Book 1
20
The feast which he mentions as taking place in the palace of Menelaus is of a peculiar character; for there he represents the guests as conversing during the banquet and then they wash their hands and return to the board, ad proceed to supper after having indulged their grief. But the line in the last book of the Iliad, which is usually read, He eat and drank, while still the table stood, should be read, He eat and drank still, while the table stood, or else there would be blame implied for what Achilles was doing at the moment; for how could it be decent that a table should be laid before Achilles, as before a party of revellers, down the whole length of a banqueting-room? Bread, then, was placed on the table in baskets, and the rest of the meal consisted wholly of roast meat. But Homer never speaks of broth, Antiphanes says, He never boil'd the legs or haunches, But roasted brains and roasted paunches, As did his sires of old.
