Pliny the Elder, The Natural History, BOOK XXXIII. THE NATURAL HISTORY OF METALS., CHAP. 52.—AT WHAT PERIOD SILVER CHARGERS OF ENORMOUS SIZE WERE FIRST MADE. WHEN SILVER WAS FIRST USED AS A MATERIAL FOR SIDEBOARDS. WHEN THE SIDEBOARDS CALLED TYMPANA WERE FIRST INTRODUCED.

In fact, it was but very shortly before that period that these couches were invented, as well as chargers¹ of silver, one hundred pounds in weight: of which last, it is a well-known fact, that there were then upwards of one hundred and fifty in Rome, and that many persons were proscribed through the devices of others who were desirous to gain possession thereof. Well may our Annals be put to the blush for having to impute those civil wars to the existence of such vices as these!

Our own age, however, has waxed even stronger in this respect. In the reign of Claudius, his slave Drusillanus, surnamed Rotundus, who acted as his steward² in Nearer Spain, possessed a silver charger weighing five hundred pounds, for the manufacture of which a workshop had had to be expressly built. This charger was accompanied also by eight other dishes, each two hundred and fifty pounds in weight. How many of his fellow-slaves,³ pray, would it have taken to introduce these dishes, or who⁴ were to be the guests served therefrom?

Cornelius Nepos says that before the victory gained⁵ by Sylla, there were but two banquetting couches adorned with silver at Rome, and that in his own recollection, silver was first used for adorning sideboards. Fenestella, who died at the end of the reign of Tiberius Cæsar, informs us that at that period sideboards, inlaid even with tortoiseshell,⁶ had come into fashion; whereas, a little before his time, they had been made of solid wood, of a round shape, and not much larger than our tables. He says, however, that when he was quite a boy, they had begun to make the sideboards square, and of different⁷ pieces of wood, or else veneered with maple or citrus:⁸ and that at a later period the fashion was introduced of overlaying the corners and the seams at the joinings with silver. The name given to them in his youth, he says, was "tympana;"⁹ and it was at this period, too, that the chargers which had been known as "magides" by the ancients, first received the name of "lances," from their resemblance¹⁰ to the scales of a balance.

1 "Lances."

2 "Dispensator."

3 "Conservi"—said in keen irony.

4 Giants, at least, one would think.

5 Over the party of Marius.

6 See B. ix. c. 13.

7 "Compacta;" probably meaning inlaid like Mosaic.

8 See B. xiii. c. 29, B. xv. c. 7, and B. xvi. cc. 26, 27, 84.

9 Meaning, "drum sideboards," or "tambour sideboards," their shape, probably, being like that of our dumb waiters.

10 The name given to which was "lanx," plural "lances."

The Natural History. Pliny the Elder. John Bostock, M.D., F.R.S. H.T. Riley, Esq., B.A. London. Taylor and Francis, Red Lion Court, Fleet Street. 1855.

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Pliny the Elder, The Natural History
John Bostock, M.D., F.R.S., H.T. Riley, Esq., B.A., Ed.

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CHAP. 52.—AT WHAT PERIOD SILVER CHARGERS OF ENORMOUS SIZE WERE FIRST MADE. WHEN SILVER WAS FIRST USED AS A MATERIAL FOR SIDEBOARDS. WHEN THE SIDEBOARDS CALLED TYMPANA WERE FIRST INTRODUCED.

Pliny the Elder, The Natural History John Bostock, M.D., F.R.S., H.T. Riley, Esq., B.A., Ed.