To require tasks not feasible, is tyrannical, and doth only pick a quarrel to punish. Id. Contemplations.

If a project should be proposed to us very feasible, and probable to succeed, in pursuance whereof assuredly we might obtain great profit ; methinks, in consistence with ourselves, and conformable to our usual manner of acting, we should be very ready to embrace and execute it. Barrow.

We conclude many things impossibilities, which yet are easy feasibles. Glanville's Scepsis.

Men often swallow falsities for truths, dubiosities for certainties, possibilities for feasibilities, and things impossible for possibilities themselves.

FEAST, n. s., v. n. & v. a.
FEAST'ER, N. S.
FEAST FUL, adj.
FEAST RITE, N. s.

Couper.

Sax. Fæst; Fr. fete feste; old Fr. feast; Ital. and Port. festa; Span. fiesta; Belg. feest; Goth. fist (food); Lat. festum. A formal or sumptuous entertainment; an anniversary day of rejoicing; delicious food: to feast is to eat sumptuously, or on a joyful occasion: as a verb active, to give a sumptuous entertainment; to delight; pamper: feastful is luxurious; festive; joyous: feastrite, a custom or rite observed at feasts.

On Pharaoh's birthday he made a feas unto all his

servants.

Genesis xl. 20.

Who frowns at others' feasts, had better bide away.

Sir P. Sidney.

Richard and Northumberland, great friends, Did feast together.

Shakspeare.

Id.

Here's our chief guest. If he had been forgotten, It had been as a gap in our great feast. This day is called the feast of Crispian. Id. He was entertained and feasted by the king with great shew of favour. Hayward. Those feasters could speak of great and many exTaylor.

cellencies in manna,

Returning to England in the same vessel with myself, as I have related above, he invited all his old creditors to a feast. Franklin.

FEAST, OF FESTIVAL, is derived by some from feriari, to keep holiday; by others from estaw, to feast or entertain; by others, particularly M. Huet, from festinare, which is used by Origen in the same sense, in his Comment on Matthew. Social or civil feasts are also expressed by the words convivium, and compotatio, or concœnatio. had neither cups nor bowls at their feasts, but We learn from Herodotus, that the ancients they drank out of little horns tipt with silver or gold. The Greeks and Romans kept a domestic for the purpose of reading during their meals and feasts. Sometimes the chief of the family him

Heroes

self performed the office of reader; and history informs us, that the emperor Severus often read while his family ate. The Greeks at feasts proposed moral topics for conversation, of which Plutarch has preserved a collection. rarely assembled convivially without bringing affairs of consequence into discourse, or deliberating upon those that regarded either present events or future contingencies. The Scythians, while at meat, used to make the strings of their bows resound, lest their warlike virtues might be enfeebled or lost in the season of pleasure. People of rank among the Rhodians, by a fundaily with those who had the management of damental law of the state, were obliged to dine

affairs, in order to deliberate with them concerning such things as were necessary or useful for the country; and on this account the principal ministers of the kingdom were obliged to keep open table for all who could be of use to the state. The Persians also generally deliberated on business at table, but never determined, or put their determinations in execution, except in the morning before having eaten. Among the Romans, the place where they supped was generally the vestibule, that a more retired part of the house might not encourage licentiousness and disorder. There were several laws that restricted their meals to these vestibules. When luxury reigned in Rome, they had superb halls for their entertainments. Lucullus had many, each of which bare the name of some deity; and this name was a mark which indicated to the servants the expense of the entertainment. The expense of a supper in Lucullus's hall of Apollo amounted to 50,000 drachmas. Singers, dancers, musicians, stage-players, jesters, and buffoons, were brought into these halls to amuse the guests. Plutarch informs us that Cæsar, after his triumphs, treated the Roman people at 22,000 tables; and by calculation it would seem, that there were at these tables upwards of 200,000 persons. The hall in which Nero feasted, by the circular motion of its walls and ceiling, imitated the revolutions of the heavens, and represented the different seasons of the year, changing at every course, and showering down flowers and perfumes on the guests. The Romans did not, as we do, use but one table at their feasts; they

had generally two; the first was for the services of animal food, which was afterwards removed, and another introduced with fruits; at this last they sung and poured out their libations. The Greeks and eastern nations had the same custom, and even the Jews in their solemn feasts and at sacrifices. The Romans, in the time of Nero, had tables made of citron wood brought from Mauritania; they were varnished with purple and gold, and were raised on feet of carved ivory. It is said that they were more precious than gold. Dion Cassius affirms, that Seneca had 500 of these, which he made use of one after another; and Tertullian tells us that Cicero had The Romans chose the king of the feast by a throw of the dice. At the conclusion of the feast they drank out of a large cup as often as there were letters in the names of their mistresses.

but one.

Some very interesting particulars of the preparations for, and materials of, the Athenian feasts are collected in a late number of the Quarterly Review. We are principally indebted to it for the following facts and observations:The Athenians surpassed our French neighbours, we are told, still more than they do us, in the variety and excellence of their farinaceous compositions. Archestratus, a decisive authority upon these matters, and one of the earliest to be found, made the gods trade with Lesbos for their barley meal for wheaten bread, at least of one kind (the apro ayopaio,) he allowed, that mere mortals could not go to a better market than the Athenian. Besides the usual divisions of wheaten and barley bread, the Athenians appear to have made use of millet (μɛλivn), of zea, (the triticum spelta of Linnæus, and the far of the Romans), and of a corn called tiphe, in these compositions. The species of grain denominated olyra, with which Homer feeds his heroes' horses, formed, in later ages, a sort of brown bread. Rice (opula) and an Ethiopic grain resembling the seed of the plant sesame, whose fruit still furnishes a valuable oil in the east, supplied a species, called Orindes. But the chief attention was confined to the wheaten and the barley bread (apτoç, μača). Into the details of each of these the copious language of the Greeks entered very minutely. The meal of the latter (apirov) was accurately distinguished from the meal of the former (alevoov), and the act of kneading them into dough had also their separate terms, (πεττειν, μασσειν). Meal unbonlted bore the name of syncomistos; boulted to an extreme degree, it was termed semidalis: a third name was imparted from the boulting cloth (konospa), which, according to Photius, was often made of wool, and bore the same name as the fine net with which the Athenian anchovy was caught. If leaven was used, the bread received the appellation of zymites; if not, that of azymos. The operation of baking, as performed by the oven, the hearth, by live coals without flame, by ashes heaped up round the dough, or by placing the dough on a roaster, introduced a fresh change of names. Invrns, Exaρitηs, aπaνOρakıç, EYKOνpiac, were terms appropriated to these operations. But the favorite mode of baking was that performed by the cri

banus, or clibanus, au earthen or iron pot broader below than above. The dough shut up in this vessel, and surrounded with coal, or placed over a fire, was thought to warm more equally; and the bread thereby acquired a more delicious flavor. The bread made of the first corn after the harvest was called thargelus. The homoros was a bread on which goddesses supped; as the hemiartium, or half-circle, appeased the coarser appetite of Hecate. The bread given to children was, according to the scholiast on Aristophanes, called collyra. The poor, who wished to fill the stomach expeditiously, we conclude, bought the bread called panias. The bread made of new spring-wheat, and which in figure resembled the pegs or pins by which harpstrings were tightened, was called collabus. A large bread prepared for the ladies of Delos, when celebrating the feast of Ceres and Proserpine, took the name of Achaïnas: its size gave a name to the festival; and, from an exclamation put into the mouths of those who carried it, it appears to have been of a very greasy composition. The Cyprian bread was chiefly dangerous to hungry horsemen travelling in a hurry; for, having the effect of a magnet, it necessarily impeded expedition. The encryphias, placed in Alexandria in the temple of Chronus for any person to eat that pleased, ranked, as we have seen, among the Athenians, with the bread baked on live coals. The obelias, deriving its name from its price, or the manner in which it was baked, was a bread carried on men's shoulders in sacred processions, and was invented by Bacchus on his military expeditions. From a caution of Pherecrates against its purchase, the god was probably hard put to it for food, when the idea first entered his head. The statites had a mixture of fat in it; the meconis a strong tincture of a favorite edible among the ancients, the poppy; the encris was composed of farina, oil, and honey; the dipyrus (synonymous with the modern biscuit) of water and farina, boiled in broth, with an addition of pepper, cinnamon, and saffron cheese, that universal ingredient in Greek cookery-much to the discomfiture of Archestratus-also entered into its composition. But the two favorite breads were the escharites of the Rhodians, and the cribanites. The latter was said to surpass all the rest, as being juicy, agreeable to the stomach, and easy of digestion; but Gourmands must have been inexcusable in not preferring the former: for, surpassing even the apron ayopator of the Athenians, it is said to have been so delicious as to cause appetite by eating. A Lydian, a Phoenician, and in latter ages, when the excellencies of the art had been thoroughly discriminated, a Cappadocian baker was recommended. Thearion, one of the profession, could command honorable mention even from such a man as Plato. The pastry-cooks claimed the title of demiurgists, or artists par excellence: the task was generally entrusted to female hands. Guests wiped their hands on pieces of soft bread, called apomygdaliæ: Aristophanes feeds his sausage-seller upon morsels of this kind, and the rogue, in spite of his dramatic pleasantry, deserved no better food. apomygdaliæ were generally thrown to dogs

The

The Athenian cook had both a secular and a sacred capacity; and the parish-clerk of England has not more right to mix himself up with the religion of his country, than had this person to take his place among the priesthood of Athens. All the mechanical parts of the sacrificial rites were entrusted to him; and that this was no unimportant function may be evinced from the earnest language in which Olympias writes to her son Alexander, then engaged in his grand Asiatic exterprise, upon the subject of a person of this description whom she had sent to him at his own request. As the epistle possesses a convenient brevity, we insert a version of it, without troubling ourselves much about the difficulties of commentators. You will please to accept at my hands of a cook his name Pelignas. He is well versed in all the modes of sacrifice usual in your own country; he is also acquainted with those practised in the mysteries, and the festivals of Bacchus, and with such as take place before the commencement of the Olympic games. You will, therefore, pay him every attention, and be cautious of any neglect. Let me hear from you at your earliest leisure. That fit and able persons might never be wanting in this branch of the profession, there appears to have been a particular tribe at Athens, enrolled into a sort of collegiate body, for the sake of preserving the knowledge of their important functions.

The taste for fish of every kind, salt, fresh, shelled or otherwise, was, among the Athenians, universal and vehement. Among other saltfish, in various degrees of favor among the common Athenians, may be mentioned the scombri, which the most correct taste decided, ought to be eaten just three days after putting into brine; the coracini, of which the best came from the Lacus Mæotis, and which then assumed the name of saperda; the mugiles supplied from Abdera and Sinope; the enormous tiltus, and that species of fish, of which the larger sort were called platistaci, the middle-sized mylli, and the small agnotidia. Of all salted fish, the cheapest, perhaps, was the omotarichos. In a very amusing fragment of Alexis, where a person, with his table and reckoning stones before him, settles the various prices of fish, the omotarichos is rated at five-eighths of an obol: seamuscles fetch seven-eighths of the same coin, and the echinus, or sea-porcupine, an entire obol. These fish, potted down, formed the common food of the Greek soldiers and sailors. Epicures pronounced them to be best when boiled in seawater; and the hotter they were brought to table, the more agreeable they were declared to be.

The ancient dinners were no sinecures, either in a bodily or an intellectual view. To touch a lute, to bear a part in a catch or scolium, to enliven the board, or repay hospitality by a fable or a tale similar to those found in the old Fabhaux, were among the lighter contributions to a Grecian feast; the guests were often called upon for a more important task; and had the convivial discourses of Aristotle, Speusippus, Dion, and others come down to us, we should perhaps have found that the Greeks, like the Romans, brought their common-place books when they distrusted

their memories, and mercilessly showered down their contents on the unfortunate auditors.Another list of fish brings us among the Alphesta, which were always caught in pairs, one seeming to follow at the tail of the other; the amia, so delicious in itself, that in autumn, if dressed after the setting of the Pleiades, it defied all the arts of bad cookery to spoil it; the scarus, the only fish, according to Seleucus, that never slept at night, the anthias, particularly agreeable in winter, as the chromius was in spring; the ellops, by some writers supposed to be the same as the anthias; the batis (maid or skate) which, in concert with hares, and women whose gait or feet have puzzled translators, formed the great attraction, according to Eupolis, of Callias's table; the gnapheus or fuller;-in the water, which boiled one, says Dorion, I washed out every one of my stains;—the salpa, who never could resist a hook baited with gourds; the sacred fish pompilus, to which so many romantic Greek stories are attached, and which was said to have sprung with Venus from the blood of the sky; and the aphyæ (anchovies), for the dressing of which Archestratus has given a very full receipt. The fish called at Rhodes the fox, and at Syracuse the dog, is opposed by Lynceus to any of the Athenian fish, 'even though surpassing Cecrops himself in reputation.' Archestratus recommends epicures to steal it at the hazard of life, if they cannot purchase it; and all accidents of fate were to be considered as immaterial, according to this great gastrologist, when a man had once eaten of this inestimable dainty. The aper he declares to be too divine for the eyes of any but rich bankers and moneyreckoners to look upon; and he recommends travellers to purchase it even at its weight in gold, under pain of incurring the divine displeasure, for it is the 'flower of nectar.' Eels, the only instance perhaps in Athens of modest merit brought from the shade of retirement, supplied an admirable repast for the table, and no small one for the theatre; some of the happiest strokes of the comic poets being derived from its natural habits. It has already appeared incidentally, that the Copaic eel ranked first. The Baotians, with whom this eel formed a valuable article of trade, crowned the larger sort with a garland like victims, and then offered them to the gods. The eel ranked among fish, according to good eaters, as Helen among women in the opinion of amatory poets; Archestratus sang its praises accordingly: I commend,' says he, 'eels of every kind, but happiest among men is he who lives near Messina, for there the best are found.' The Egyptians, the bold Antiphanes tells us, rank the eel in equal honor with the gods; but in fact, it is in much higher estimation than the gods. Offer a few prayers to the heavenly powers, continues the poet, and you gain all your desires; but such is the value set upon eels, that you may pay ten good drachmæ, and hardly get a small one after all! He who goes to cater,' says Amphis, ‘and buys herbs, when he has the power to buy good fish, is a madman.'

Two other articles connected with Grecian dinners, will, from their intrinsic excellence,

(observes the lively writer we have adverted to,) repay a little attention-perfumery and flowers. The room where an entertainment was held was commonly perfumed by burning myrrh and frankincense. The thicker perfumes were called Xoμara; the thinner aλappara. To indulge in the latter, which was poured over the limbs, was thought to evince a feminine and voluptuous disposition; but the sober and the virtuous, it was allowed, might use the thicker sort without any impeachment of their good qualities. The suppliers of perfumery occupied a considerable place in the list of Greek artisans; those perfumes impregnated with the odor of the violet and the rose were the most popular. The prac tice of wearing flowers at feasts is referred by Eschylus to a grateful memento of the chains worn by Prometheus, as a punishment for his endeavours to benefit mankind. Sappho ascribes the custom to a religious feeling: for flowers,' said she, are agreeable to the gods, who turn with aversion from those whose heads are uncrowned with them.'

'To drink like a Greek,' has become a proverb. The gods, it was understood, did not sit long at table; but the Greek sat long, and drank deep. Long may you live,' was the congratulatory expression used to a person who drank off a large cup without taking breath; and, that there might be no evasion, three public officers, we are assured, were elected in the free town of Athens, whose business it was to attend entertainments, and observe whether every man drank his portion. In the pains and headaches arising from the powerful effects of unmixed wine, a compression of the head by the hands was found to convey considerable relief. This gave rise to more permanent ligatures. Ivy, as the most ready a hand, was the first herbaceous plant used for the purpose; the myrtle, the rose, and the laurel soon followed, each having some physical qualities to recommend it, besides its external beauty. By the time of Theophrastus, a much larger assortment had been pressed into the service of the chaplet. The violet, both the black and the white,-the lily, the anemone, the hyacinth, the helichrysus, deriving its name from the nymph who first gathered it,―the hemerocallis, which dies away at night and revives with the rising sun,-the cosmosandalus, from the wearing of which in their chaplets, Clearchus dates the ruin of the Lacedæmonians, the lychnis, born of the water in which Venus bathed.'

'During the day,' says Dr. Hill, the Atheniaus either took no food, or only a slight repast in private. At sun-set they sat down to supper; and, considering the business of the day as over, devoted the evening to society and amusement, and often continued to a late hour of the night. For the pic-nic parties, where each guest might send his own portion of the feast, or where one might provide, at a fixed price, an enter tainment for all the rest, the Athenians appear to have felt a passionate fondness. When Aristotle advocates the propriety of admitting that complex entity, the public,' as he calls them, into a share of the government, he inore than once draws an argument from the pic-nic suppers, which he asserts were always better than those

furnished by a single person. And Theophrastus, his great disciple, was so much persuaded of this truth, that among his legacies may be found one for the support of a pic-nic club.

Before the time of Menander, the law to prevent too large a concourse of people at an entertainment, had limited the number of guests to thirty: there were persons called gynœconomi, whose office it was to number the guests, and to see that this statute was not infringed. It was an ancient practice to give a bill of fare to the master of the feasts, who communicated its contents, at proper intervals, to the guests. The great man, whether host or guest, was generally attended by a flatterer, whose office, from the epithets attached to him by Julius Pollux, (the most amusing of word-collectors), was evidently no easy one-and recreations for the sight and hearing (Jeaμara, akpoaμara) made part of the entertainment. The supper-hunters (70EXEDELTVOL), that class of persons upon whom is laid all the trouble of convivial conversation, and who are expected to perform the double task of never speaking with the mouth full, and yet never losing a mouthful, generally paid their quota in coin of the latter kind. They who were present without contributing towards the entertainment, says archbishop Potter, were termed arvμßoλot, in which condition (continues the learned, but plain-spoken archeologist) were poets and singers, and others who made diversion for the company.'

The common Athenians contented themselves with salt-fish, herbs, pottage, a barley cake not very nicely kneaded: these with a bottle of wine, and figs perhaps for a dessert, formed their usual diet, when a sacrifice, or one of those feasts, which, on various pretences, were wrested from the rich, did not furnish a more substantial banquet.

The following picture of the domestic entertainments of the Romans, which introduces us to their social and convivial hour, contains, in a condensed and accurate shape, nearly all that can be collected upon the subject.

"The tables were originally made of ordinary wood, square, and on four feet; but the form was afterwards changed to circular, or oval, supported on a single carved pedestal, and they were richly inlaid with ivory, gold, or silver, sometimes with the addition of precious stones. Those most valued were made of a kind of wood with which we are at present unacquainted. It appears to have been brought from some part of Barbary, and was called citron-wood: but the timber from the tree of that name is far from beautiful, and certainly was not then so scarce as to command an extraordinary price; yet we are told of a single table, formed of it, having cost a million of sesterces! They were at first used without any covering, and it was not until the reign of the emperors that cloths were introduced: these were of colored woollen, or silk and wool intermixed, and variously ornamented with embroidery; but those most in fashion were striped with gold and purple. A canopy was suspended over the table, to guard it, as it is said, from the dirt of the ceiling. This, however it may have added to the decoration of the

apartments, does not convey a very high idea of their cleanliness; and, in fact, Horace describes the accidental fall of the drapery, at an entertainment, as having enveloped the company in a cloud of dust.' Sketches of the Domestic Manvers, &c., of the Romans, London, 1824, pp. 164,

165.

'The indulgence of lying down at supper on couches was not extended to young people, of either sex, and, when they were admitted at table, they were seated at the feet of their nearest relation. Each couch could accommodate three or four, but seldom five, persons, who lay in a reclining posture, on the left arm, having the shoulders elevated with cushions, and the limbs extended behind whoever was next; so that, the head of the one was opposite to the breast of the other; and, in serving themselves, they only made use of the right hand.'-p. 166.

'When the form of the table was changed from square to circular, it became customary to place but one large couch around it, in the manner of a crescent. The improvement in the decoration of the table, was followed, as may be supposed, by that of the couch; and from having been formed of the coarsest materials-stuffed with straw, and covered with skins-it became not uncommon to see them plated with silver, and furnished with mattresses of the softest down covered with the richest stuffs. The ancient poets, and even graver writers, are full of descriptions of them, and have long dissertations on their substance and fashion, the choice of the purple, and the perfection of the brocade. The dress worn at table differed from that in use on other occasions, and consisted merely of a loose robe, of a light texture, and generally white. Cicero accuses Valerius, as if it were a crime, of having appeared at an entertainment, dressed in black, although it was on the occasion of a funeral; and compares him to a fury whose presence spread dismay among the assembly. The guests were sometimes supplied with these robes by the master of the house. The sandals were taken off, lest they should soil the costly cushions; and the feet were covered with slippers, or, not unfrequently, left naked. Water was presented to the company to wash the hands, and even the feet before they lay down; and they were then perfumed with essences. It was also customary to sprinkle the apartments with scented waters: but these were, probably, far inferior both in odor and variety, to those of the present day, as the ancients neither possessed so many species of flowers as the moderns, nor were so well acquainted with the art of distilling them; and their chief perfume was always extracted from saffron. Precedence was strictly attended to, and, in families of distinction, there was always a master of the ceremonies who arranged the company; but in those of inferior condition, that duty devolved or the giver of the entertainment. The master of the house occupied the second place on the centre couch, that immediately be low him being for his wife, and that above for the most distinguished guest. This was called the consular seat, and we are told, that it was so termed in consequence of being considered the most proper for the chief magistrate, because

the space between it and the next couch would admit of his more easily conversing with those who might come to him on the public business. Those next in rank took the upper couch. Guests were allowed to bring their friends, though uninvited, along with them, and they were frequently accompanied by some humble dependents, who, however, do. not seem to have been treated with much respect, and were even distinguished by the sneering appellation of shadows. These, with the parasites of the family-also contemptuously nick-named 'flies,' from those insects intruding themselves every where, and the clients, were placed on the lower couch. The custom of entertaining parasitesmen who professedly repaid the hospitality of the host with the grossest adulation-was general, and betrays a want of delicacy and refinement but little in unison with the elevation of sentiments and dignity of manners which we are taught to consider as characteristic of the Romans, as well as a humiliating contrast with the high-minded independence of their ancestors. They were not alone looked upon with the contempt which their servility perhaps merited, but they were often treated with a degree of coarseness that reflected as little credit on the manners, as on the hospitality of their entertainers; and we should find it difficult to determine whether most to despise the meanness of the patron who could impose, or that of the sycophants who would submit to, such a tax upon their reception. The guests being placed, a bill of fare was laid before each, with a cover and goblet.". pp. 167-171.

Feasting was no small enjoyment of the Britons, Germans, Gauls, and all the other Celtic nations; in which they indulged themselves to the utmost, as often as they had opportunity. Among these nations (says M. Pelloutier, in his Hist. Celt. 1. 2, c. 12, p. 463,) there is no public assembly, either for civil or religious purposes, duly held; no birth-day, marriage, or funeral properly celebrated; no treaty of peace or alliance rightly cemented, without a great feast."' When the Germans, says Tacitus, wanted to reconcile enemies, to make alliances, to name chiefs, or to treat of war and peace, it was during the repast, that they took counsel; a time in which the mind is most open to the impressions of simple truths, or most easily animated to great attempts. These artless people during the conviviality of the feast spoke without disguise. Next day they weighed the counsels of the former evening: they deliberated at a time when they were not disposed to feign, and took their resolution when they were least liable to be deceived. It was by frequent entertainments of this kind that the great men or chieftains gained the affections and rewarded the services of their followers, and those who made the greatest feasts were sure to be most popular, and to have the greatest retinue. These feasts (in which plenty was more regarded than elegance) lasted commonly several days, and the guests seldom retired until they had consumed all the provisions and exhausted all the liquors. Athenæus describes an entertainment that was given by Arcamnes, a very wealthy prince in Gaul, which continued a whole year