Michael Psellos (c.1030-c.1080) in eleventh century Constantinople offers an amusing anecdote on this. Constantinople's Great Palace was known for possessing a room called The Hall of 19 Couches and the imperial family and custom were still forcing people to recline like ancient Romans in the high medieval period. Psellos, a renowned philosopher of Plato, complained of the effect of eating while lying as such causing his stomach pain and causing indigestion and flatulence, literally 'pressing the waste from my backside'.

As he makes such a note of this we can presume it was a most unusual custom to force people to do by then.

By 1081 Alexios Komnenos was emperor and he moved the family to the Blachernae Palace on the other side of the city. We may suppose the couches did not come too.