Democratic Sentinel, Volume 8, Number 47, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 19 December 1884 — Dining-Rooms of the Ancients. [ARTICLE]

Dining-Rooms of the Ancients.

The most elaborate rooms as regards furniture were the dining-rooms. As a matter of course, they greatly varied in shape, but the arrangement of them was essentially the same. In many of the wealthiest houses there were different dining-rooms for different seasons of the year—warm rooms for winter; oooler, with a northern aspect, for summer. Lucullus, who was famous for his luxurious banquets, had diningrooms adapted to the rank of his guests and the costliness of the entertainments that he gave in them, and if he were but to indicate the room, in which he was to dine, everything was arranged accordingly. In the last days of the republic, when the Romans feasted hundreds of persons, the banquet was prepared in the peristyle of the house, or in immense halls built especially for the purpose, and adorned with rows of columns. Halls of this kind seemed almost indispensable in the palace of that time, but even here the tables were very numerous and independently arranged. The ordinary dining-room had but one table, and this was placed in the center, with a cushioned seat or couch running round on three sides, for the Greeks as well as the Romans never sat at meals, but ate in a reclining posture. The fourth side was always left open for the convenience of the servants who waited upon the table. Great stress was laid upon the costliness of these tables, both in material and artistic finish. They were lower than ours, to accommodate the recumbent guests, and their form was also influenced by the practice of reclining at meals. The ancients did not put their limbs under the tables as we do, the table-top not projecting as much as that of a modern dining-table. This rendered tlie feet and framework of antique tables a great deal more conspicuous, and could be much more richly ornamented. The feet and framework of tables were often carved in the shape of various kinds of figures. Sometimes the tops rested on the wings of two griffins placed back to back, on feet of lions, or other animals. Tables were often made, among the wealthier Romans, of precious metals, or of marble and bronze, or had legs of bronze, which supported a marble or wooden slab. Only nine persons could dine at one of these tables, for the ancients had a rule that the number of guests should not be greater than that of the Muses or less than the Graces. — Mrs. G. Hall , in the New York Graphic.