SCENE THE TENTH - THE DRINKERS

Summary

THE lamps had been long shining on the marble panels of the walls in the triclinium, where Earinos, with assistants, was making preparations, under the direction of the tricliniarch, for the nocturnal comissatio. Upon the polished table between the tapestried couches stood an elegant bronze candelabrum, in the form of a stem of a tree, from the winterly and almost leafless branches of which four two-flamed lamps, emulating each other in beauty of shape, were suspended. Other lamps hung by chains from the ceiling, which was richly gilt and ingeniously inlaid with ivory, in order to expel the darkness of night from all parts of the saloon. A number of costly goblets and larger vessels were arranged on two silver sideboards, and on one of them a slave was just placing another vessel filled with snow, together with its colum, and on the other was the steaming caldarium, containing water kept constantly boiling by the coals in its inner cylinder, in case any of the guests should prefer the calda, the drink of winter, to the snow-drink, for which he might think the season was not sufficiently advanced.

By degrees the guests assembled from the bath and the peristylum, and took their places in the same order as before on the triclinium. Gallus and Calpurnius were still wanting. They had been seen walking to and fro along the cryptoporticus in earnest discourse.