II First Course — Bread
Crit. Enough of civilities. Let us begin our description. The best and lightest of bread! It is as light in weight as a sponge. The wheat is soft as a medlar. You must have an industrious miller.
Scop. Roscius has the mill in his charge.
Sim. Is he never hurled into it?
Scop. Far be such a fate from such a thrifty servant!
Dem. Pass me the coarse bread (made of unbolted flour).
Sim. And me the bread made of the middle quality of foreign wheat.
Scop. Why do you wish that?
Sim. Because I have both heard and found from experience that I eat less when the bread has not a fine taste.
Scop. Here, boy, bring him common bread, and even the black bread if he prefers. We will have the most pleasant of meals, if every one shall take what most pleases him.
Pol. This bread, which you praise so much, is spongy, watery; I prefer it thicker.
Crit. I indeed don’t dislike it spongy—so long as it isn’t hastily made. But this also has cracks such as cakes baked on the hearth are accustomed to have, although, as is sufficiently clear, this came out of the oven.
Pol. This black bread is both sour and full of chaff; you would say that it was from flour of second-rate wheat.
Scop. So our husbandmen are accustomed to do with all wheat which they bring hither; first to make it pungent with the common, and to mix it with all kinds of seeds; the taste then comes from the leaven being excessive.
Pol. No class of men are more deceptive than husbandmen. They only act wrongly through ignorance.
Crit. This bread is not sufficiently fermented.
Dem. For to-day think thyself a Jew, one of those who, by the ordinance of God, only feed on bread which is unleavened.
Crit. And this, indeed, was because they were such very bad men that the eating of swine was forbidden them, than which nothing is more pleasing to the palate; nor if taken moderately is anything more healthful. With unleavened bread sauces must be eaten together with field lettuce, which is extremely bitter.
Pol. All this has too much depth of meaning. Let us leave the subject.
Scop. Yes, indeed, and the whole discussion about bread! If there is so much difference of opinion about what is eaten with bread, how much discord there will be over every part of the menu of the whole meal!
Crit. It happens, forsooth, as Horace says:—
Tres mihi convivae prope dissentire videntur,
Poscentes vario multum diversa palato.73