There was something admirable about the spirit of careful mockery behind the doggy bags on offer to the finalists in this year’s Oscars and Daftas. The chance to hire a car or visit a New Zealand winery (pay your own airfare) cannot be very high on even the most grasping star’s list of ultimate desiderata. That said, the organisers are missing a trick here — the element of chance. The Roman emperors can come to their aid.
Apophoreta, literally ‘takeaways’, were standard features of Roman dinner parties (the satirical poet Martial wrote a book of 221 couplets about them, celebrating everything from bras to nail-scissors and food for dealing with stretchmarks). But the emperors’ dinner parties were something different. At his extravaganzas, the emperor Augustus (d. AD 14) ‘had guests pay for tokens inscribed with misleading descriptions of the objects concerned’ and ‘whimsically varied their value’, from rich clothing or gold and silver plate to sponges, pokers and tongs; or he invited guests to e.g.
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