Easton's 1897 Bible Dictionary:

Meals
   are at the present day "eaten from a round table little higher
   than a stool, guests sitting cross-legged on mats or small
   carpets in a circle, and dipping their fingers into one large
   dish heaped with a mixture of boiled rice and other grain and
   meat. But in the time of our Lord, and perhaps even from the
   days of Amos (6:4, 7), the foreign custom had been largely
   introduced of having broad couches, forming three sides of a
   small square, the guests reclining at ease on their elbows
   during meals, with their faces to the space within, up and down
   which servants passed offering various dishes, or in the absence
   of servants, helping themselves from dishes laid on a table set
   between the couches." Geikie's Life of Christ. (Comp. Luke
   7:36-50.) (See ABRAHAM'S BOSOM; BANQUET; FEAST.)