Dining with Friends

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]

You'll Have had your Tea?

I am sure that we have all on occasion had house guests who have imposed on us at a bad time, or perhaps outstayed an original welcome? I know that I have.

Of course good manners - not to mention the primeval laws of human hospitality - dictate that one cannot refuse a visitor. Even harder when that visitor be friend, family or a work associate. Perhaps then, we should all spare a thought for that great statesman of the Late Roman Republic, Marcus Tulius Cicero, who in 45 BC was honoured by a rather onerous visit from his then political ally, Julius Caesar. Receiving this most powerful guest, probably at his estate at Pueoli, Cicero was alarmed to note that Caesar travelled with a personal retinue of no less than 2,000 men:

"His entourage moreover were lavishly entertained in three other dining rooms. The humbler freedmen and slaves had all they wanted - the smarter ones I entertained in style. In a word I showed I knew how to live. But my guest was not the kind of person to whom one says 'Do come again when you are next in the neighbourhood.' Once is enough. .... There you are, a visit, or should I call it a billeting, which as I said was troublesome to me but not disagreeable."

[Cicero, Letters to Atticus 110, Penguin, London 1986]

Of course the next time I am imposed upon in my small tenement flat, I shall think of Cicero and count myself lucky.