FARMING AND FOOD IN ANCIENT ROME

Farming

Because Rome had originally begun as a farming society and agriculture remained always the main basis of its economy, urban and rural Romans alike had a strong emotional attachment to country life. As noted scholar Garry Wills memorably puts it, "Romans always had a sharp nostalgia for the fields. Even their worst poets surpass themselves when a landscape is to be described. And all of them associated morality with simplicity, simplicity with the countryside. The city was foul, the country pure" (Roman Culture, p. 24).
Indeed, Virgil and other Augustan poets captured the perceived virtues of pastoral life in many of their works. "Happy old man!" Virgil wrote. "These lands will still be yours.... Here, amid familiar streams... you shall court the cooling shade... Under the towering rock, the woodsman's song shall fill the air" (First Eclogue 46-56). However, such idyllic views of the fields were largely those of the members of upper classes who did not have to work in them. The harsher reality was that the vast majority of rural people were poor farmers whose lives consisted mainly of long hours, weeks, and years of backbreaking toil for which material rewardswere few and meager.
With the help of his wife, children, and sometimes a slave or hired hand if he could afford one, the average farmer grew grains, such as emmer wheat, to make flour for bread, one of the staple foods. Autumn was planting season. Using a crude plow (of wood, sometimes equipped with an iron blade) pulled by an ox, one person broke up the earth, while a second tossed the seeds by hand from a bag hung around the neck. Cultivation and weeding were accomplished mainly by hand, using wooden hoes and spades (the edges of which were sometimes sheathed by metal for better efficiency and durability).
Harvest time was April or May, when the workers cut the grain using hooks and sickles having wooden handles and iron blades. (In Gaul and some other areas, a harvesting machine, the vallus, consisting of a row of blades mounted on wheels pushed along by a donkey or mule, came into use.) The most common method of threshing the harvested grain (separating it from the stalks and chaff) was to spread it on a stone floor and have donkeys, horses, or other animals trample it.
Finally, workers threw the threshed grain into the air (a process called winnowing); the excess chaff blew away and the heavier grain fell back to be collected. Usually, a farmer sold whatever grain his family did not eat to a pistor, a combination of miller and baker who lived in a nearby town. The baker crushed the grain using a millstone, fashioned it into dough, and then baked it in a brick oven heated by charcoal. Archaeologists have excavated many bakeries (pistrinae) at Pompeii, which may have had more than thirty such facilities in all.

In one, the bakery of Modestus, they found eighty-one loaves of bread still sitting in the oven where the bakers left them when they fled the eruption of Vesuvius in A.D. 79 (the disaster that buried the town with a layer of ash and pumice, which preserved the bakeries and other buildings). Pompeii's bakers had their various specialties; one even made his own brand of dog biscuits from the grain he bought from neighboring farms. Grains were not the only output of such farms. Farmers also grew vegetables and fruits, including carrots, radishes, cabbage, beans, beets, lentils, peas, onions, grapes, plums, pears, and apricots.
These and other crops grew well in the coastal lowlands of Italy and several of Rome's provinces, which benefited from the pleasant Mediterranean climate, consisting of short, mild winters followed by long, hot, and sunny springs and summers. The climate and soil were particularly favorable for growing olives, a crop second in importance only to wheat. Some olives were eaten. Most, however, were pressed to produce olive oil, which the Romans and other peoples used in cooking, as a body lotion, to make perfumes, and as fuel for oil lamps.
Farmers also raised livestock, including goats, chicken, geese, ducks, sheep, and pigs. They slaughtered some of these to eat themselves and sold the surplus. By the mid-Republic, cattle and sheep raising had become important farming industries on a par with grain production in Italy. In many areas, such grazing animals pastured on cleared hillsides in summer and were This modern moved to lowland pastures in fall and winter.
Pigs often foraged in mountain forests. An important by-product of raising livestock was the manure these animals produced, which farmers used to enrich their fields. (Residues from olive pressing and wine making were substituted in those regions where manure was scarce.) Regarding land use, in general the coastal regions of Italy were dedicated to growing grains, fruits, and vegetables (and for animal pasturage), although grain production declined in these areas during the Empire.
Olives and grapevines grew on the slopes of the Apennines and nuts in highly elevated forests. The same pattern of land use prevailed in most other parts of Rome's Mediterranean/European realm, with minor local variations. Gaul, Britain, and the northern provinces grew few or no olives, for example; the area now occupied by Lebanon specialized in growing cedar trees (the wood of which was widely valued); and Egypt and other parts of the east grew not only grain, but also the reeds that produced papyrus parchment.
Other patterns and aspects of land use— ownership and the nature of the workforce— changed over the centuries. In the first few centuries of the Republic, many small farmers owned their own land, a typical holding consisting of two to five acres. The image of the honest, frugal, hardworking, self-sufficient small farmer, exemplified by the legendary Cincinnatus, became a model for the good Roman citizen.
Disputes between such small farmers (who were mostly plebs) and the government increased as Rome extended its control over the whole Italian peninsula. Farms and other real estate confiscated from enemies or rebels became public lands (agerpublicus) administered by the state. In the last two republican centuries the state leased huge amounts of this public land to patricians and other wealthy individuals, who turned their shares into large-scale farming estates (latifundia).
Typically encompassing thousands of acres, these estates, utilizing the cheap labor of many slaves, cornered the agricultural market by the early years of the Empire. (They were typically run by hired managers [bailiffs], since most of the owners were absentee landlords who spent much of their time in the city.) There were latifundia in the provinces, too, but they were usually not as large as those in Italy.
In the Empire, the emperor was the largest landowner/farmer of all because he owned numerous imperial estates throughout the realm. As might be expected, increasing numbers of small farmers found it impossible to compete with the large estates, went out of business, and migrated to Rome and other cities in search of work. Many others became poor tenant farmers who worked small portions of the latifundia in exchange for a share of the harvest. Most of what is known about Roman farming comes from treatises on the subject by Cato the Elder, Varro, and Columella.

Food and Drink

The kinds of food the Romans ate depended on their economic situation and the local customs of the regions in which they lived. Overall, though, the most common diet across the Roman realm, especially in early times, was fairly simple and plain, consisting of bread and porridge made from grains, a few fruits and vegetables, olive oil and wine, and on occasion, for those who could afford it, fish, fowl, pork, and beef.
The exception, of course, was the array of richer, more exotic foods consumed by wealthier members of the upper classes, mainly from the first century B.C. on, and particularly at their dinner parties, which could be fairly frequent. In private houses (domus) and villas, food preparation took place in the kitchen, as it does today. Most cooking was done over an open hearth or brazier, which was equipped with a metal grill or metal stands to hold the pots, pans, and kettles (made of pottery or bronze) and/or a chain above the fire to hang them on. Smoke from the fire escaped through a hole in the roof or a wall.
In early republican centuries, bread was baked at home in small brick ovens shaped like domes. But after public bakery shops became common in the second century B.C., more and more city dwellers bought their bread from a baker (pistor), while the majority of country folk continued the custom of home baking. In the Empire, many city dwellers lived in tenement apartments that lacked kitchen facilities. They variously cooked on portable grills set up in outside courtyards or at communal hearths somewhere in the tenement block; bought their bread from pistores; and ate out at inexpensive snack bars (thermopolii).
Meals for the average family began with breakfast (ientaculum), although some Romans skipped it. A light meal, it normally consisted of bread or wheat biscuits, either dipped in wine or covered with honey, sometimes along with a little cheese or some olives and/or raisins. In early Roman times, the main meal of the day—dinner (cena)—was eaten in the afternoon.
However, over time this custom changed, as dinner became an early evening meal and a light lunch, called prandium, was added in the late morning or early afternoon. Lunch fare varied, consisting of cold foods such as bread, salads, fruits, and leftovers from yesterday's main meal.
In those households that could afford it, that main meal, the cena, was served in three courses, collectively called ab ovo usque ad malla ("from the egg to the apples"). The first course, gustatio or promulsh, featured appetizers such as salads, mushrooms and other raw vegetables, oysters, eggs, and sardines; the second and main course, prima mensa, featured cooked vegetables and meats (such as fish, poultry, lamb, wild boar, and pork, the Romans' favorite meat); and the third course, secunda mensa, was the dessert, typically consisting of fruit, nuts, and honey cakes and other pastries.
It must be emphasized that the majority of Romans and provincials were poor or of minimal means and could not often afford to eat such varied three-course dinners; they enjoyed this sort of fare, if at all, only on holidays, birthdays, and other special occasions. The satirist Juvenal claimed that he rarely ate so well: Even when invited to dinner at a rich man's house, he was served cheap fare while his host kept the best foods for himself, a common custom.
According to Juvenal, one of the dishes his wealthy host consumed was lobster. Some of the many other exotic delicacies served at upper-class banquets included pheasant, ostrich, peacocks and peacock brains, flamingo tongues, and fish livers. The well-to-do and literate could consult cookbooks that suggested imaginative ways of preparing expensive and exotic foods as well as more ordinary fare.
A surviving Roman cookbook dating from perhaps the late fourth century A.D. includes, for example, recipes for preparing peacock, ostrich, and pig. One of the simpler recipes is for boiled ham with dried figs and bay leaves. When the ham was almost completely cooked, the chef removed the skin, made little cuts in the meat, and filled these with honey. Then the ham received a coating of a paste made from flour and oil and went back into the oven for a while. Fruit, honey cakes, and cooled wine stirred with spices rounded out the meal.
Speaking of spices, the Romans used several kinds, along with herbs, many of them imported from the far-flung reaches of their realm and some from as far away as India and China. Pliny the Elder provided a long discussion of the origins and characteristics of herbs and spices in his encyclopedic first-century A.D. work, the "Natural History". Among the many examples he describes are salt, pepper, ginger, cinnamon, balsam, sweet marjoram, myrrh, cassia, frankincense, rue, mint, and parsley.
Some of these herbs were used to make tangy sauces, one of the most popular being a salty fish sauce called garuni. (By contrast, defrutum was a sweet sauce made by boiling fruit juice until it thickened.) The main drink for poor and rich people alike was wine, which in wealthy homes was chilled with ice. (Donkey trains shipped ice in from the nearest mountains and people stored it in underground pits until they were ready to use it.)
Almost all Romans mixed their wine with water in a large bowl called a crater, from which they ladled it into goblets; drinking undiluted wine was seen as undignified or even uncivilized. (Drinking milk was also viewed as uncivilized.)
Sweetening wine with honey produced a popular drink called mulsum, and poor people often drank posca, a mixture of water and a low-quality, vinegarlike wine. Beer, an alternative to wine, was popular mainly in the northern provinces. Regarding dining habits and manners, most Romans sat upright on chairs, stools, and benches to eat their meals as people do today.
The exception was at dinner parties, particularly those of the rich, which became common beginning in the late Republic, where the diners reclined on couches. At formal banquets, guests were assigned to such couches according to their social status, those of higher status having the privilege of sitting closer to the host or guest of honor.
Most foods were eaten with the fingers (meats and other items having been precut or sliced in the kitchen), although spoons were employed for soup pudding, and eggs. Dinner guests typically brought their own napkins, in which they might later wrap up their leftovers (the Roman equivalent of a "doggie bag"). In one of his epigrams, Martial humorously described a fellow who shamelessly took home the scraps of other diners as well.

And the poet Catullus wrote about someone who filched others' napkins: "While we are relaxed and inattentive, telling jokes and drinking, you are stealing our napkins. Do you think this is cute? Well, you're wrong, you ill-mannered fool. It's an ugly and quite vulgar type of behavior" (Poems 12). In many homes, and in all wealthy ones, slaves served most or all the courses of a dinner or banquet and cleaned up the mess afterward.



By Don Nardo in the book  "Ancient Rome" The Greenhaven Encyclopedia, Greenhaven Press,  San Diego, California, USA,2002, excerpts p.155-160. Adapted and illustrated to be posted by Leopoldo Costa.