made.
(Hesiod, "Theogony," 116.)

For it was necessary that there should be first a place and room
provided for the beings that were afterward to be produced; and not as
was seen yesterday at my son's entertainment, according to Anaxagoras's
saying,

All lay jumbled together.

But suppose a man hath room and provision enough, yet a large company
itself is to be avoided for its own sake, as hindering all familiarity
and conversation; and it is more tolerable to let the company have
no wine, than to exclude all converse from a feast. And therefore
Theophrastus jocularly called the barbers' shops feasts without wine;
because those that sit there usually prattle and discourse. But those
that invite a crowd at once deprive all of free communication of
discourse, or rather make them divide into cabals, so that two or three
privately talk together, and neither know nor look on those that sit, as
it were, half a mile distant.

Some took this way to valiant Ajax's tent,
And some the other to Achilles' went.
("Iliad," xi. 7.)

And therefore some rich men are foolishly profuse, who build rooms
big enough for thirty tables or more at once; for such a preparation
certainly is for unsociable and unfriendly entertainments, and such as
are fit for a panegyriarch rather than a symposiarch to preside over.
But this may be pardoned in those; for wealth would not he wealth,
it would be really blind and imprisoned, unless it had witnesses, as
tragedies would be devoid of spectators. Let us entertain few and often,
and make that a remedy against having a crowd at once. For those that
invite but seldom are forced to have all their friends, and all that
upon any account they are acquainted with together; but those that
invite frequently, and but three or four, render their entertainments
like little barks, light and nimble. Besides, the very reason why we ask
friends teaches us to select some out of the number. For as when we
are in want we do not call all together, but only those that can best
afford, help in that particular case,--when we would be advised, the
wiser part; and when we are to have a trial, the best pleaders; and
when we are to go a journey, those that can live pleasantly and are at
leisure,--thus to our entertainments we should only call those that
are at the present agreeable. Agreeable, for instance, to a prince's
entertainment will be the magistrates, if they are his friends, or
chiefest of