lly.
They were not specialists in the sense of modern writers like
Reyniere, Rumohr, Vaerst; nor did they approach in technical knowledge
medieval writers like Martino, Platina, Torinus.

True there were exceptions. Athenaeus, a most prolific and voluble
magiric commentator, quoting many writers and specialists whose names
but for him would have never reached posterity. Athenaeus tells about
these gastronomers, the greatest of them, Archestratos, men who might
have contributed so much to our knowledge of the ancient world, but to
us these names remain silent, for the works of these men have perished
with the rest of the great library at the disposal of this genial host
of Alexandria.

Too, there are Anacharsis and Petronius. They and Athenaeus cannot be
overlooked. These three form the bulk of our evidence.

Take on the other hand Plutarch, Seneca, Tertullian, even Pliny,
writers who have chiefly contributed to our defective knowledge of the
ancient table. They were no gourmets. They were biased, unreliable at
best, as regards culinary matters. They deserve our attention merely
because they are above the ever present mob of antique reformers and
politicians of whom there was legion in Rome alone, under the pagan
regime. Their state of mind and their intolerance towards civilized
dining did not improve with the advent of Christianity.

The moralists' testimony is substantiated and supplemented rather than
refuted by their very antipodes, the satirists, a group headed by
Martial, Juvenal and the incomparable Petronius, who really is in a
class by himself.

There is one more man worthy of mention in our particular study,
Horace, a true poet, the most objective of all writers,
man-about-town, pet of society, mundane genius, gifted to look calmly
into the innermost heart of his time. His eyes fastened a correct
picture on the sensitive diaphragm of a good memory, leaving an
impression neither distorted nor "out of focus." His eye did not "pick
up," for sundry reasons, the defects of the objects of observation,
nor did it work with the uncanny joy of subconscious exaggeration met
with so frequently in modern writing, nor did he indulge in that
predilection for ugly detail sported by modern art.

So much for Horatius, poet. Still, he was not a specialist in our
line. We cannot enroll him among the gifted gourmets no matter how
many meals he enjoyed at the houses of his society friends. We are
rather inclined to place h