In honour of some food festival in Bangkok, the Independent lists the top ten parties on record ... here's number one (although I think there's an attempt to present them chronologically rather than by partyheartiability):

NERO'S ULTIMATE ORGY Rome, AD64

The Romans were fond of a slap-up dinner, preferably one that involved gluttonous excess and lashings of promiscuity. But, according to the historian Tacitus, one banquet - organised by Tigellinus for his deviant emperor, Nero, AD64 - stands out as the most "prodigal and notorious" of the lot.

In Book V of The Annals, Tacitus writes that "the entertainment took place on a raft constructed on Marcus Agrippa's lake. It was towed by other vessels, with gold and ivory fittings. Their rowers were degenerates, assorted according to age and vice."

Although Tacitus' recollection of the event does not extend to a menu card (there, are, however, details of eye-watering sexual feats), we may assume the feast ran along the lines of the one mapped out by Petronius in his Satyricon. At that banquet guests were treated to dormice sprinkled with poppyseed; sow's udders; a hare with wings attached, to represent Pegasus; a calf boiled whole and wearing a helmet; and more than 50 other Roman delicacies.