ns.]

[NOTE 12.

"_Took their coena at noon_."--And, by the way, in order to show how little
_coena_ had to do with any evening hour (though, in any age but that of our
fathers, four in the afternoon would never have been thought an evening
hour in the sense implied by _supper_,)--the Roman _gourmands_ and _bons
vivants_ continued through the very last ages of Rome to take their coena,
when more than usually sumptuous, at noon. This, indeed, all people did
occasionally, just as we sometimes give a dinner even now so early as four,
P.M., under the name of a _dejeuner a la fourchette_. Those who took their
_coena_ so early as this, were said _de die coenare_--to begin dining from
high day. Just as the line in Horace--"Ut jugulent homines surgunt _de
nocte_ latrones," does not mean that the robbers rise when others are going
to bed, viz., at nightfall, but at midnight. For, says one of the three
best scholars of this earth, _de die, de nocte_, mean from that hour
which was most fully, most intensely day or night, viz., the centre, the
meridian. This one fact is surely a clencher as to the question whether
_coena_ meant dinner or supper.]

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