Book 2
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Afterwards, when these laws were illegible from the rust of age and forgotten, when many men of abundant means were gormandizing, and recklessly pouring their family and fortune into an abyss of dinners and banquets, Lucius Sulla in his dictatorship proposed a law to the people, which provided that on the Kalends, Ides and Nones, on days of games, and on certain regular festivals, it should be proper and lawful to spend three hundred sesterces on a dinner, but on all other days no more than thirty.
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Besides these laws we find also an Aemilian law, 78 B. C. Another Aemilian sumptuary law was passed in 115 B.C. setting a limit not on the expense of dinners, but on the kind and quantity of food.
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Then the law of Antius, Passed a few years after the Aemilian law. besides curtailing outlay, contained the additional provision, that no magistrate or magistrate elect should dine out anywhere, except at the house of stipulated persons.
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Lastly, the Julian law came before the people during the principate of Caesar Augustus, Cf. Suet. Aug. xxxiv, 1. by which on working days two hundred sesterces is the limit, on the Kalends, Ides and Nones and some other holidays, three hundred, but at weddings and the banquets following them, a thousand.
