so general, and little by little they
244 THE INNS OF
assimilated to themselves so completely the other places
of debauchery, that finally, as we have said, the two
words meritorium and lupanar came to have the same
meaning. When Vopiscus said that the emperor Tacitus
gave orders as to certain bad places of the city he refers
to the meritoria; with Sparianus it is the same, when he
cites the letter of Severus reproaching Rogonius Cellus
because the tribunes of his army ate in the cook shops
but slept in the taverns he uses a significant phrase^
"pro tridinus popinas habent, pro cubiculis meritoria."
Lodging houses, as was but natural, took also sometimes
at Rome the name meritorium. Certain verses of Juvenal
do not permit us to doubt this. He shows us a poor
devil of a traveller who, ill in a lodging house in the most
noisy quarter of Rome, where the uproar is torture,
dies then from lack of sleep; and another who, tor
mented by his indigestion, caused by the meal which he
had taken in that inn, lies upon his stomach and cannot
sleep peacefully.
To designate these inhospitable retreats, the word
meritoria is used by the satirists.*
That which is decisive proof that by meritorium was
meant a hotel at Rome is the fact that one does not call
otherwise the immense asylum, a veritable hotel of dis
abled soldiers in which at the expense of the state the
old wounded veterans were maintained. This meri
torium stood upon the site occupied today by the church
of Santa Maria in the Transtiber.
However, the inn in Rome as well as along the roads
was generally called simply caupona, whether it savored
of the cabaret or not; again, the term diver sorium was
applied and sometimes diverticulum, because, forsooth,
they were found upon the side streets and not upon the
*See page 128 (See Juvenal Meritoria).
GREECE & ROME 245
public ways but at crossroads. Tacitus has represented
Xero as running about in the habiliments of a slave,
the streets of the city, the red light district, and the
taverns and inns; and the term which he applies is
dwerticula.
An epigram of Martial has lent color to the charges
frequently preferred against the innkeepers, charges
accusing them of all manner of theft including even that
of robbing the pack animals, owned by their guests, of
their grain and fodder.
"Muleteer, accept what thou dost not give to the
uncomplaining mules as, though I do not wish to give
you a present, neither do I wish to give it to the land
lord."
The Roman inn, fairly well provided along the great
routes, could lodge beast and men at the same time;
could give shelter at the same time to the host, to the
guest, servants and baggage. In the Menaechmi of
Plautus the hero arrives at Rome with a considerable
equipage which he sends on ahead of him to an inn
under the guard of one whom he can trust and also of
his other slaves; nor did he retain those things esteemed
of greatest value in his baggage, and we shall find it
also very imprudent to thus rely upon the honor of an
innkeeper and of his slaves*
All these lodgings came at a high rate, but were not
worth what they cost. Stratilax, in the Truculentus, a
man well informed, prevented such treatment for himself.
"Hold," said he to his guide, "I would be led into a tavern
where I would be received badly for my money." And
it was worse in the suburbs. Judge by what Harpax says
of the hag Chrysis, the toothless and greasy hostess
whom he met, "I will go and lodge outside the gates,
at the third tavern, with the old woman Chrysis, gross
as a hogshead, lame and greasily fat."
246 THE INNS OF
From the propriety of this hostess, judge well that
of the lodging.
In the city or in the suburbs, the majority of the
inns were uncleanly, frequented by peoples of all sorts
and conditions, a medley of thieves, debauchees, and
unsavory lodgers, and the eyes of the prudent aedile and
praetor were always on them. Every day a lictor visited
suspected inns where espionage was thought to be car
ried on.
Many a passage in Petronius has recorded perhaps
too faithfully the doings and life of institutions such as
these, and Eumolpus and Encolpius were as well qualified
to speak of the things which went on under their eyes
as they were to take part in them. Marcus Manicius,
that hardy type of landlord, is as universal as self-
interest, and who shall say that the sweet predaciousness
of designing widowhood is more frequently imposed
upon today than it was in the reign of Nero, when the
laws did not protect it so thoroughly. Apuleius has pre
served a spirited account of an adventure in an irm of
the second century. He had arrived at Hypat^a, in
Thessaly, and being a mystic, devoting much attention
to witchcraft and magic, made the best of the story he
puts in the mouth of Aristomanes. The passage occurs
in the first book of the Metamorphosis and runs as follows:
TALE OF ARISTOMENES, THE COMMERCIAL TRAVELLER
"I am a native of JEgina, and I travel to and fro
through Thessaly, JStolia, and Boeotia, for the purpose
of purchasing honey of Hypata, as also cheese, and other
articles of traffic used in cookery. Having understood
that at Hypata,* which is the principal city of all Thes-
*Hypata. This was a famous city of Thessaly, situate on the banks of the
river Spercheus.
GREECE & ROME 247
saly, new cheese of exquisite flavour was to be sold at a
very reasonable price, I made the best of my way to that
place, with the intention of buying up the whole of it.
But, as generally is the case, starting unluckily with the
left foot foremost,* all my hopes of gain were utterly
disappointed. For a person named Lupus, a merchant
in a large way of business, had bought the whole of it the
day before.
"Weary with my rapid journey, undertaken to so little
purpose, I proceeded, early in the evening, to the public
baths, when, to my surprise, I espied an old companion
of mine, named Socrates. He was sitting on the ground,
half covered with a sorry, tattered cloak, and looked
almost another person, he was so miserably wan and thin;
just like those outcasts of Fortune, who beg alms in the
streets. Consequently, although he had been my friend
and particular acquaintance, I yet accosted him with
feelings of hesitation.
" "How now, friend Socrates, 9 said I, what is the
meaning of this? Why this appearance? What crime
have you been guilty of? Why, you have been lamented
at home, and for some time given up for dead.f Guard
ians have been assigned to your children, by decree of the
provincial magistrate. Your wife, having fulfilled what
was due to the dead,J all disfigured by grief and long-
continued sorrow, and having almost cried herself blind
with excessive weeping, is being worried by her parents to
*Left foot foremost. To start on a journey by putting the left foot foremost was
considered to be especially significant of ill luck; so much so, that the expression came
to be generally used to denote bad omen.
iGiten up for dead, "Condamatus es." After a person was dead it was the
custom of the Romans to call on him by name, for the purpose of recalling him to life,
in case he should be only in a trance. This ceremony was called " conclamatio," and
was generally performed while the body was being washed, once a day for seven days;
after which period the body was burnt.
%Due to the dead. Ovid, in his Fasti, b. L 1. 36, mentions ten months as the
period assigned by Numa for widows to mourn the loss of their husbands.
248 THE INNS OF
repair the misfortune of the family by the joys of a new
marriage. But here you come before our eyes like some
spectral apparition, to our extreme confusion/
" *O Aristomenes ! said he, c it is clear that you are
ignorant of the slippery turns, the unstable freaks, and
the ever-changing vicissitudes of Fortune/
"As he said this, he hid his face, which was crimsoned
with shame, in his cobbled covering of tatters, so that
he left the rest of his body naked. At last, unable to
endure the sight of such a miserable spectacle of woe, I
took hold of him, and endeavoured to raise him from the
ground. But, with his head covered up as it was, he
exclaimed, Let me alone, let me alone; let Fortune still
enjoy the trophy she has erected/
* However, I prevailed upon him to accompany me : and
at the same time pulling off one of my own two garments,
I speedily clothed, or covered him, shall I say? imme
diately after which, I took him to a bath, and, myself,
applied to him the requisite anointing and scrubbing
processes, and laboriously rubbed off the coat of filth with
which he was defiled. Having paid every attention to
him, though tired myself, I supported his enfeebled steps,
and with great difficulty brought him to my inn; where
I made him rest on a couch, gave him plenty of food,
cheered him with wine, and entertained him with the
news of the day. And now our conversation took quite
a merry turn, we cracked jokes, and grew noisy in our
prattle; when, heaving a bitter sigh from the bottom of
his breast, and violently striking his forehead with his
right hand:
" Miserable man that I am! 5 said he; Ho have fallen
into these misfortunes while intent on gratifying myself
with a famous gladiatorial spectacle. For, as you are
very well aware, I went to Macedonia on an affair of
business; and after being detained there for the space of
GREECE & ROME 249
ten months, I was on my return homewards, having
gained a very pretty sum of money. I had nearly reached
Larissa,* which I had included in my route forthepurpose
of seeing the spectacle I mentioned, when I was attacked
by some desperate robbers, in a lonely and rugged valley,
and only effected my escape, after being plundered by
them of all I possessed. Being thus reduced to extreme
distress, I betook myself to a certain woman named
Meroe, who kept a tavern, and who, though old, was
remarkably engaging; and to her I related the circum
stances of my lengthened absence, of my earnest desire
to reach home, and of my being plundered of my property
on that day. After I, unfortunate wretch, had related
such particulars as I remembered, she treated me with
the greatest kindness, supplied me with a good supper,
all for nothing. But from the very moment that I, un
happy man, first saw her, my mind contracted a lasting
malady; and I even made her a present of those garments
which the robbers, in their humanity, had left me to
cover my nakedness. I likewise presented her with the
little earnings I made by working as a cloak-maker while
I was yet in good condition of body; until at length this
worthy partner, and ill fortune together, reduced me to
that state in which you just saw me.*
" *By Pollux, then,* said I, you deserve to suffer
extreme misfortunes, if there is anything still more
extreme than that which is most extreme, for having
preferred the pleasures of dalliance and a wrinkled harlot,
to your home and children/
" Hush! hush!* said he, raising his forefinger to his
mouth, and looking round with a terror-stricken counte
nance to see if he might speak with safety; * Forbear to
revile a woman skilled in celestial matters, lest you do
yourself an injury through an intemperate tongue/
*Laris8a. A city of Thessaly, situated near the river Feneus.
250 THE INNS OF
" Say you so?* said I. What kind of a woman is
this tavern keeper, so powerful and queenly?"
" She is a sorceress/ he replied, and endowed with
powers divine; she is able to draw down the heavens, to
uplift the earth, to harden the running water, to dissolve
mountains, to raise the shades of the dead, to dethrone
the Gods, to extinguish the stars, and to illumine the
depths of Tartarus itself/
" Come, come/ said I, *do draw asunder this tragic
curtain* and fold up the theatric drop-scene, and let s hear
your story in ordinary parlance/
** Should you like/ said he, to hear of one or two, ay,
or a great many of her performances? Why, as for
making not only her fellow-countrymen love her to dis
traction, but the Indians even, or the inhabitants of both
the JEthiopias,f and even the AntichthonesJ themselves;
these are only the leaves, as it were, of her art, and mere
trifles. Listen, then, and hear what she has performed
in the presence of many witnesses* By a single word
only, she changed a lover of hers into a beaver, for having
been connected with another woman. She likewise
changed an innkeeper, who was her neighbour and of
whom she was envious on that account, into a frog; and
now the old fellow, swimming about in a cask of his own
*Tragic curtain. The "siparium" was a piece of tapestry, stretched on a
frame, and, rising before the stage, answered the same purpose as the curtain or
drop-scene with us in concealing the stage till the actors appeared. Instead of
drawing up this curtain to discover the stage and actors, according to our present
practice, it was depressed when the play began, and fell beneath the level of the
stage; whence " aukea premuntur," meant that the play had commenced. "Aulsea "
seems here to mean the stage curtain, which divided in the middle and was drawn
aside: while the "siparium" would more nearly correspond with our drop-scene.
jThe JEthiopiag.The eastern and the western, separated from each other by
the river Nile, which the ancients (as we are informed by Strabo, Geograph. lib. ii.)
considered as the boundary of Asia and Africa.
tThe Antichfhone*.So called from inhabiting the earth contrary to that on
which we dwell. Hence they are either the same with the Antipodes, or, at
least, are those who dwell in the inferior hemisphere which is contrary to ours.
GREECE & ROME _ 251
wine, or buried in the dregs, croaks hoarsely to his old
customers, quite in the way of business. She likewise
transformed another person, an advocate of the Forum,
into a ram, because he had conducted a cause against her;
and to this very day that ram is always at loggerheads.*
Then there was the wife of a lover of hers, whom she con
demned to perpetual pregnancy, when on the point of
increasing her family, by closing her womb against the
egress of the infant, because she had chattered scandal
against the witch.
" * After this woman, however, and many other persons,
had been injured by her arts, the public indignation
became aroused against her; and it was determined that
on the following day a most dire vengeance should be
wreaked upon her, by stoning her to death But, by the
power of her enchantments, she frustrated this design:
and as Medea, having obtained by entreaty from Creon
the truce of a single day, prior to her departure, burned
his whole palace, his daughter, together with the old man
himself, with flames issuing from a garland, so, likewise,
did this sorceress, having performed certain deadly incan
tations in a ditch,t (as she herself lately told me in a fit
of drunkenness), confine all the inhabitants of the town,
each in his own house, through a secret spell of the
daemons; so that for two whole days together, neither
could the bars be wrenched off, nor the doors be taken off
the hinges, nor, in fine, could a breach be made in the
walls; until, by mutual consent, the people unanimously
cried out, and swore in the most sacred manner, that they
would not lift a hand against her, and would, in case any
one should fhrnlc of so doing, afford her timely assistance.
*Is always at ^ggerheads.-- "Causas agit." This Sir G. Head cleverly renders,
"and gives rebutters and surrebutters as lie used to do.**
^Incantations in a <&&. -Sacrifices to celestial gods were offered on raised
altars; those to terrestial gods, on the ground; those to infernal gods,inapltorditcL
252
THE INNS OF
Being after this manner appeased, she liberated the whole
city.
" In the middle of the night, however, she conveyed
the author of this conspiracy, together with all his house,
that is to say, with the walls, the very ground, and all the
foundations, close shut as it was, into another city, situate
at the hundredth milestone hence, and on the summit
of a craggy mountain, in consequence of which it is de
prived of water. And, as the dwellings of the inhabitants
were built so close together, that they did not afford room
to this new comer, she threw down the house before the
gate of the city, and took her departure/
" You narrate/ said I, marvellous things, my good
Socrates, and no less terrible than marvellous. In fine,
you have excited in me too, no small anxiety, indeed, I
may say, fear, not inoculating me with a mere grain of
apprehension, but piercing me with dread as with a spear,
lest this old hag, employing in a similar manner the
assistance of some daemon, should come to know this con
versation of ours. Let us, therefore, with all speed,
betake ourselves to rest, and when we have relieved our
weariness by a night s sleep, let us fly hence as far as we
possibly can, before daylight/
"While I was yet advising him thus, the worthy
Socrates, overcome by more wine than he had been
accustomed to, and by the fatigue of the day, had fallen
asleep, and was now snoring aloud. Shutting the door,
therefore, securing the bolts, and placing my bed close
against the hinges, I tossed it up well, and lay down upon
it. At first, indeed, I lay awake some time through fear,
but closed my eyes at last a little about the third watch.*
"I had just fallen asleep, when suddenly the door was
burst open with too great violence for one to believe that
it was robbers; nay, the hinges being entirely broken and
*Tkird Watch. The beginning of this would be midnight.
GREECE & ROME 253
wrenched off, it was thrown to the ground. The bed
stead, too, which was but small, wanting one foot, and
rotten, was thrown down with the violence of the shock,
and falling upon me, who had been rolled out and pitched
upon the ground, completely covered and concealed me.
Then was I sensible that certain emotions of the mind are
naturally excited by contrary causes. For as tears very
often proceed from joy, so, amid my extreme fear, I could
not refrain from laughing, to see myself turned, from
Aristomenes, into a tortoise,* And so, while prostrate
on the floor, peeping askance to see what was the matter,
and completely covered by the bed, I espied two women,
of advanced age, one of whom carried a lighted lamp,
and the other a sponge and a drawn sword. Thus
equipped, they planted themselves on either side of
Socrates, who was fast asleep.
"She who carried the sword then addressed the other,
This, sister Panthia, is my dear Endymion,f my Gany-
mede,t who by day and by night, hath laughed my
youthful age to scorn. This is he who, despising my
passion, not only defames me with abusive language, but
is preparing also for flight and I, forsooth, deserted
through the craft of this Ulysses, just like another
Calypso, am to be left to lament in eternal loneliness/
"Then extending her right hand, and pointing me out
to her friend Panthia; And there/ said she, is his worthy
counsellor Aristomenes, who was the proposer of this
flight, and who now, half dead, is lying flat on the ground
beneath the bedstead, and is looking at all that is going on,
while he fancies that he is to relate disgraceful stories of
me with impunity. I ll take care, however, that some
*Into a tortoise. From his bed and bedstead being turned over him.
\My dear Endymion. Alluding to the secret of Diana and the shepherd
Endymion, on Mount Latmus.
%My Ganymede, Called "Catamitus" in the text; by which name he is also
called in the Mensechini of Plautus.
254 THE INNS OF
day, ay, and before long too, this very instant in fact, he
shall repent of Ms recent loquacity, and his present
inquisitiveness/
"On hearing this, wretch that I was, I felt myself
streaming with cold perspiration, and my vitals began to
throb with agitation; so much so, that even the bedstead,
shaken by the violence of my palpitations, moved up and
down upon my back.
" * Well, sister/ said the worthy Panthia, * shall we hack
him to pieces at once, after the fashion of the Bacchanals,
or, shall we bind his limbs and hold him prisoner?
"To this, Meroe replied for I perceived from the
circumstances, as well as from the narrative of Socrates,
how well that name fitted her* "Rather let him live, if
only that he may cover with a little earth the body of this
wretched creature/ Then, moving the head of Socrates
to one side, she plunged the whole sword into him up to
the hilt, through the left side of his throat, carefully
receiving the flowing blood into a small leathern bottle,
placed under it, so that not a drop of it was anywhere
to be seen. All this did I witness with my own eyes;
and, what is more, the worthy Meroe, that she might not,
I suppose, omit any due observance in the sacrifice of the
victim, thrusting her right hand through the wound, into
the very entrails, and groping among them, drew forth
the heart of my unhappy companion; while, his windpipe
being severed by the thrust of the weapon, he emitted
through the wound a voice, or rather I should say, an
indistinct gurgling noise, and poured forth his spirit with
his bubbling blood. Panthia then stopped the gaping
wound with the sponge, exclaiming, * Beware, O sea-born
sponge, how thou dost pass through a river. 5
*How weU that name fitted her. Ausonius, Epigram xix., explains this allusion.
You are named Meroe, not because you are of a swarthy complexion like one
born in Meroe, the island of the Nile; but because you do not dilute your wine with
water but are used to drink it unmixed and concentrated. K.
GREECE & ROME 255
"Hardly had they passed over the threshold, when
the door resumed its former state; the hinges resettled
on the pannels; the posts returned to the bars, and the
bolts flew back once more to their sockets. But I, left in
such a plight, prostrate on the ground, scared, naked, cold,
indeed, I may say, half dead, but still surviving myself,
and pursuing, as it were, a posthumous train of reflections,
or, to say the least, like a candidate for the cross, to which
I was surely destined: What/ said I, will become of
me, when this man is found in the morning with his
throat cut? Though I tell the truth, who will think my
story probable? You ought at least, they will say, to
have called for assistance, if you, such a stout man as
you are, could not resist a woman. Is a man s throat to
be cut before your eyes, and are you to be silent? How
was it you were not likewise assassinated? TVhy did the
barbarous wretch spare you, a witness of the murder,
and not kill you, if only to put an end to all evidence of
the crime? Inasmuch, then, as you have escaped death,
now return to it/
" These remarks I repeated to myself, over and over
again, while the night was fast verging towards day.
"It appeared to me, therefore, most advisable to
escape by stealth before daylight, and to pursue my
journey, though with trembling steps. I took up my bundle,
and putting the key in the door, drew back the bolts.
But this good and faithful door, which during the night
had opened of its own accord, was now to be opened but
with the greatest difficulty, after putting in the key a
multitude of times.
" * Hallo! porter/ said I, where are you? Open the
gates of the inn ; I want to be off before break of day/
"The porter, who was lying on the ground behind the
door of the inn, still half asleep, replied, Who are you,
who would begin your journey at this time of night?
256 _ THE INNS OF
Don t you know that the roads are infested by robbers?
Ay, ay, though you may have a mind to meet your death,
stung by your conscience, belike for some crime you have
committed, still, I haven t a head like a pumpkin, that
I should die for your sake/
" "It isn t very far from day-break, 5 said I; and
besides, what can robbers take from a traveller in the
greatest poverty? Are you ignorant, you simpleton, that
he who is naked cannot be stripped by ten athletes even?
"The drowsy porter, turning himself on his other side,
made answer, And how am I to know that you have not
murdered that fellow-traveler of yours, with whom you
came hither last night, and are now consulting your safety
in flight? And now I recollect that just at that hour I
saw the depths of Tartarus* through the yawning earth
and in them the dog Cerberus, looking ready to devour
me.
"Then truly I came to the conclusion that the worthy
Meroe had not spared my throat through any compassion,
but" that she had cruelly reserved me for the cross, f
Accordingly, on returning to nay chamber, I thought about
some speedy mode of putting an end to myself: but as
Fortune had provided me with no weapon with which
to commit self-destruction, except the bedstead alone
Now, bedstead, said I, most dear to my soul, who hast
been partner with me in enduring so many sorrows, who
art fully conscious, and a spectator of this night s events,
and whom alone, when accused, I can adduce as a witness
of my innocence, do thou supply me, who would fain
*Saw the depths of Tartarus. Of course in a dream. Just at that hour. He
kncws all about it, even to the precise time. The promptitude with which the porter
decides from the evidence of his dream that the murder had been actually com
mitted, and at the very moment when the dream occurred, is a fine touch of
nature. K.
crow. The cross was the instrument of punishment for slaves and
foreigners, especially in cases of murder.
GREECE & ROME 257
hasten to the shades below, with a welcome instrument of
death/
"Thus saying, I began to undo the rope with which
the bed was corded, and throwing one end of it over a
small beam which projected above the window, and there
fastening it, and making a strong slip-knot at the other
end, I mounted upon the bed, and thus elevated for my
own destruction, I put my head into the noose. But while
with one foot I was kicking away the support on which
I rested, so that the noose, being tightened about my
throat by the strain of my weight, might stop the func
tions of my breath; the rope, which was old and rotten,
broke asunder, and falling from aloft, I tumbled with
great force upon Socrates (for he was lying close by), and
rolled with him on to the floor.
"Lo and behold! at the very same instant the porter
burst into the room, bawling out, * Where are you, you
uneasy traveler who were in such monstrous haste to be
off at midnight, and now lie snoring, rolled up in the
bed-clothes?
"At these words, whether awakened by my fall, or by
the discordant notes of the porter, I know not, Socrates
was the first to start up, and exclaim, Assuredly, it is not
without good reason that all travellers detest these
hostlers. For this troublesome fellow, intruding so im
pertinently, with the intention, no doubt, of stealing
something, has roused me out of a sound sleep, by his
outrageous bellowing/
"On hearing him speak, I jumped up briskly, in an
ecstasy of unhoped-for joy: FaithfuHest of porters/ I
exclaimed, *my friend, my own father, and my brother,
behold Trim whom you, in your drunken fit, falsely accused
me of having murdered/ So saying, I embraced Socrates,
and was for loading him with kisses; but he, being assailed
by the stench of the most filthy liquor with which those
258 THE INNS OF
hags* had drenched me, repulsed me with considerable
violence. Get out with you/ he cried, for you stink
like the bottom of a sewer/ and then began jocularly to
enquire the cause of this nasty smell. Sorely confused, I
trumped up some absurd story on the spur of the moment,
to give another turn to the conversation, and, taking Vnm
by the right hand, Why not be off/ said I, and enjoy the
freshness of the morning on our journey?* So I took my
bundle, and, having paid the innkeeper for our night s
lodging, we started on our road.
"We had proceeded some little distance, and now
every thing being illumined by the beams of the rising
sun, I keenly and attentively examined that part of my
companion s neck, into which I had seen the sword
plunged. Foolish man/ said I to myself, * buried in your
cups, you certainly have had a most absurd dream. Why
look, here s Socrates safe, sound and hearty. Where is
the wound? where is the sponge? where, in fine, is the
scar of a wound, so deep, and so recent?
" Addressing myself to him, Decidedly/ said I,
skilful doctors have good reason to be of opinion that
it is those who are stuffed-out with food and fermented
liquors who are troubled with portentous and horrible
dreams. My own case is an instance of this: for having
in my evening cups exceeded the bounds of temperance,
a wretched night has been presenting to me shocking and
dreadful visions, so that I still fancy myself besprinkled
and defiled with human gore/
" * Tis not gore/ he replied with a smile, you are
sprinkled with, but chamber-lye; and yet I too, thought,
in my sleep, that my throat was cut: some pain, too, I felt
in my neck, and I fancied that my very heart was being
*Those fto0*. "Lamias" wee enchantresses, who were said to prowl about at
midnight to satisfy their lustful propensities, and their fondness for human flesh.
They correspond very nearly with the "Ghouls" mentioned in the Arabian Nights
GREECE & ROME 259
plucked out: and even now I am quite faint, my knees
tremble, I stagger as I go, and feel in want of some food
to refresh my spirits/
" "Look, 5 cried I, here s breakfast all ready for you;
and so saying, I lifted my wallet from off my shoulders,
and at once handed him some cheese and bread, saying,
*Let us sit down near that plane-tree/
"We did so, and I also helped myself to some refresh
ment. While looking at him somewhat more intently, as
he was eating with a voracious appetite, I saw that he was
faint, and of a hue like box-wood; his natural colour in
fact had so forsaken him, that as I recalled those nocturnal
furies to my frightened imagination, the very first piece of
bread I put into my mouth, though a very tiny bit, stuck
in the middle of my throat, so that it could neither pass
downward, nor yet return upward- And then besides,
the number of people passing along increased my appre
hensions; for who would believe that one of two com
panions could meet with his death without any harm done
by the other?
" Meanwhile, after having devoured a sufficient quan
tity of food, he began to be impatient for some drink;
for he had voraciously eaten a good part of a most excel
lent cheese; and not very far from the roots of the plane
tree, a gentle stream flowed slowly along, just like a placid
lake, rivalling silver or glass in its lustre. Look/ said
I, * drink your fill of the water of this stream, bright as the
Milky Way/
"He arose, and, wrapping himself in his cloak,* with
his knees doubled under him, knelt down upon the shelv
ing bank, and bent greedily towards the water. Scarcely
had he touched the dewy surface of the water with the
edge of his lips, when the wound in his throat burst wide
open, the sponge suddenly rolled out, a few drops of blood
*In his dodk. "PaHiolo" seems a preferable reading to "paulnlum."
260 THE INNS OP
accompanying it; and then, his body, bereft of life, would
have fallen into the river, had I not laid hold of one of his
feet, and dragged it with the utmost difficulty and labour
to the top of the bank; where, having, as well as the time
permitted, lamented my unfortunate companion, I buried
him in the sandy soil that eternally begirt the stream.
For my own part, trembling and terror-stricken, I fled
through various and unfrequented places; and, as though
conscious of the guilt of homicide, abandoning my
country and my home, and embracing a voluntary exile,
I now dwell in JStolia, where I have married another
wife."
One must realize that in accounts such as these, cir
culated in the conversation wherever people met, an
author such as Apuleius would revel, and his fiction is
founded upon such episodes, tinctured perhaps by lore
from the Levant, or from the more remote hamlets of
his native Africa. The perseverance with which such
peoples adhere to the customs of primitive hospitality
has much to commend it, and the bandits and beauties
in distress whom he has introduced were as characteristic
of his age as they are of our own.
GREECE &RO ME 261
EPILOGUE
During the interminable number of years which com
prised the life of the Roman world and through which we
have conducted our readers, we have met always the same
abuses; whether in tavern, inn, or cabaret, always have
the scandalous contraventions of honesty and morality
intruded themselves into our speculations and forced
themselves upon our notice.
Lechery in silk, lust in rags, vice generally unpunished
and always open, and unbridled orgies that transcend
belief, infamy and robbery all these things taken to
gether may be said to have formed an integral part in the
calling of the innkeeper.
The spread of Christianity, the invasion by savage
barbarians, whose morals were at first purer than the
effeminate serfs whom they subjugated, the slow stran
gulation of internal commerce; these three things may, in
the largest sense of the word, be said to have caused inn
keepers and innkeeping to decline to a degree which
would have scarcely been deemed possible, and forced the
refectories of the various religious orders to take upon
themselves the duties of a hospitality well-nigh Grecian
in its purity and its freedom from self interest.
The innkeepers at Rome during the age of Alexander
Severus were engaged in open warfare with the Christians
and sought by every means possible to give the death blow
to the new religion which seemed designed to destroy
their calling by its austere and moral precepts of sobriety.
But these precepts were the main factors in the destruc
tion of the r>g and innkeepers of the early Middle Ages,
and it is scarcely too much to say that such institutions
during that period were to be found in numbers only in
262 THE INNS OF
the great sea-ports and centres of trade, designed upon
the one hand to serve the interests of such mariners as
were lucky enough to escape the pirates, and on the other
to cater to the appetites of such country rustics and louts
as were able to run the gauntlet of mediaeval highwaymen
and assassins on market days and occasions of f&tes and
fairs.*"-
We shall bring our account of the inns of Greece and
Rome to a close by relating, along with a few other
incidents, an early chapter in the history of Augusto-
dunum, now known as Augsburg, and the martyrdom of
Affre, its patron saint.
The Rhetians as a people remained unconquered for
many years, but we cannot escape the suspicion that that
German province had acquired the corruption of Rome
before it was subjected by her arms. Vice marching ahead
had undermined the barbarian vigor and had prepared its
votaries for the sacrifice. One lone tradition has come
down to us dealing with this country in the Roman epoch,
and that, alas, is a scandalous tradition and deals with the
histories of infamous taverns even as we have already
dealt; nay more: it shows us an admirable illustration of
the power and example exerted by those same precepts of
austere and moral sobriety which were the cornerstones of
primitive Christianity, ere it had come to purify by fire
and sanctify by blood.
Let us then suppose ourselves in the last year of the
reign of Galerius, and in the midst of the last persecution
brought about to subjugate the Christians. Gaius is
vested with the imperial authority of Augsburg, the
tribunal before which must appear all those confessing
themselves Christians and refusing to sacrifice to false
gods. Among the women identified with the cults of
shameless divinities which were anathema in the nostrils
of the new faith we find the daughter of Hilaria, born, as
GREECE & ROME 263
was her mother, in Cypress. Affre, for that was the name
of the future martyr, was, we regret to say, a prostitute.
But what of that; what was one to expect of a priestess of
Aphrodite?
With the aid of three young women who came, doubt
less, either from Cypress or Greece itself, Affre and her
mother opened at Augsburg a cabaret on the order of
those gay establishments conducted by Thracian girls in
Athens, or, a finer comparison still, like those tasteful
retreats conducted at Rome and its suburbs by Syrian
harp-girls. Hilaria managed the house, Affre and her
companions ministered to the wants of the patrons.
" Affre/* according to Tirardin, who has been instrumental
in preserving this legend in its entirety, "Affre was, I
suppose, the Phryne and the Aspasia of the municipality
of Augsburg. One may easily conjure up a picture of the
opulent young Romans who came to Augsburg in their
tour of duty; whether as praetors or in other official ca
pacity, sighing for the flesh-pots of Italy, and looking
forward with disgust to a period of barbarous and horrid
isolation and dreary boredom. What must have been
their surprise at finding in this forbidding province a
retreat which would have charmed Cypress and hostesses
in whose company Pericles would have been delighted?"
One day there arrived at the door of this abandoned
retreat two men of forbidding mein and grave counte
nance. One was the bishop, Narcissus, and the other was
his deacon, Felix. They found here a refuge from the per
secutors put upon their track by the minister of Galerius;
they had seen this hostelry, and not believing it as
infamous as it really was, they had entered, Affre
received them, "and as the legend had it, believing them
to be two travellers inflamed with impure desires, she
invited them to supper and prepared everything in the
manner usual and convenient to such occasions; but the
264 THE INNS OF
bishop, when he approached the table, began to pray and
sing hymns to the Lord. Affre, stupefied by these words,
the like of which she had never heard before, demanded of
him who he was, and he apprised her that he was a
bishop of the church. Immediately she cast herself at his
feet and cried out, "Lord, I am unworthy to receive you,
and in all the town there is not a single creature more vile
than I. I am not worthy to touch even the hem of your
garments/ "Fear nothing/ the bishop responded, "the
Saviour was touched by impure hands and remained un
stained. Does not the light of the sun shine equally upon
sewers and immodest places and is it contaminated
thereby? Therefore, my daughter, receive in your soul
the light of the faith that you may be purified from all
your sins, that you may rejoice to have received me in your
house/ "Alas/* responded Affre, "I have committed
more sins than I have hairs on my head. How shall I be
able to wash away the spots?" "Believe, receive
baptism, and you shall be saved/ answered Narcissus.
At these words, which promised hope of salvation even in
this house of shame, Affre, radiant with joy, called in the
young women who lived with her, her companions in
luxury, whom she wished also to make her companions in
a life of purity. They entered, and viewed with pious
respect the holy man in their shrine. " This man who has
come among us," she told them, "is a bishop of the
Christians and he has said to me if you will believe in
Christ and receive baptism, all your sins shall be forgiven
you. What do you think?" And the three priestesses,
Digna, Eumenia, and Euprepia, responded, "you are our
mistress; we have followed you in vice, why should we not
follow you to procure pardon for our sins?" And after
these words, that night, which as all the others would
without doubt have been passed in an orgy, was passed
by these repentant daughters in all the fervors of prayer,
GREECE & ROME 265
under the eyes and extended hands of the bishop* The
morning came, Affre apprised her mother, Hilaria, of the
presence of the holy man, she experienced the charm of
his conversation and the old courtesan was filled with
grace, and placed all her hopes of heaven in the blessings
of the bishop. Not only did she consent to give him
sanctuary in a house which she possessed near the inn,
but when Affre said to her, "It is well, tonight I will bring
you to him," she cried out full of joy, " bring him immedi
ately lest he refuse what thou askest."
Thus it was that day, Narcissus, conducted by Affre
to the house near the infamous resort which his presence
had so miraculously sanctified, was brought into the
presence of Hilaria to whom he brought an equally
poignant gladness. The old Cyprian fell at his knees and
during three hours, so says the tale, she made the curtain
hoops ring with her cries, "I pray you, O Lord, vouchsafe
that I shall be purified of my sins."
Here the legend, as is customary in these sorts of
tales, introduces the devil, who is to strive to annul all that
the bishop has accomplished and "to prevent Narcissus
from obtaining such rich prey as the four friends whom he
had uplifted in a single night in the inn of Affre, by in
sinuating the advisability of spending another night alone
with the four friends in that retreat of pleasure. Narcissus
refused, fearing lest the sinners, with difficulty brought
into the faith, should backslide in the hours of darkness
devoted ordinarily to impurity, and the demon, van
quished, took his departure.
On the following day Affre, her servants and her
mother, were baptized.
But all too soon the soldiers of Gaius surrounded the
inn of Affre, seized the new Christian, brought her before
the Roman commander, who threatened to have her
burned to death unless she sacrificed to the gods. She
266 THE INNS OF
refused, and was taken to an island in the LeK, where,
lashed to a stake, she died, praying to her God.
"During all this, Digna, Eumenia, and Euprepia, who
had been slaves, sinners, even as she, and baptized with
her by the holy bishop Narcissus, were down at the river.
They passed over to the island and found the corpse of
the holy Affre unmutilated. A boy who was with them
recrossed the river by swimming and carried the news to
Hilaria, the mother of the martyr. She went at night with
the priests of God, took up the body and interred it two
miles from the town in a sepulchre which she had built for
herself and hers* Gaius, who had been apprised of this,
sent her a messenger with orders to persuade her to
sacrifice if it should be possible; if not, to slay her in the
same sepulchre. The soldiers, after having employed in
vain promises and threats, and finding them firm in
refusing the sacrifice, filled the sepulchre with fagots and
dry pine cones, set them afire, and departed. Therefore
the same day which saw the holy Affre canonized,
witnessed also the martyrdom of her mother and her three
servants," as Fleury has related.
A little after this same epoch in which the martyrdom
of the holy Affre, hotel hostess and courtesan, prepared
the way by her pious example for the conversion of the
German provinces, there was born and grew up in a little
inn in Sicily a holy woman who was able more than any
other to serve the cause of the faith and to open the road
even to the imperial throne. I refer to the holy Helena,
the mother of Constantine the Great. She was born in
the third century in the village of Drepanum, a village
which Justinian in memory of her so richly embellished
and which he called Helenopolus. Her father was an inn-
keeper. Some historians, by no means satisfied with so
humble an origin for the mother of the first Christian
emperor, have attempted to cloud the issue and to secure
GREECE & ROME 267
for Helena a more noble parentage, but the birth of
Helena in the little inn at Drepanum cannot be disputed,
as it has been established by the evidence of Orosius, who
wrote in good faith, and thanks also to Entropius, who
though less explicit, has remarked that Constantine the
Great was born of a very obscure marriage contracted by
Constantius ex obscuriore matrimonio. After them
Gibbon has confirmed what we have said of the origin of
Helena: "We are obliged to confess that Helena was the
daughter of an innkeeper," and he adds in a note, "It is
indeed probable enough that Helena s father kept an inn
at Drepanum and that Constantius might lodge there
when he returned from a Persian embassy in the reign of
Aurelius."
In discussing the decline of innkeeping, and the
change which the rites of hospitality underwent, as a
necessary corollary, we must give some consideration to
one of the most curious social conditions with which the
world has ever been confronted. On one hand, we have
the movement of the Christian revolution, operating in
favor of liberty, enfranchising poverty, and extending the
protection of the laws to it; on the otlrr, the political
chaos brought about by barbarian invasions, operating to
install new authority, the parent, as it were, of a new
slavery. It was not a case of action followed by the
inevitable reaction, for the two contrary movements were
simultaneous, and the singular combination born of that
contradiction has never been thoroughly studied and
understood by historians. The masters of Rome became
the slaves of their conquerors; the classes who had known
nothing but slavery passed under the authority of new
masters, and the ancient slaves of the Germans and the
Goths attached themselves to the destiny of their latest
owners. Priests of the church, stationed at the furthest
borders of the two states, conquering and conquered alike,
268 THE INNS OF
slave and mistress, owner and serf, formed an im
measurable complication which did much to bring on the
era which we call that of the Middle Ages, and formed the
cornerstone upon which feudalism rested. The various
degrees of servitude produced in their turn divers degrees
of vassalage. So difficult was it to annihilate slavery, an
institution having its deepest roots in the faith and
manners of the conquering nations and in the laws of the
peoples conquered, that the very monasteries themselves
were slaves, in the larger meaning of the term.
The classes with whom we are especially concerned in
our researches, the innkeeping and tavern-keeping
classes, had, notwithstanding their infamy, come to play
a major part and exert a powerful influence in prolonging
the existence of pagan rites, and in aiding in their celebra
tion, and the determined opposition which Christianity
encountered amongst the slaves and the vilest of the
rabble, may be accounted for by this fact. The tavern-
keepers acted as the trusted agents for pagan cults and
their establishments became the refuge of believers in the
older religions. In fact, these Roman hosts were the born
enemies of Christian austerity, they were the priests and
ministers of the gods of gluttony. They saw themselves
menaced in their vital interests by a religion which en
joined abstinence and fasting upon their best customers.
Paganism, with its sensual divinities, its orgies, its
sacrificial feasts, its libations in temple or tomb, was the
only religion which they could embrace to their advantage
and, in defense of it, they were prepared to devote them
selves, soul and body. Not only did they profit from the
debaucheries which they furthered, but the sacrifices were
also highly advantageous to them. The popa, as we have
already had occasion to remark, was always predaceous,
and generally an innkeeper. We ought not, therefore,
manifest surprise when we find a man of such keen
GREECE & ROME 269
intellect and convenient principles, for the interests
involved in this double calling required both, turning a
cold shoulder to the compliments of the first Christians.
He would be among the last to hold friendly intercourse
with a sect whose purpose was to crush paganism, and, in
crushing it, to annul his usefulness to society.
As we have said above, open warfare between the
Christians and the innkeepers was waged under Alex
ander Severus, and the Christians were so weak in
influence at court and in the means of defense that only
with difficulty could they resist the vile mob of roisterers
gathered against them. The cause of this crucial diffi
culty was a piece of land which they had taken possession
of for the purpose of building a church. The corporation
of innkeepers laid claim to this land, on what titles we do
not know. The affair attracted much attention on
account of the malignant and animated clamors of the
tavern-keepers, to which, without doubt, the Christians
opposed a countenance grave but firm. The case came at
last before the tribunal of the emperor. Luckily for the
Christians it was Alexander Severus, the first prince whose
heart had ever opened itself to the sentiments of Chris
tianity other than to malign and curse them. Lampridius,
his biographer, has reported the trial:
"The Christians had taken possession of a site which*
in former times, had been public; the innkeepers laid
claim to it, and the decision of Alexander Severus was
that it would be better in every way to consecrate the site
to the cult of some god than to let it fall into the hands of
the tavern-keepers. *
Having thus gained their cause, through the impartial
judgment of the emperor, the Christians were left in
possession of the disputed property and proceeded to
build their church. Thus was the first church built in
Rome. It was erected on ground which, up to that time,
270 THE INNS OF
had been used by tavern-keepers and claimed by them;
a tradition little in keeping with a foundation so pious.
The good fathers of the church waxed bitter and
eloquent on the subjects of inns and taverns, but they
still would have us believe that the early progress of
Christianity brought about the downfall of the debauch
ery, of the divinities dedicated to libertinage and orgy,
and that chastity and the symbol of the Virgin took their
place. One may well believe that primitive Christianity
was, if anything, a true forerunner of socialism, a pre
cursor of a sort of communism spreading to branches
through the inferior classes of the Roman world, and
coming finally to dominate them. And why not? Was
not its chief appeal directed at the social strata which
have from the beginning of organized society formed the
real basis of power? In a remarkable passage in the
" Destruction of Paganism" the learned author has this to
say: "One may repeat habitually that Christianity was
the religion of the plebes, the poor, the sad. In fact, it
was the refuge universal in its scope of all those suffering
from the imperfect organization of Roman society; and
that which was true of that epoch was not less so in the
fourth century, for, as Jerome remarks, *The church of
Christ is a congregation of the plebes/ "
The growth of the new sect was rapid, but its members
could with difficulty reconcile themselves to the necessities
of military life, and the dissensions with which the Empire
was divided reached their climax under Julian, the
Apostate. The social cosmos, distracted with class
hatreds and religious dogmas, became gradually less and
less able to contend on equal terms with the savage
barbarian hosts of the north, and when we reach the age
of Arcadius and Honorius, we find Italy overrun with the
hordes of Aleric, and a great official, Rutilius Numa-
tianus, to visit his paternal estates in Gaul, was forced to
GREECE & ROME 271
make the trip by boat, as the country had been so ravaged
and devastated that there were no inns left in the north
of Italy. Commerce and trade languished and finally
ceased almost altogether; travel was dangerous and was
only undertaken under the most pressing necessity; and
the religious monasteries were forced to take upon them
selves the burden of hospitality, a burden not destined to
be lifted permanently until the rise of guilds, and the
necessity of marketing their products had revitalized the
inert intelligence of baronial and municipal authority.
Then mine host comes again into his own, and may his
just reward be out of all proportion to his virtues.
[THE END]
INDEX
PAGE
Adulteration of wines 74
281
on 82,228
Alexander the Great 20, 51
Alexandria 1
Anarcharsis 91
Annius slays Marcus Antonius 200
Aphrodite 14
Apollo 33,54
Appian Way and its lodging houses. . 117
Apuleius 192, 215
Arcadian merchant and his fate, an. . 126
Aristophanes 50, 58, 61, 73, 84
Aristotle 56, 92
Assyrian and Babylonian inns 18
Assyrian and Chaldaean wines 20
Athenaeus s specific for over-indul
gence 10
Athenaeus on vintages 12
Athenian debauch, an 217
Augustus 231
Aurelian 237
Aurelian assassinated in a pot-house . . 110
Axilos 40
Babylonians against women selling
wine 19
Baths, splendor and wickedness of . . , 165
Beds of the inns and taverns 121
Beers, perfumed ; 4
Beers, methods of making 6
Beers of Egypt 4
Bethlehem, the inn at 24
Bootleggers in Rome 230
Brigandage and thievery center around
inns and taverns 127
Buchon 55, 56
Byzantine s love for wine 93
Cabarets and low dives of Athens 69
Cabaret dancer, the 142
Cabarets and resorts of Canopus. ... 11
Caesar Germanicus drives out food
hawkers 226
Caligula perfumes his body 166
Canopus 11
Cassius Dio 211
Cato and his sumptuary laws. . . 172, 229
traffics in wine 238
Chaucer 11
PAGE
Chick-pea peddlers 207
Chian vintage wines 90
Cicero and Tres Tabernae 156
Claudius, patron of the vilest inna . . . 104
Clearchus 95
Cleopatra 13
Clodius murdered inaninn 15
College boys of the dark ages 10
Commodus, the incarnation of evil.. . 181
Constantine 159
Cooks and caterers, insolence of 222
Corinth, city of new pleasures 82
Corn pi ills and millers 163
Cnossis 4
Crassus 228
Croesus 27
Cyrus 27
Damsels of Tbrace, the 64
Dance, graphically described, a 148
Dancing-girl gilds 138
Darius 51
Demetrius 189
Demosthenes 67, 91
Dice gambling 151, 153
Dining-rooms connected with the
baths 168
Diodorus Siculus 17
Diogenes 56, 66
Diomedes 40
Dionyshis 54, 56, 83, 149
Djotomus, the "funnel" 91
Diphilus, the comic poet 88
Domitian and the liquor situation. . . 135
Drinking invitations 6
Drinking cups 214
Drunkards of Egypt 14
Egyptian drunkenness 14
Etesius 11
Epicurus 39
Eustathius 32, 52
Faleraian wines 14
Famous drinkers 91
Food displ 
