Martial And Petronius
Arbiter Must Hide Their Diminished Heads Before Baffo.
The owner of this
book chose to read out loud, quite unsolicited, several choice sonnets of
this poet for our edification during the journey; and this branch of
litterature seemed to be the only one with which he was acquainted.
When the examination was over I took leave of my fellow travellers, and
repaired to the German Hotel in the Via de' Condotti, where I engaged
an apartment, and sat down to dinner at an excellent table d'hote at five
o'clock. There was a profusion of everything, particularly of fish and
game. Mullets and wild boar are constant dishes at a Roman table. The
mullets at Rome are small but delicious, and this was a fish highly prized
by the ancient Romans. Game of all kinds is very cheap here, from the
abundance of it that is to be met with in wild uninhabited wastes of Latium
and in the Pontine marshes. Every peasant is a sportsman and goes
constantly armed with fire-arms, not only to kill game, but to defend
himself against robbers, who infest the environs of Rome, and who sometimes
carry their audacity so far as to push their reconnaissances close to the
very walls of the city. At the German Hotel the price of the dinner at
table d'hote, including wine at discretion, is six paoli, about three
franks. I pay for an excellent room about three paoli per diem and my
breakfast at a neighbouring Caffe costs me one paolo.
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