A sophister I will forbid to sit by a sophister, and one poet by another; For beggars beggars, poets envy poets.
(Hesiod, "Work and Days," 26) I separate the clamorous scoffers and the testy, by putting some good-nature between them, so they cannot jostle so roughly on one another; wrestlers, hunters, and farmers I put in one company.

For some of the same nature, when put together, fight as cocks; others are very sociable as daws.

Drinkers and lovers I set together, not only those who (as Sophocles says) feel the sting of masculine love, but those that are mad after virgins or married women; for they being warmed with the like fire, as two pieces of iron to be joined, will more readily agree; unless perhaps they both fancy the same person.
QUESTION III.

UPON WHAT ACCOUNT IS THE PLACE AT THE TABLE CALLED CONSULAR ESTEEMED HONORABLE.
THE SAME.
This raised a dispute about the dignity of places, for the same seat is not accounted honorable amongst all nations; in Persia the midst, for that is the place proper to the king himself; in Greece the uppermost; at Rome the lowermost of the middle bed, and this is called the consular; the Greeks about Pontus, and those of Heraclea, reckon the uppermost of the middle bed to be the chief.

But we were most puzzled about the place called consular; for though it is esteemed most honorable, yet it is not because it is either the first or the midst; and its other circumstances are either not proper to that alone, or very frivolous.