Although a staunch republican, I confess to watching bits on telly from the recent celebrations of Mrs Mountbatten’s 70th year on the throne. I soon lost count of the number of times commentators would intone, “When it comes to pageantry of this sort, we British are the best”. Being in some respects a John Bull type of Englishman, I could wish this were true. But, it’s not. As usual, the ancients were there first.
Several Hellenistic spectaculars are described in relentless detail in (Scholars at dinner) written in the second-third centuries AD by Athenæus, (eds. David Braund & John Wilkins, University of Exeter Press, 2000).
