DINNER, KEAL AND REPUTED. 233

On this principle we come to understand why it is,
that, whenever the Latin poets speak of an army as
taking food, the word used is always prandens, and
pransiis ; and, when the word used is prandens, then
always it is an army that is concerned. Thus Juvenal
in a well-known satire —

' Credimus altos

Desiccasse amnes, epotaque flamina, Medo Prandente.'

Not ccenante, observe : you might as well talk of an
army taking tea and toast. Nor is that word ever
applied to armies. It is true that the converse is not
so rigorously observed ; nor ought it, from the explan-
ations already given. Though no soldier dined, {ccena-
bat,) yet the citizen sometimes adopted the camp usage
and took a prandium. But generally the poets use the
word merely to mark the time of day. In that most
humorous appeal of Perseus — ' Cur quis non prandeat,
hoc est .'' ' 'Is this a sufficient reason for losing one's
prandium ? ' He was obliged to say prandium, be-
cause no exhibitions ever could cause a man to lose his
cmna, since none were displayed at a time of day when
anybody in Rome would have attended. Just as, in
alluding to a parliamentary speech notoriously deliv-
ered at midnight, an English satirist must have said, Is
this a speech to furnish an argument for leaving one's
bed 1 — not as what stood foremost in his regard,
but as the only thing that could be lost at the time of
night.
