their walnuts,--and more selfishly; for no one but their most sacred
Majesties dared eat any; but one would think that even they would find
it hard to digest all the walnuts that the country could produce. It
is averred, that walnuts entered largely into the Mithridatic recipe
against poison. The modern recipe, called “Mithridate,” I have given
elsewhere; but that which Pompey is said to have found in the palace of
the King whom he had overthrown, was as follows: “Pound, with care, two
walnuts, two dried figs, twenty pounds of rue, and _a grain of salt_.”
Yes, we should say it must be taken _cum grano_. Howbeit, the royal
physician goes on to say, “Swallow this mixture,--precipitate it with a
little wine,--and you have nothing to fear from the action of the most
active poison, for the space of four-and-twenty hours.” There would,
probably, be less to fear after that time had elapsed than before.
Nuts have not had respectability conferred on them, even by Nero,
who was wont to go _incog._ to the upper gallery of the theatre, and
take delight in pelting them on the bald head of the Prætor, who
sat below. That official knew the offender, and was rewarded for
bearing the attack good-humouredly; and thence, perhaps, the proverb
which characterizes something falling, at once sudden and pleasant,
by the term, “That’s nuts!” Of course, nuts were in fashion; not so
chestnuts,--these were as much disliked by the Patricians as the
filbert and hazel were said, in France, to be hated by the sun. When
they were ripening, the inhabitants used to issue forth at sunrise,
and endeavour to frighten the luminary out of the firmament, by making
a horrid uproar, with pots, pans, and kitchen utensils generally. And
this was done under a Christian dispensation. The people were not
heathen Chinese, trying to cure an eclipsed planet by attacking the
dragon that was supposed to be swallowing it, with a _tintamarre_ of
caldron, kettle, tongs, and trivet.
The Athenians were great hands at dumplings, consisting of fruit,
covered with a light and perfumed paste; and Rhodes, verifying the
proverb, that “extremes meet,” was as famous for its gingerbread as
for its Colossus. The Roman wedding-cake was a simple mixture of sweet
wine and flour; and the _savilum_ pie, made of flour, cheese, honey,
and eggs, was a dish to make all sorts of guests jubilant. It was,
in short, the national pie; and if there were a dish that was more
popular, it was the _artocreas_, a huge mince-pie, and the imperial
pie of Verus, compounded of sow’s flank, pheasant, peacock, ham, and
wild boar, all hashed together, and covered with crust. If Emperors
invented pies, so did philosophers create cakes; and the _libuna_ of
Cato was a real cheesecake, that gave as much delight as any of the
same author’s works in literature. Cheese was a favourite foundation
for many of the Roman cakes; but he was a bold man who added chalk, and
so invented the _placenta_. Yet the _placenta_ was eaten as readily
as Charles XII. swallowed raspberry-tarts, Frederick II. Savoy cakes,
or Marshal Saxe--who loved pastry, pastrycooks, and pastrycooks’
daughters--macaroons.
The Church honoured pastry,--or would so pious a King as St. Louis have
raised the pastrycooks to the dignity of a guild? The Abbey of St.
Denis, long before this, stipulated with the tenant-farmers, that they
should deliver a certain quantity of flour, to make pastry with; and,
in some cases, in France, portions of the rent for lands was to be paid
in puff pastry. This was at a time when fennel-root tooth-picks used to
appear at table, thrust into the preserved fruits, and every one was
expected to help himself. Certainly our refined neighbours had some
questionable customs. See what L’Etoile says: (1596) “_Les confitures
sèches et les massepains y étaient si peu épargnés que les dames et
demoiselles étaient contraintes de s’en décharger sur les pages et
laquais, auxquels on les baillait tout entiers._”
Prince George of Denmark, the consort of Queen Anne, was never
suspected of intermeddling with the foreign policy of the kingdom;
but he was something renowned for his appetite, and for the bent of
it towards pastry. I think it is Archdeacon Coxe, in his “Life of the
Duke of Marlborough,” who says of this illustrious Prince, that he
would leave the battle-field, in the very heat of action, and come into
camp, with the hungry inquiry, if it were not yet dinner-time. This
was something worse than drawing off the hounds, or unloading the
fowling-pieces, because the “Castle bell” was peremptorily ringing to
luncheon. Prince George was just the sort of man--fond of good living,
and able to entertain others with the same predilection--who was
likely to be surrounded by parasites; and the remembrance of this fact
suggests that, while the wine is passing round, I may venture to give a
sketch of that ancient and remarkable gentleman, “the Parasite.” It is
better than getting upon controversial subjects, which are productive
of any thing but unanimity. I remember one of the very pleasantest
of “after-dinners” being marred by a guest, who, having slipped into
the assertion that the Jews were the earliest of created people, was
indiscreet enough to try to maintain what he had asserted, and weak
enough to be angry at finding it summarily rejected. Why, Father
Abraham himself was but a foreign Heathen, from Ur of the Chaldees;
and to claim primeval antiquity for the Jews is only as absurd as if
one were to say, that Yankees and mint julep were anterior to Alfred’s
cakes and the Anglo-Saxons.
But many a hasty assertion has been simply the effect of an antagonism
between imperfect chymification and the oppressed intellect. Mind
and matter have much influence on each other; and, for the guidance
of those interested in such questions, I may, while on the subject
of dinner, notice, that from Dr. Beaumont’s “Table,” drawn out to
show the mean time of digestion in the stomach (or _chymification_)
of various articles of food, we learn that boiled tripe ranks first
in amiable facility, being disposed of in about one hour. Venison
steak requires some half-hour more. Boiled turkey and roast pig are
classed together, as requiring two hours and twenty-five minutes for
the process of digestion; while roast turkey and hashed meat demand
five minutes more. Fricasséed chicken is not more facile of digestion
than boiled salt beef, both requiring two hours and three-quarters.
Boiled mutton, broiled beefsteak, and soft-boiled eggs, take three
hours; while roast beef and old strong cheese trouble the stomach for
some three hours and a half. Roast duck, and fowls, whether boiled or
roasted, are alike slow of digestion: they require four hours as their
mean time of chymification, and are only exceeded by boiled cabbage,
which requires full half-an-hour more. I borrow these details from an
article in the “Journal of Psychological Medicine,” for January, 1851,
a periodical edited by Dr. Forbes Winslow. I believe I do not err in
attributing the article in question (“Mental Dietetics”) to the able
pen of the accomplished Editor himself, than whom no man has a better
right to speak _ex cathedrâ_ on the subject in question. It will be
seen, by the following extract from this article, that diet influences
the mind as well as the body. “The nutritive particles of the food,”
says Dr. Winslow, “being in the form of chyle, mixed with the blood,
and supplying it with the elements which enable it to repair the waste
of the animal system, it is obvious that the health, both of the body
and of the mind, must depend on the quality and quantity of the vital
stream. According to Lecanu, the proportion of the red globules of the
blood may be regarded as a measure of vital energy; for the action of
the serum and of the globules on the nervous system is very different.
The former scarcely excites it, the latter do so powerfully. Now those
causes which tend to increase the mass of blood, tend also to increase
the proportion of red globules; whilst those which tend to diminish the
mass of blood, tend to diminish the proportion of the globules. The
result is obvious. A large quantity of stimulating animal food, without
a proper amount of exercise, augments the number of the red globules,
and diminishes the aqueous part of the blood. Hence the nervous system
becomes oppressed, the brain frequently congested, and the intellectual
faculties no longer enjoy their wonted activity. In the mean time, the
system endeavours to relieve itself by throwing a counter-stimulus upon
certain other organs, the functions of which are morbidly increased.
The blood, in such cases, becomes preternaturally thickened, and its
coagulum unusually firm. On the other hand, if the system be not
supplied with the requisite amount of nutrition, the blood becomes,
by the loss of its red corpuscles, impoverished in quality, and, in
cases of extreme abstinence, diminished in quantity. In these cases the
powers of the mind soon become enfeebled.”
But we will pass from these scientific matters, to seek the company of
one who, if ignorant of science, was, generally, a great man in the
profession of his peculiar art,--the ancient parasite.
THE PARASITE.
----“Pity those whose flanks grow great,
Swell’d by the lard of others’ meat.”--HERRICK.
Para, “near,” and _sitos_, “corn,” pretty well explain what the Greeks
understood by the word “parasite.” As the worthless weed among the
wheat, so was this classical Skimpole in the field of society. As the
weed hung for support to the substance that promised to yield it, so
did the parasite cling to the side of those who kept good tables, and
lacked wit to enliven them.
The parasite was too delicate a fellow to allow of invidious
distinctions. He supped or dined wherever he was invited, and at
marriage feasts waited for no invitation at all. _There_ he was in his
glory. He was the cracker of jokes, and of the heads of those who did
not agree with every word that fell from the lips of the Amphitryon of
the hour. He usually, however, got his own skull bruised by the watch,
when staggering home through the dark, “full of the god,” and without
a slave to direct his steps. But it was only with the morning that he
became conscious at once of pain from the bruises, and the necessity of
providing, at the cost of others, for his own breakfast.
These professional “livers out” were, however, not always unattended.
The victims whom they flattered sometimes lent them a slave. Their
wardrobe seldom extended beyond two suits, one for the public, and
one for wear at home. They looked abroad for dupes, just as our
ring-droppers used to do, and for the same purpose. The parasite
generally attached himself to the first simple-looking personage he
encountered, provided he bore with him proofs of being a man who could
afford to live well. _Simplex_ usually swallowed with complacency all
the three-piled flattery with which the parasite troubled him; and if
he were expecting friends to dinner, the gastronome, who wanted one,
was probably invited. But there was always an understanding, that, in
return for the invitation, he was to maintain, for the diversion of the
company, a continual fire of jokes. If he proved but a sorry jester,
he was promptly scourged into the street, down which he ran, nothing
abashed, to look for hearers whom indifferent jests could move to ready
laughter.
The parasite looked upon the fortune and table of others as a property
which was properly to be held in common. Monsieur Prudhon really
started a parasitical precept, when he tried to establish, that what
belonged to one man belonged to a great many others besides. But if, as
regarded his own share in property that was _not_ his own, the parasite
was so far a Communist, he was the most charitable of fellows, his
earnest prayer being, that none of his patrons might ever fall into
such distress as to be unable to give good dinners. The dinner-table
was his arena. If he got but one meal a day, he consumed enough thereat
to satisfy half-a-dozen appetites; and, as he ate, it was matter of
perfect indifference to him whether he was called upon to find wit
for the guests, or to be the butt of their own. You might buffet him
till he were senseless, provided the blows were afterwards paid for in
brimming glasses.
He was always first at a feast; and as he was as common an object at
a feast as the sauce itself, so “sauce” was the common name for a
parasite. There he was not only wit, butt, and bully, but porter also;
and his office was not merely to knock down the drunken, but to carry
them out when incapable of performing that office for themselves. The
parasites had a dash, too, of the “bravo” in their character, and
let themselves out for a dozen other purposes besides dining. The
stronger-bodied and the braver-souled let out their strength. “Do you
want a wrestler?” says the parasite, in Antiphæus, “here I am, an
Antæus. If you want a door forced, I have a head like a ram to do it;
and I can scale a wall like Capaneus. Telamon was not stronger than my
wrist; and I can wreathe into the ear of beauty like smoke.” Some of
these Bobadils are even said to have ventured into battle, and to have
especially distinguished themselves in the Commissariat department!
Others boasted of their powers of fasting,--always provided good pay
assured them of compensating banquets at the end of their service. “I
can live on as little as Tithymallus,” says one; and the individual
in question is said to have supported life on eight lupines a day,--a
hint to Poor-Law Commissioners. Another makes a merit of being as
thin as Philippides, who, like Hood’s friend, was _so_ thin, that,
when he stood side-ways, you could not see him! The merits of a third
are summed up by him in saying, that he can live on water, like a
frog; on vegetables, like a caterpillar; can go without bathing, like
Dirtiness herself, if there be such a deity; can live in winter with
no roof but the sky, like a bird; can support heat, and sing beneath a
noon-day sun, like a grasshopper; do without oil, like the dust; walk
bare-footed from break of day, like the crane; and keep wide awake all
night, like the owl.
Of such a profession the parasite was proud, and even declared that its
origin was divine; and that Jupiter Amicalis (Ζεὺς ὁ φίλιος) was its
patron saint! As Jove entered where he chose, ate and drank of what
most took his fancy, and, after creating an atmosphere of enjoyment,
retired without having any thing to pay; just so, it was argued,
was it with the parasite. In Attica, parasites were admitted to the
commemorative banquets that followed the sacrifices to Hercules; proof
enough that they were accounted as being of the same kidney as heroes.
In later times came degenerate men and manners; and then, instead of
honourable men sitting with gods and heroes, the office of parasite was
so degraded, that none but the hungry wits exercised it. Flattery to
mortals then took the place of praise to gods. The parasite was ready
to laud every act of the master of the feast,--
“----_laudare paratus
Si bene ructavit, si rectum minxit amicus_,”
and to eulogize a great number of other acts besides, as may be
found noted by those who are very curious, and not over-nice, in the
fragments of Diodorus of Sinope.
The fellows were witty, too, however degraded. When Chœrephon had,
uninvited, slipped into a vacant position at a wedding-dinner, the
gynæconomes, as inspectors of the feast, counting the guests, came upon
him last, and said, “You are the thirty-first: it is against the law;
you must withdraw.” “I do not dispute the law,” said the parasite, “but
I object to your manner of counting. Begin the numbering by me, and
your conclusions will be indisputable.”
The parasite, Philoxenus, happened to be supping with a host who
gave his guests nothing but black bread. “This is not a loaf, but a
spectre,” whispered the professional wit: “if we eat any more of it, we
shall soon be in the shades.”
There was more wit in Bithys, the parasite of the avaricious King
Lysimachus, who one day, at dinner, flung a wooden scorpion at the
flatterer. The latter affected great fright, but afterwards remarked,
“I will, in my turn, terrify you, O King; be good enough to give me a
talent.”
Clisophus, another of this strange brotherhood, either fooled or
flattered King Philip to the very top of his bent. The King having
lost an eye, Clisophus always sat down to dinner in his presence with
a bandage over one of his own; and when the Monarch limped, from a
wound in the leg, Clisophus went “halting at his side;” and if, by
chance, an ill odour affected the royal nostrils, Clisophus wore,
all day long, a grimace upon his features, as if he were sick with
disgust. However absurd this may appear, the parasites of Louis XIV.
flattered him as grossly as the original practitioners did the early
and heathen Kings. People shaved their heads and wore periwigs, because
the Monarch, having little hair of his own, wore long locks cropped
from other heads. So, when once at dinner he complained of having lost
his teeth, a young flatterer who sat next him swore, with a broad smile
which displayed his own incisors, that nobody had teeth now-a-days.
And again, when the King, on his seventieth birthday, inquired the age
of a person from whom he had received a petition, the reply was, that
the person was of everybody’s age,--about threescore and ten. Nay,
the Court preachers flattered the Sovereign quite as coarsely as the
mere courtiers, and would not have received invitations to dinner,
if they had not done so. “My brethren,” said one of these, “all men
must die;” and at that very moment he perceived the eye of the King
glaring uneasily upon him:--“that is to say, Sire, _almost all_ men!”
and the complaisant preacher was at the royal table that day. The same
parasitical spirit prevailed at the English Court, especially when
bolster neckcloths were worn, simply because the King was compelled to
wear one, in consequence of a disease in the glands of the neck. But,
to translate the sentiment of the French poet,--
“From royal example slaves have never shrunk:
When Auguste tippled, Poland soon got drunk.
When the great Monarch breathed the air of love,
Hey, presto, pass! Paris was Venus’ grove!
But turn’d a Churchman and devout, alas!
The courtiers ran and beat their breasts at mass.”
It is said by ancient writers that the species of flattery which
Clisophus paid Philip, was obligatory on all the guests and officials
in the ancient royal Courts of Arabia. There, if the King suffered
in any member, every courtier was bound to be in pain in the same
limb. This species of flattery was, in fact, a conclusion logically
arrived at; for the Arab lawgivers said that it would be absurd in
the courtiers to vie with one another for the honour of being buried
alive with the King defunct, if they did not suffer with him in all his
bodily pains when living.
The Celtic King of the Sotians maintained a body of men who were
called the “Eucholimes,” or the “Death Volunteers.” They amounted to
six hundred men; they were lodged, clothed, and tended like the King,
with whom they daily sat at meat; but they were also bound to die with
their master; and it is alleged that the chance was eagerly incurred,
and that no man ever failed, when called upon by the King’s decease, to
accompany His Majesty on a visit to his royal cousin, Orcus.
But your regular parasite preferred to live and flatter living
Monarchs. “See,” said Niceas, when he saw Alexander troubled by a
fly that stung him, “there is one that will be King over all flies;
for he has imbibed the blood of him who is King over all men.” The
flattery was not more delicate which Chirisophus once paid at dinner
to Dionysius the Tyrant. Chirisophus, seeing the King smile at the
other end of the table, burst into a roar of laughter. The King
asked, “Wherefore?” seeing that the parasite could not have heard the
joke. “True,” said Chirisophus; “but I saw that Your Majesty had heard
something worth laughing at, and I laughed in sympathy.” This species
of parasite is not uncommon in English houses; but perhaps they do
their office more refinedly than Chirisophus.
The flatterers of the younger Dionysius were far more disgusting in
their adulation. They were simply absurd, when they pretended to be
short-sighted, like him, and to be unable to see a dish, unless they
thrust their noses into it. But they were filthy followers when they
offered their faces for the King to “void his rheum” upon, and even
went to extremes of nastiness at which human nature shudders, but at
which Dionysius smiled. And yet Dionysius was hailed by some of them as
a god. It was the custom, we are told, in Sicily, for every individual
to make sacrifices, in his own house, before the figures of the nymphs,
to get devoutly drunk before the altar, and to dance round it as long
as the pious devotee could keep upon his legs. It was accounted as an
exquisite piece of flattery in Damocles, the parasite, that he refused
to perform such service before inanimate deities, while he went through
the whole duty before Dionysius as his god. The Athenians, it will be
remembered, were horror-stricken at such impious laudation as this.
They fined Demades ten talents for having proposed to award divine
honours to Alexander; and Timagoras, whom they had sent as Ambassador
to the King of Persia, they put to death for compromising the Athenian
dignity by prostrating himself before that King. And, indeed, let us do
justice to Alexander himself. He had more than misgiving touching his
own alleged divinity. He had once--“his custom in the afternoon”--eaten
and drunk so enormously, that in the evening he was forced to a
necessity which compels very mortal people,--take physic. He made
as many contortions, on swallowing it, as a refractory child; and
Philarches, his parasite, remarked, with a rascally hypocritical smile,
“Ah! what must be the sufferings of mortal man under such medicine, if
you, who are a divinity, feel it so much!” The idea of a deity drawing
health out of an apothecary’s phial, was too much even for Alexander,
who declined to accept the apotheosis, and called Philarches an ass.
But Philarches was only giving the King a taste of the parasite’s
professional craft. The noble Nicostratus of Argos quite as impiously
flattered the Sovereign of Persia, when, for the sake of currying
favour with that majestic barbarian, he every night, in his own house,
prepared a solemn supper, richly provided, and offered to the genius of
the King, (τῶ δαίμονι τοῦ Βασιλέως,) for no better reason than that he
had learned that such was the custom in Persia. Whether he profited or
not by this delicate attention, Theopompus does not inform us.
The Anactes or Princes of the royal family of Salamis maintained two
distinct families, in whom, if I understand Athenæus rightly, the
office of flatterer (and of spy, I may add) was hereditary. These were
the Gerginoi and the Promalangai. The former did the dirty work of
circulating among the people, worming themselves into their confidence,
getting invited to their tables, and then reporting to the Promalangai
all they had heard. The last-named took such portions of the report as
were worth communicating to the Anactes, with whom they sat at table,
where such a dish of scandal was daily served as would puzzle the
social spies of Paris to set before their lord.
But the profession was not accounted vile; and the professors
themselves gloried in their vocation. They extolled the easiness of
their life, compared, for instance, with that of the painter, or the
labourer, or, in fact, with that of any other individual but those
of their own guild. “Truly,” says one, in a fragment of Antiphanes,
“since the most important business in life is to play, laugh, trifle,
and drink, I should like to know where you would find a condition more
agreeable than ours.”