"Last night at supper I was challenged to an eating race by some people at my table and tried to swallow too large a mouthful of polenta cheese. It was so doughy and soft that it stuck half-way down my throat, blocking my windpipe, and I nearly choked to death. Yet only a few days before, at the Painted Porch in Athens, I had watched a juggler actually swallow a sharp cavalry sabre, point downwards too; after which, he collected a few coins from us bystanders and swallowed a hunting spear in the same astonishing way. We watched him tilt his head backwards with the handle sticking out from his throat into the air; and presently, believe it or not, a beautiful boy began to wriggle up that handle with such slippery movements that you might have mistaken him for the royal serpent coiled on the roughly-trimmed olive club carried by the God of Medicine; he seemed to have neither bone nor sinew in his whole body."
Apuleius, The Golden Ass (2nd Century A.D.)
[translated by Robert Graves].
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