FOOD AND DINING IN ANCIENT ROME

THE ANCIENT ROMANS AT THE DINNER TABLE

Contrary to the sometimes prevailing modern view, most ancient Romans did not customarily gorge themselves at lavish dinner parties or engage in cycles of eating and vomiting and then eating still more. A majority of Romans undoubtedly were restrained in their eating habits, a condition perhaps dictated as much by economics as by appetites.

The basic food groups were grains and vegetables; various kinds of bread and porridge were produced from the former. Vegetables included beans, peas, onions, radishes, lettuce, cabbage, celery, and cucumbers. Fruits also formed a part of the typical Roman's diet; figs, grapes, apples, and pears were staples. Eggs, cheese, mushrooms, and olive oil were also important food items, and spices, especially salt and herbs, were widely used and enjoyed.

Meat was generally too expensive for most household budgets to afford on a regular basis; pork and veal were the two most readily available meat products. Fish and poultry were probably more commonly eaten than animal meats.

Without doubt, the "national drink" of the Romans was wine. Usually mixed with water and honey, it was served even to young children. Milk and beer were also available but were less popular than wine.

The ancient Romans, like their modern counterparts, consumed three meals per day. Breakfast (jentaculum) was a light meal, consisting perhaps of bread, cheese, and fruit; lunch (prandium), eaten around noon, might feature bread, eggs, vegetables, and perhaps fish. Supper (cena) was the day's main meal. It generally included three courses: appetizers (gustatio); the often multi-course cena itself; and dessert (mensae secundae). In wealthy Roman homes, meals were eaten in the triclinium, a dining room equipped with three couches for reclining as well as a dinner table.

Food requiring cooking was usually boiled or roasted, and most homes ad ovens, or small, hibachi-like braziers suitable for the purpose. Bread was baked in home ovens or bought from commercial bakeries.

Alternatively, if one's hectic daily schedule precluded time for meal preparation, eating out was always an option. The restaurant and tavern trade flourished throughout Italy, although the patronizing of such establishments was viewed with some disapproval by upper-class Romans. Some of the restaurants were of the "fast food" variety, where a customer could eat in or purchase a meal "to go." Some were even designed in such a way that customers could obtain meals without leaving their wagons or entering the restaurant at all, the prototype of "drive-through" service.

Healthy Eating

The physician Celsus (fl. first century A.D.) recommends the following foods and drink as beneficial to the stomach: harsh, sour, and moderately salted foods; unleavened bread: soaked rice or barley; roasted or boiled birds; beef and other kinds of meat, as long as lean (rather than fatty) cuts are consumed; pig parts, including feet, ears, and womb; lettuce; cooked gourds; cherries, mulberries, pears, apples, pomegranates, preserved raisins; dates, soft eggs, preserved white olives, tree-ripened black olives; dry wine; oysters, snails, fish. Very hot or very cold foods and drinks are recommended.

Included on Celsus's list of stomach-unfriendly food and drink are the following: lukewarm consumables and anything that is too salty, excessively sweet, stewed, and especially fatty; leavened bread or barley bread; herbs soaked in fish sauce or olive oil; honey; raisin wine; dairy products, including milk and all kinds of cheeses; grapes; figs; and certain spices or seasonings, such as thyme, catnip, mint, or sorrel juice (Celsus On Medicine 2. 24-25).

A Special Dinner Menu

A first century B.C. list of foods served at the inauguration of priests survives. The first course consisted of sea-urchins, plain oysters, two sorts of mussels, a thrush on asparagus, a fatted hen, a ragout of oysters and mussels, black and white chestnuts; then different kinds of shellfish and marine animals with becaficos, loins of does and wild boars, gamepie, and purple fish with becaficos. The chief course consisted of udders of sows, a pig's head, fricassee of fish and sow's udder, two kinds of duck (boiled or otherwise prepared), hares, roasted game, a meal pudding and Picentine bread. The menu of the dessert is lost (list quoted from Friedlaender Roman Life and Manners 2.149).

DINING WITH THE ELITE ROMANS

One of ancient Rome's most famous gourmands was Lucius Licinius Lucullus (ca. 117-56 B.C.). After his long and distinguished public career, he enjoyed a retirement of ease and leisure. This was especially true when it came to dinners and their trimmings.

A typical Lucullan bash featured expensively dyed tablecloths and pitchers studded with gemstones; live entertainment, usually actors who would perform poetic recitations or excerpts of plays; and every kind of meat dish imaginable, as well as exquisitely prepared side dishes.

A story once circulated about Pompey the Great (106-48 B.C.) who, when ill, was advised by his physicians to eat a thrush. Pompey's servants replied that thrushes were nowhere to be found in that season of the year (winter), except on Lucullus's estates, where he raised them.

Pompey refused to indebt himself to Lucullus through the procurement of a thrush, instead ordering the servants to concoct some equivalent medicinal preparation.

Lucullus thoroughly enjoyed his luxurious lifestyle and never seemed to care if others criticized or envied him. He once entertained some Greek visitors for several days, but as the costly amenities continued to flow forth, the guests became increasingly uncomfortable. Finally, they told him, they could stay no longer, because Lucullus was running up such a large tab on their account. Lucullus smiled and replied that although some of his expenditures were on their account, most of the outlays were on his account.

On another occasion he was scheduled to eat dinner alone. His cooks, knowing this, prepared a modest meal for him, with only one course. When the unadorned food was placed before him. Lucullus was furious and demanded to speak to the servant responsible for such slim pickings.

The servant's explanation: because he knew that Lucullus would be dining without guests, he thought that a less costly meal would suffice. "What are you talking about?" bellowed Lucullus. "Don't you know that Lucullus is feeding Lucullus today?"

Lucullus's residences featured a number of dining rooms, each with its own serving staff, cookware, table settings, and budget. Therefore it was relatively easy for him to organize a lavish dinner party on short notice. One day Cicero and Pompey approached him while he was relaxing in the forum; they said that they wished to discuss some business with him over dinner. To this request he readily assented and invited them to do so at his home, but in a day or two. They protested that the matter was pressing and could not be postponed even for that long; they were hoping to embarrass Lucullus into serving them ordinary food in an unpretentious setting, as there would not be enough time for him toarrange an expensive spread.

But Lucullus got the last laugh by ordering his servants to immediately set three places at the Apollo, the name he gave to one of his most elegant dining rooms; dinners there regularly incurred great expense. So when Pompey and Cicero were ushered into the Apollo, they were astonished, both at the costliness of the meal and at the speed with which their host was able to assemble it (Plutarch Life of Lucullus 41).

Menu Items for the Elite 

Lampreys. 

The lamprey was judged to be a desirable dinner delicacy by many of the elite in Rome, as Macrobius indicates in the following anecdotes.

Lucius Licinius Crassus, an early first century B.C.orator, was held in the highest esteem by his contemporaries; he eventually rose to the office of censor. And yet, when a prized lamprey of his died in the fish pond on the grounds of his estate, he donned mourning garb as if a member of his own family had passed away. This incident quickly became grist for Rome's rumor mill, to the point that his colleague in the censorship, Gnaeus Domitius, made a speech in the senate criticizing him for such ridiculous and inappropriate behavior. Crassus rose to his feet to respond. He admitted that he had mourned the loss of the lamprey, but he also claimed that his action was entirely fitting.

Cato the Younger (95-46 B.C.) inherited a fish pond from another noted first century B.C. lover of fine living, Lucius Licinius Lucullus. Because Cato had no use for the lampreys with which the pond was stocked, he sold them all for a sum of 40,000 sesterces. The incident, says Macrobius, illustrates how men of wealth—like Lucullus, the orator Hortensius, and others—valued the lamprey as a gourmand's delight.

Lampreys were imported to Rome from Sicilian waters, where they were called "floaters." They received this name because they habitually swam near the water's surface. They were unable to dive because of their prolonged exposure to the hot summer sun and also because of their plumpness, which added to their buoyancy. Fishermen found it an easy task to simply "harvest" the lampreys by grabbing them with their hands and tossing them into the fishing boats.

Lampreys were relatively common in Rome, at least in the fish ponds and dining rooms of the city's wealthier inhabitants. But even average citizens could occasionally feast on the creatures; when Julius Caesar, for example, was celebrating one of his many military triumphs, he purchased for the people 6,000 pounds of lampreys from a certain Gavius Hirrius. This Hirrius, although not inordinately affluent, was able to sell his country estate for 4,000,000 sesterces, its primary selling point being the well-stocked fish ponds (Macrobius Saturnalia 15.3-9).

Sturgeon. 

Alongside the lamprey on the list of luxurious menu selections was the sturgeon.

Cicero (106-43 B.C) confirms the sturgeon's lofty status in his philosophical essay On Fate (as recorded by Macrobius) in which he relates an anecdote about Scipio Aemilianus. One evening, when Scipio and his friend Pontius were relaxing at Scipio's home in Lavernium, a large sturgeon was served to him. Pleased that such a rare delicacy was to be consumed at the evening meal, he was about to invite several more friends to join him. But Pontius cautioned him against such liberality, pointing out that it was not often that sturgeon was on the menu and that he ought to be selective about who, and how many, could share inthe repast (Macrobius Saturnalia 3.16).

By Pliny the Younger's time (late first, early second century A.D.) the sturgeon had for some unknown reason fallen into disfavor among gourmands. But it experienced a renaissance in the following century, at which time contemporary authors noted that "the fish [had in former times been] brought to table by servants crowned with garlands and to the accompaniment of the flute" (Macrobius Saturnalia 3.16; tr. P. V. Davies).

Boar's Meat. 

In Rome's earlier days, boar's meat was considered a disgusting consumable; during his censorship in 184 B.C., for example, Cato the Elder delivered several speeches condemning the practice of eating such a food.

Tastes, however, changed. In the first century B.C., Publius Servilius Rullus became the first man on Roman record to cook and serve a whole boar at his dinner parties. By the first century A.D. it was not unusual for two or even three boars to be served at banquets (Pliny the Elder Natural History 8.210).

Wrasse. 

The wrasse (a kind of fish that according to Webster's Third International Dictionary is an "elongate compressed but heavy-bodied usu[ally] brilliantly colored marine fish ... related to the parrot fishes,but hav[ing] separate teeth in their jaws and conspicuous thick lips") was so rare in the seas around Italy that there was not even a Latin word for it. However, a certain Optatus, who as a naval commander had sailed far and wide, learned of the wrasse and caught and sent home a great quantity of them (alive); ships with specially designed tanks were used to accomplish this task. The fish were released into the coastal waters of Italy, "sown in the sea as grain is sown in the earth," as Macrobius put it.

Furthermore, Optatus suggested that for the five-year period following the wrasse-stocking program, any fisherman who caught one should immediately return it to its watery adoptive home (Macrobius Saturnalia 3.16; tr. P. V. Davies).

Pearls.

Pliny the Elder (A.D. 23-79) records a strange menu selection of Clodius, son of the actor Aesopus. This Clodius was evidently fairly wealthy, having inherited a large estate from his father. One day he developed an odd hankering to know how pearls might taste. To find out, he did the obvious thing: he popped one into his mouth! Satisfied that pearls were indeed tasty, he decided to serve some at the next banquet he put on. He gave his guests one pearl apiece to eat so that they, too, might share in the pearl's palate-pleasing characteristics (Pliny the Elder Natural History 9.122).

Mark Antony (82-30 B.C), whose reputation for excessive chinking and eating was well established in Rome, once actually proposed a law limiting expenditures on banquets. The circumstances that led to this proposal were as follows:

Cleopatra had made a "friendly wager" with him that she could fund a dinner party costing 10,000,000 sesterces, a sum greater than even he — the exemplar of extravagance, the king of costliness, the lord of lavishness — had ever spent on such a party. Antony could not believe that she would be able to pull it off, so he accepted her wager, with Munatius Plancus holding the money and playing the role of impartial arbiter.

The next day Cleopatra put on a spread — elegant and expensive but not outlandishly so, by Antonian standards, at least— so he began to feel confident of winning the bet. But then Cleopatra ordered one of the servants to bring out a drinking glass, which she filled with vinegar; in one swift motion she removed a large pearl from one of her earrings and dropped it into the glass. The vinegar dissolved the pearl; Cleopatra downed the pearly drink and was ready to declare herself the winner, because the pearl she had swallowed was by itself worth 10,000,000 sesterces.

However, before claiming her winnings she raised her hand and was preparing to consume the valuable pearl in her other earring in the same way, when Plancus intervened and officially ruled that Antony had lost the bet. After falling victim to Cleopatra's trickery, Antony apparently was motivated to propose his sumptuary law.

The remaining pearl survived the ordeal. Later (after the Battle of Actiumin 31 B.C.) it was taken from Cleopatra and brought to Rome. Its immensity could be illustrated by the fact that it was cut in half and a "new" pearl was fashioned from each half; the two "new" pearls were still considered large enough to be worthy of a place on the statue of Venus in the Pantheon (Macrobius Saturnalia).

From time to time Roman politicians proposed, and Roman legislatures passed, mostly unenforceable Sumptuary Laws sumptuary laws designed to regulate the amount of money that could be spent on banquets and the kinds of foods served at them. These policies sometimes ushered in unexpected consequences, as the following Ciceronian letter shows:

"In case you [Marcus Fadius Gallus] should wonder what caused this attack [of diarrhea] or how I brought it upon myself, it was that sumptuary law, which is supposed to have inaugurated "plain living,"—it was that, I say, which proved my undoing. For your gourmets, in their anxiety to bring into favor the fruits of the earth, which are exempted under that law, season their mushrooms, potherbs, and greens of every kind with a skill that makes them irresistibly delicious. I was let in for that sort of food at an augural banquet at Lentulus's house [to celebrate Lentulus's selection as an augur], with the result that I was seized with an attack of diarrhea so persistent that not until today has it shown any signs of stopping. So I, who had no difficulty abstaining from oysters and lampreys, was [done in by beets and mallow]. So for the future I should take better care of myself I intend staying on here until I am restored to health, for I have lost both strength and weight. But once I have beaten off this attack, I shall easily, I hope, recover both. (Cicero Letters to His Friends 7.26; tr. W. Glynn Williams LCL)"

For an example that provided the impetus for sumptuary laws, one might cite the 8,000-sesterce mullet. During the reign of the emperor Caligula (A.D. 37-41), a certain Asinius Celer paid that very sum for a mullet and dared his fellow gourmands to top that price. The recorder of this anecdote, Pliny the Elder, goes on to remark that a skilled cook once fetched a higher purchase price than a horse, but that now "the price of three horses is given for a cook, and the price of three cooks for a fish" (Pliny the Elder Natural History 9.67).

A Feast for Antony and Cleopatra

Plutarch (ca. A.D. 50-ca. 120) relates an anecdote told to his grandfather by a certain Philotas, a young medical student living in Alexandria at the time in which Mark An- Antony and tony was courting Cleopatra. Philotas developed a friendship with one of Cleopatra's cooks, who invited him to take a tour of the royal kitchen on a day on which a feast was being prepared for Antony and Cleopatra. Philotas was flabbergasted at the sights that met his eyes: a huge abundance of food, including no fewer than eight wild boars, all in various stages of preparation.

Philotas figured that there must be a virtual army of guests expected, but the cook laughingly explained that only about twelve diners would partake of the meal. But they were extremely demanding diners, and every course had to be done to a turn—and at the exact time that they desired. Unfortunately, the kitchen staff never knew precisely when that demand would come; sometimes Antony wanted to eat immediately, but at other times, only after drinking some wine and chatting with his fellow diners. Therefore, said the cook, "not one, but many suppers are arranged; for the precise time is hard to hit" (Plutarch Life of Mark Antony 28; tr. B. Perrin LCL)

Dinner with the Emperor Augustus 

The emperor Augustus (ruled 27 B.C.-A.D. 14) was not the most gregarious of men, but nevertheless  he enjoyed giving formal banquets, as Suetonius relates:

"He gave dinner parties constantly and always formally, with great regard to the rank and personality of his guests. Valerius Messala writes that he never invited a freedman to dinner with the exception of Menas, and then only when he had been enrolled among the freeborn after betraying the fleet of Sextus Pompey... He would sometimes come to table late . . . and leave early, allowing his guests to begin to dine before he took his place and keep their places after he went out. He served a dinner of three courses or of six when he was most lavish, without needless extravagance but with the greatest goodfellowship. For he drew into general conversation those who were silent or chatted under their breath, and introduced music and actors, or even strolling players from the circus, and especially story-tellers."

Augustus's own eating habits were anything but luxurious. He did not eat much, and when he did eat, ordinary fare was usually the order of the day; he particularly liked bread, fish, cheese, and figs. Sometimes he ate "on the road" when traveling in a carriage; on these occasions a little bread, a few grapes, and maybe some dates would be on the menu. He drank wine, but only in very moderate amounts and almost never before dinner.

Because he often ate in between meals—favoring bread, cucumber slices, lettuce, or apples on these occasions—he might not eat anything at all at his formal dinner parties (Suetonius Life of Augustus 74, 76, 77; tr. J. C. Rolfe LCL).

By David Matz in "Daily Life of the Ancient Romans" Grenwood Press, USA, 2002, excerpts pp.23-30. Digitized, adapted and illustrated to be posted by Leopoldo Costa.