Recently the Emperor was invited to dine with a friend.
I was reminded of a letter from that most famous of statesman, Cicero, written to his fiend Papirius Paetus in 44 BC:
"I am sorry to hear that you have given up dining out. You have deprived yourself of a great deal of amusement and pleasure. Furthermore (you will not mind me being so candid), I am afraid that you will unlearn what little you used to know, and forget how to give little dinner-parties. ..."
"And really my dear Paetus, all joking apart I advise you, as something which I regard as relevant to happiness, to spend time in honest, pleasant, and friendly company. Nothing becomes life better, or is more in harmony with its happy living. I am not thinking of physical pleasure, but of community of life and habit and of mental recreation, of which familiar conversation is the most effective agent; and conversation is at its most agreeable at dinner-parties. In this respect our countrymen are wiser than the Greeks. They use words literally meaning 'co-drinkings' or 'co-dinings', but we say 'co-livings', because at dinner-parties more than anywhere else life is lived in company. You see how I try to bring you back to dinners by philosophising!"
"Take care of your health - which you will most easily compass by constantly dining abroad."
[Cicero, Letter to Papirius Paetus]
