1 Re 4:23

Ten fat oxen, and twenty oxen out of the pastures, and an hundred sheep, beside harts, and roebucks, and fallowdeer, and fatted fowl.

Ver. 23. Ten fat oxen … and fatted fowl.] Lectissima quaeque altilia; yet not with such luxury and gormandise as sundry Roman emperors. Anthony, who contended with Cleopatra in prodigal spending upon a banquet, and wrote, or rather vomited out a book of his own intemperances. Geta the emperor would have his dishes served in by the alphabet, viz., anserem, anatem, aprum; aliquando fasianum, farra, ficus; aliquando pullum, pavunem, perdicem, &c.

a Caligula would have his bread gilded. Well might Nasica say of Rome, when nothing so luxurious, Stant moenia, ruunt mores; The walls indeed stand, but good manners are fallen to the ground and abolished. Not so at Jerusalem in Solomon's days.

a Bruson., lib. iii. cap. 1.