Book i

. EL iv. 1. 32.]

[Footnote 797: Touched with her fingers.--Ver. 577. The ancients are supposed not to have used at meals any implement such as a knife or fork, but merely to have used the fingers only, except in eating soups or other liquids, or jellies, when they employed spoons, which were denoted by the names 'cochlear' and 'ligula.' At meals the Greeks wiped their fingers on pieces of bread; the Romans washed them with water, and dried them on napkins handed round by the slaves.]

[Footnote 798: Are drinking by lot.--Ver. 581. The 'modimperator,' or 'master of the banquet,' was often chosen by lot by the guests, and it was his province to prescribe how much each person should drink. Lots were also thrown, by means of the dice, to show in what order each person was to drink. This passage will show the falsity of his plea in the Second Book of the Tristia, addressed to Augustus, where he says that it was not his intention to address the married women of Rome, but only those who did not wear the 'vittæ' and the 'instita,' the badges of chastity.]

[Footnote 799: Agent attends even too much.--Ver. 587. His meaning seems to be, that in the same way as the agent does more than attend to the injunctions of his principal, and puts himself in a position to profit by his office, so is the inamorato, through the confidence of the husband reposed in him, to make a profit that has never been anticipated.]

[Footnote 801: Eurytion.--Ver. 593. At the nuptials of Pirithous and Hippoda-mia. See the Metamorphoses, Book xii . 1. 220, where he is called Eurytus.]

[Footnote 802: Stealing up.--Ver. 605. This piece of impudence he professes to practise in the Amores,