thither a part of the venison he had killed; for these two
occasions were the only excuses allowed for supping at home. The
custom of eating together was observed strictly for a great while
afterwards; insomuch that king Agis himself, after having
vanquished the Athenians, sending for his commons at his return
home, because he desired to eat privately with his queen, was
refused them by the polemarchs; and when he resented this refusal
so much as to omit next day the sacrifice due for a war happily
ended, they made him pay a fine.

They used to send their children to these tables as to schools of
temperance; here they were instructed in state affairs by
listening to experienced statesmen; here they learnt to converse
with pleasantry, to make jests without scurrility, and take them
without ill humor. In this point of good breeding, the
Lacedaemonians excelled particularly, but if any man were uneasy
under it, upon the least hint given there was no more to be said
to him. It was customary also for the eldest man in the company to
say to each of them, as they came in, "Through this" (pointing to
the door), "no words go out." When any one had a desire to be
admitted into any of these little societies, he was to go through
the following probation: each man in the company took a little
ball of soft bread, which they were to throw into a deep basin,
that a waiter carried round upon his head; those that liked the
person to be chosen dropped their ball into the basin without
altering its figure, and those who disliked him pressed it betwixt
their fingers, and made it flat; and this signified as much as a
negative voice. And if there were but one of these flattened
pieces in the basin, the suitor was rejected, so desirous were
they that all the members of the company should be agreeable to