ABSTRACT
W H I L E the party was amused with music and dancing, and the late arrivals were successively announced, refreshments continued to be handed round, and every attention was shown to the assembled guests. Wine was offered to each new comer, and chaplets of flowers were brought by men servants to the gentlemen, and by women or white slaves to the ladies, as they took their seats.* An upper servant, or slave, had the office of handing the wine, and a black woman sometimes followed, in an inferior capacity, to receive an empty cup when the wine had been poured into the goblet. The same black slave also carried the fruits and other refreshments ; and the peculiar mode of holding a plate with the hand reversed, so generally adopted by women from Africa, is characteristically shown in the Theban paintings.|
* Woodcut 157 ; figs. 4, 5, 8, 9, 12, 21. t Woodcut 158.
