ABSTRACT
In the mid-sixth century, John Lydos criticized the frivolous conduct of his detested civil-service boss, John the Cappadocian, saying: ‘... he dined on everything that flew in the air and swam in the sea accompanied by various wines ... the needs of his table exhausted the Bosporos and the Hellespont. His purveyors had to ransack the Black Sea for fish and fowl.’1 Legal texts, inventories, anecdotal accounts, contemporary representations and extant plate provide a good idea of the pretentious silver available to enhance such occasions. Even Attila the Hun’s symposium given for Priskos, envoy of Theodosios II, featured wine waiters and silver platters.2 Sidonius Apollinaris refers repeatedly to ‘glittering sideboards’ loaded with silver for display. But such silver was put to use: he also refers to ‘silver set by panting attendants on sagging tables’ and ‘heads bent by chased metal on laden shoulders’.3 In the sixth century, Severos of Antioch refers to ‘meals [taken] from silver plates carried by numerous servants’.4 Justinian’s Digest contains forty legal opinions from Roman law of the first to the third centuries, still relevant in the sixth, which concerned legacies of gold and silver. The opinions attempt to distinguish between types of vasa argentea,5 notably argentum escarium and argentum potorium – that is, silver for eating and drinking. Numbers, weights and/or names of silver vessels are provided by three inventories or lists from
Olympiodorus, Priscus, and Malchus (Liverpool, 1983), 2.267, 285. 3 W. B. Anderson, ed. and tr., The Poems and Letters of Gaius Sollius Apollinaris Sidonarius (Lon-
don, 1980-84), Carmina 1.2.6; Epistulae 1.2, 2.2, 8.7, 9.13. 4I. Guidi, ed. and tr., ‘Les homiliae cathédrales de Sévère d’Antioche’, PO 22 (Paris, 1930),
247. 5Digest 34.2.19, Corpus Iuris Civilis, ed. T. Mommsen, P. Krueger et al., vol. 1 (Berlin, 1928-
9); see also A. Watson, tr., The Digest of Justinian, 4 vols (Philadelphia, PA, 1985), 3.151-3.
