Miscellany
Pantagruelian feasts, common at Gallo-Roman villas, followed the Gallic custom of eating around a table rather than the Roman method of doing so while lying down supported by one elbow. After one banquet, it was recorded that all “remained seated on their benches. They had drunk so much wine and had so gorged themselves that the slaves and the guests lay drunk in every corner of the house, wherever they happened to stumble.”