h, but a truth it is,
that "prandium", in its very origin and _incunabula_, never was a meal
known to the Roman _culina_. In that court it was never recognized except
as an alien. It had no original domicile in the city of Rome. It was a _vot
casfren-sis_, a word and an idea purely martial, and pointing to martial
necessities. Amongst the new ideas proclaimed to the recruit, this was
one--"Look for no '_coenu_', no regular dinner, with us. Resign these
unwarlike notions. It is true that even war has its respites; in these
it would be possible to have our Roman _coena_ with all its equipage of
ministrations. Such luxury untunes the mind for doing and suffering. Let us
voluntarily renounce it; that when a necessity of renouncing it arrives, we
may not feel it among the hardships of war. From the day when you enter the
gates of the camp, reconcile yourself, tyro, to a new fashion of meal, to
what in camp dialect we call _prandium_." This "prandium," this essentially
military meal, was taken standing, by way of symbolizing the necessity of
being always ready for the enemy. Hence the posture in which it was taken
at Rome, the very counter-pole to the luxurious posture of dinner. A writer
of the third century, a period from which the Romans naturally looked back
upon everything connected with their own early habits, and with the same
kind of interest as we extend to our Alfred, (separated from us as Romulus
from them by just a thousand years,) in speaking of _prandium_, says, "Quod
dictum est _parandium_, ab eo quod milites ad bellum _paret_." Isidorus
again says, "Proprie apud veteres prandium vocatum fuisse oinnem militum
cibum ante pugnam;" i.e. "that, properly speaking, amongst our ancestors
every military meal taken before battle was termed _prandium_." According
to Isidore, the proposition is reciprocating, viz., that, as every
_prandium_ was a military meal, so every military meal was called
_prandium_. But, in fact, the reason of that is apparent. Whether in the
camp or the city, the early Romans had probably but one meal in a day. That
is true of many a man amongst ourselves by choice; it is true also, to our
knowledge, of some horse regiments in our service, and may be of all. This
meal was called _coena_, or dinner in the city--_prandium_ in camps. In the
city it would always be tending to one fixed hour. In the camp innumerable
accidents of war would make it very uncertain. On this account it would
be an established