THE SCENE: Much of the early gossip about the Emperor Didius Julianus focused on what he ate on the night that his predecessor, Pertinax, was assassinated.
THE TEXT: In the meantime Didius Julianus was held in loathing by the people, because it had been their belief that through the agency of Pertinax the abuses of the previous era were to have been reformed; and thus it was felt that Pertinax had been killed at the prompting of Julianus. Those who had begun to hate Julianus were now the first to spread it abroad that on his very first day, despising Pertinax’s dinner, he had prepared a luxurious banquet embellished with oysters and fattened birds and fish. This is agreed to have been untrue, for Julianus is said to have been so frugal that he shared out a sucking-pig over a three-date period, likewise a hare, if anyone happened to send him one. Often, moreover, even if there was no religious reason, he dined happily on green vegetables and beans, without meat. Finally, he did not even dine until Pertinax had been buried, and he took food in a very sad state on account of his murder, and spent the whole of the first night awake, disturbed by such a fate.
– The Augustan History, Aurelius Spartianus, 4th Century AD
