That such discussion did not go too deeply into hard questions was perhaps the result of the comfort.
There was of course another side to this picture of the evening of a Roman gentleman.

There was a coarse side to the Roman character, and in the age when wealth, the slave trade, and idle habits encouraged self-indulgence, meals were apt to become ends in themselves instead of necessary aids to a wholesome life.

The ordinary three parts or courses (_mensae_) of a dinner,--the gustatio or light preliminary course, the cena proper, with substantial dishes, and the dessert of pastry and fruit, could be amplified and extended to an unlimited extent by the skill of the slave-cooks brought from Greece and the East (see above, p.

209); the gourmand had appeared long before the age of Cicero and had been already satirised by Lucilius and Varro.[448] Splendid dinner-services might take the place of the old simple ware, and luxurious drapery and rugs covered the couches instead of the skins of animals, as in the old time.[449] Vulgarity and ostentation, such as Horace satirised, were doubtless too often to be met with.

Those who lived for feasting and enjoyment would invite their company quite early in the day (tempestativum convivium) and carry on the revelry till midnight.[450] And lastly, the practice of drinking wine after dinner (_comissatio_), simply for the sake of drinking, under fixed rules according to the Greek fashion, familiar to us all in the _Odes_ of Horace, had undoubtedly begun some time before the end of the Public.