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Roman Emperors' Outrageously Lavish Dinner Parties
From Nero's revolving dining room to Augustus’s rigged lottery.
Nero’s notorious Golden House palace in Rome featured “dining rooms with fretted ceils of ivory, whose panels could turn and shower down flowers and were fitted with pipes for sprinkling the guests with perfumes. His defining evils were, said the historian Suetonius, “luxury and cruelty,” proceeding to itemize the emperor’s eating extravagances as part of the stock picture of a degenerate ruler, which even involved helping himself to the remains of sacrificial meals on altars. Vitellius eclipsed even this at the dedication of a platter, which on account of its enormous size he called the “Shield of Minerva, Defender of the City.” In this, he mingled the livers of pike, the brains of pheasants and peacocks, the tongues of flamingos, and the milt of lampreys, brought by his captains and triremes from the whole empire, from Parthia to the Spanish strait.
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