Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 37, Number 12, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 14 February 1905 — Roman Gormands. [ARTICLE]

Roman Gormands.

The wealthy gormands of Rome cherished a strong partiality for song birds. Both Horace and Martial refer with approva 1 to roast thrush, and Ovid 1 recommends “a crown of thrushes” as a lover’s present to his mistress. Thrushes’ breasts were oue of the ingredients of the celebrated Apician dish, “Patina aplclana,” which also in- i eluded beccaficos, mushrooms, sow’s udder, fish and chickens, rivaling the heterogeneous contents of a gypsy’s “pot au feu.” Horace relates that the sous of Actius, to stimulate their appetite for dinner, lunched on “nightingales of monstrous price,” and Yarro tells us of the aviary of Lucullus, which was also a “salle a manger,” so that the epicure gratified his ears and his palate simultaneously, feasting upon the delicate warblers whose congeners, unconscious of their coming doom, were discoursing meanwhile the most exquisite music.