The Latin
form is triclinium, a couch which would accomodate three persons at
table. The word is of Greek origin, and simply means a place which
will allow three persons to recline upon it. As triclinia were placed
in eating-rooms, such a room is sometimes called triclinium. It is
sometimes incorrectly stated that triclinium means three couches, and
that a dining-room had the name of triclinium because it contained
three couches; which is absurd. Vitruvius describes oeci(dining-rooms)
square and large enough to contain four triclinia, and leave room also
for the servants (vi. 10). It may be true that three couches was a
common number in a room.]
[Footnote 572: There was no census this year, as Rualdus quoted by
Kaltwasser shows. Augustus had a census made in his sixth consulship,
B.C. 28; and there had then been none for twenty-four years. That of
B.C. 42 was in the consulship of M. AEmilius Lepidus and Munatius
Plancus. It has been remarked that Plutarch gives the exact numbers
that are given in Suetonius (_Caesar_, 41), when he is speaking of the
number of poor citizens who received an allowance of corn from the
state, which number Caesar reduced from 320,000 to 150,000. This
passage, compared with Dion Cassius (43. c. 21), seems to explain the
origin of Plutarch's statement. Appianus (_Civil Wars_, ii. 102) also
supposed that it was a census. See Clinton, _Fasti_, Lustra Romana,
B.
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