FOOD AND DRINK IN ANCIENT WORLD - 2
GREECE AND ROME
GREECE
9. Alexander the Great’s Daily Meal Routine
In his biography of Alexander the Great, the Greek biographer Plutarch (A.D. c. 45–c. 120) provides the following details about Alexander’s eating and drinking habits. He had the most complete mastery over his appetite... When, in the kindness of her heart [referring to a queen whom he knew], she used to send him, every day, many fancy dishes and sweets, and finally offered him bakers and cooks reputed to be very skillful, he said that he wanted none of them, for he had better cooks who had been given to him by his tutor, Leonidas: For his breakfast, namely, a night march, and for his supper, a light breakfast ...
He was less addicted to wine than was generally believed. The belief arose from the great amount of time he would spend over each cup, more in talking than in drinking ... After he had taken quarters for the night... he would inquire of his chief cooks and bakers whether the arrangements for his supper had been made. When it was late and already dark, he would begin his supper, reclining on a couch, and his care and moderation at the dinner table were remarkable... over the wine, as I have said, he would sit long, for the sake of conversation ... After the drinking was over, he would take a bath and sleep, often until mid-day, and sometimes he would actually spend the entire day in sleep.
In the matter of delicacies, too, he was master of his appetite, so that often, when the rarest fruits or fish were brought to him from the seacoast, he would distribute them to each of his friends until he was the only one for whom nothing remained. His suppers, however, were always magnificent, and the outlay on them increased with his successes.
Source: Plutarch’s Lives. Volume VII. Translated by Bernadotte Perrin. London and Cambridge: Loeb Classical Library, 1919.
10. Avoid Superfluous Food
In this excerpt from his Moralia, the Greek biographer Plutarch (A.D. c. 45–c. 120) comments on the dangers of overeating. Just as the scents of flowers are weak by themselves, whereas when they are mixed with oil, they acquire strength and intensity, so a great mass of food to start with provides substance and body, as it were, for the causes and sources of disease that come from the outside. Without such material, none of these things would cause any trouble, but they would readily fade away and be dissipated, if clear blood and an unpolluted spirit are at hand to meet the disturbance.
But in a mass of superfluous food a sort of turbulent sediment is stirred up, which makes everything foul and hard to manage, and hard to get rid of. Therefore, we must not act like those much-admired ship captains who, because of greed, take on a big cargo, but then are continually engaged in baling out the sea water. So we must not stuff and overload our body, and afterwards employ purgatives and injections, but rather keep it trim all the time.
Source: Plutarch’s Moralia. Volume II. Translated by Frank Cole Babbitt. London and New York: Loeb Classical Library, 1928.
11. The Joy of Eating Onions
In the following excerpt, the Greek historian Xenophon (c. 430–c. 354 B.C.) describes a Greek banquet in which the diners discuss the properties of the onion. And beside this, I know something else, which you may test immediately. For Homer says somewhere: “An onion, too, a relish for the drink.” Now if someone will bring an onion, you will receive this benefit, at any rate, without delay, for you will get more pleasure out of your drinking. “Gentlemen,” said Charmides, “Niceratus is intent on going home smelling of onions to make his wife believe that no one would even have conceived the thought of kissing him.”
“Undoubtedly,” said Socrates. “But we run the risk of getting a different sort of reputation, one that will bring us ridicule. For though the onion seems to be in the truest sense a relish, since it adds to our enjoyment not only of food, but also of drink, yet if we eat it not only with our dinner, but after it as well, take care that someone does not say of us that [during our banquet], we were merely indulging our appetites.” “Heaven forbid, Socrates!” was the reply. “I grant that when a man is setting out for battle, it is well for him to nibble an onion, just as some people give their fighting birds a feed of garlic before pitting them together in the ring. As for us, however, our plans perhaps look more to getting a kiss from someone than to fighting.”
Source: Xenophon: Symposium and Apology. Translated by O. J. Todd. Cambridge and London: Loeb Classical Library, 1923.
12. A Sensible Diet
As a medical writer, the fourth-century B.C. Greek physician Hippocrates recognized the important of diet in maintaining good health. For the art of medicine would never have been discovered to begin with, nor would any medical research have been conducted... if sick people had profited by the same mode of living and regimen as the food, drink, and mode of living of people in health... To trace the matter yet further back, I assert that not even the mode of living and nourishment enjoyed at the present time by healthy people would have been discovered, had a person been satisfied with the same food and drink as satisfy an ox, a horse, and every animal except humans; for example, the products of the earth: fruits, wood, and grass.
For on these, animals are nourished, grow, and live without pain, having no need at all of any other kind of living. In my opinion, to begin with, humans also used this sort of nourishment... the ancients seem to me to have sought for nourishment that which harmonized with their constitution, and to have discovered that which we use now. So from wheat, after steeping it, winnowing, grinding and sifting, kneading, baking, they produced bread, and from barley, they produced cake.
Experimenting with food, they boiled or baked, after mixing, many other things, combining the strong and uncompounded with the weaker components, so as to adapt all to the constitution and power of humans, thinking that from foods which, being too strong, the human constitution cannot assimilate when eaten, will come pain, disease and death, while from such as can be assimilated will come nourishment, growth and health . . . [This] discovery was a great one, implying much investigation and skill. At any rate, even in the present day, those who study gymnastics and athletic exercises are constantly making some fresh discovery by investigating on the same method what food and what drink are best assimilated and make a person grow stronger.
Source: Hippocrates. Translated by W.H.S. Jones. Cambridge and London: Loeb Classical Library, 1923.
13. The Pythagoreans Did Like Beans
The second-century A.D. Roman author Aulus Gellius, in this passage from his Attic Nights, debunks the notion that the sixth-century B.C. Greek philosopher Pythagoras excluded meat and beans from his diet. An erroneous belief of long standing has established itself and become current, that the philosopher Pythagoras did not eat meat, and also that he abstained from eating beans. In accordance with that belief, the poet Callimachus wrote:
"I tell you too, as did Pythagoras, Withhold your hands from beans, a hurtful food. Also, as the result of the same belief, Cicero wrote these words in the first book of his work On Divination: “Plato therefore bids us go to our sleep in such bodily condition that there may be nothing to cause delusion and disturbance in our minds. It is thought to be for that reason, too, that the Pythagoreans were forbidden to eat beans, a food that produces great flatulency, which is disturbing to those who seek mental calm.”
So then, Cicero. But Aristoxenus the musician, a man thoroughly versed in early literature, a pupil of the philosopher Aristotle, in the book On Pythagoras which he has left us, says that Pythagoras ate no vegetable more often than beans, since that food gently loosened the bowels and relieved them. I add Aristoxenus’ own words: “Pythagoras among vegetables especially recommended the bean, saying that it was both digestible and loosening; and therefore, he most frequently ate it.”
Aristoxenus also relates that Pythagoras ate very young pigs and tender kids. This fact he seems to have learned from his close friend Xenophilus the Pythagorean and from some other older men, who lived not long after the time of Pythagoras. And the same information about animal food is given by the poet Alexis, in the comedy entitled The Pythagorean Bluestocking. Furthermore, the reason for the mistaken idea about abstaining from beans seems to be, that in a poem of Empedocles, who was a follower of Pythagoras, this line is found: “O wretches, utter wretches, from beans withhold your hands . . . ” Plutarch, too, a man of weight in scientific matters, in the first book of his work On Homer, wrote that Aristotle gave the same account of the Pythagoreans, namely that except for a few parts of the flesh, they did not abstain from eating meat.
Source: The Attic Nights of Aulus Gellius. Volumes I and III. Translated by John C. Rolfe. Cambridge and London: Loeb Classical Library, 1927.
14. Don’t Drink Snow-Melt Water
In this excerpt from his Attic Nights (see also Document 13, above), the Roman author Aulus Gellius (A.D. c. 125–c. 180) references some passages from the fourth-century B.C. Greek philosopher Aristotle, about the unhealthiness of drinking water from melted snow. In the hottest season of the year, with some companions and friends of mine who were students of eloquence or of philosophy, I had withdrawn to the country place of a rich friend at Tibur. There was with us a good man... well trained, and especially devoted to [the writings of ] Aristotle. When we drank a good deal of water made of melted snow, he tried to restrain us, and rather severely scolded us. He cited for us the authority of famous physicians, and in particular of the philosopher Aristotle ... who declared that snow water was indeed helpful to grain and trees, but was a very unwholesome drink for human beings, and that it gradually produced wasting diseases in the body, which made their appearance only after a long time.
This advice he gave us repeatedly, in a spirit of prudence and good will. But when the drinking of snow water went on without interruption, from the library of Tibur, which... was well supplied with books, he pulled out a volume of Aristotle and brought it to us, saying, “At least believe the words of the wisest of men, and stop ruining your health.”
In that book it was written that water from snow was very bad to drink, as was also that water which was more solidly and completely congealed, which the Greeks call krystallos, or “clear ice”; and the following reason was there given for this: “That when water is hardened by the cold air and congeals, it necessarily follows that evaporation takes place and that a kind of very thin vapor, so to speak, is forced from it and comes out of it. But its lightest part,” he said, “is that which is evaporated. What remains is heavier and less clean and wholesome, and this part, beaten upon by the throbbing of the air, takes on the form and color of white foam. But that some more wholesome part is forced out and evaporated from the snow is shown by the fact that it becomes less than it was before it congealed.”
I have taken a few of Aristotle’s own words from that book, and I quote them: “Why is the water made from snow or ice unwholesome? Because from all water that is frozen, the lightest and thinnest part evaporates. And the proof of this is that when it melts after being frozen, its volume is less than before. But since the most wholesome part is gone, it necessarily follows that what is left is less wholesome.” After I read this, we decided to pay honor to the learned Aristotle. And so I for my part immediately declared war upon snow and swore hatred against it, while the others made truces with it on various terms.
Source: The Attic Nights of Aulus Gellius. Volumes I and III. Translated by John C. Rolfe. Cambridge and London: Loeb Classical Library, 1927.
15. Plato Did Not Approve of Excessive Drinking
In another passage from his Attic Nights (see Documents 13 and 14, above), Aulus Gellius (A.D. c. 125–c. 180) relates a story about a man who drank to excess at parties in the mistaken belief that the Greek philosopher Plato (428–347 B.C.) approved of such behavior. A man from the island of Crete, who was living in Athens, gave out that he was a Platonic philosopher, and desired to pass himself off as one. He was, however, a man of no worth, a trifler, boastful of his command of Grecian eloquence, besides having a passion for wine which made him a laughing stock.
At the parties which it was the custom of us young men to hold at Athens at the beginning of each week, as soon as we had finished eating and an instructive and pleasant conversation had begun, this fellow, having called for silence that he might be heard, began to speak, and using a cheap and disordered rabble of words after his usual fashion, urged all to drink. He declared that he did this in accordance with the opinion of Plato, maintaining that Plato in his work On the Laws had written most eloquently in praise of drunkenness, and had decided that it was beneficial to good and strong men.
And at the same time, while he was speaking like this, he drenched such wits as he had with frequent and huge beakers of wine, saying that it was a kind of kindling wood and tinder to the intellect and the faculties, if mind and body were inflamed with wine. However, Plato, in the first and second books of his work On the Laws did not, as that fool thought, praise that shameful intoxication which generally undermines and weakens people’s minds.
Source: The Attic Nights of Aulus Gellius. Volume III. Translated by John C. Rolfe. Cambridge and London: Loeb Classical Library, 1927.
16. How to Avoid Over-Indulgence at Parties and Banquets
The Greek biographer and essayist Plutarch (A.D. c. 45–c. 120) knew that people tend to eat and drink to excess at banquets, so in this excerpt from his Moralia he offers some advice on avoiding this kind of unhealthy over-indulgence. Something was said to the effect that, while less expensive things are always more healthful for the body, we ought especially to guard against excess in eating and drinking, and against all self-indulgence when we have immediately on hand some festival or a visit from friends, or when we are expecting an entertainment of some king or high official, with its unavoidable social engagements. And so we should, as it were, make our body trim in fair weather, and buoyant against the oncoming wind and wave. It is indeed a hard task, in the midst of good friends and good cheer, to keep to moderation and one’s habits, and at the same time to avoid the extreme disagreeableness which makes one appear annoying and boring to the whole group.
Therefore, to avoid adding fire to fire—as the proverb has it—and gorging to gorging, and strong drink to strong drink, we ought with all seriousness to imitate the polite joke of Philip. It goes like this: a man had invited Philip to dinner in the country, assuming that he had only a few friends with him, but when later the host saw Philip bringing a large contingent of people, and since the host had not made preparations for such a crowd, he was much disconcerted. Philip, becoming aware of the situation, sent word privately to each of his friends to “leave room for cake.”
Following the advice, and looking for more to come, they ate sparingly of what was before them, and so there was plenty of food for everyone. In this manner, then, we ought to prepare ourselves in anticipation of our obligatory round of social engagements by keeping room in the body for elaborate dishes and pastry and, may I say it, for indulgence in strong drink also, by bringing to these things a fresh and willing appetite.
Source: Plutarch’s Moralia. Volume II. Translated by Frank Cole Babbitt. London and New York: Loeb Classical Library, 1928.
ROME
17. Mark Antony’s Lavish Dinner
The Egyptian queen Cleopatra (69–30 B.C.) knew how to throw a dinner party, especially when the guest of honor was the Roman soldier and politician Mark Antony (83–30 B.C.). The Greek author Athenaeus, who wrote at the end of the second century A.D., provides the particulars of one banquet in the following excerpt from his Deipnosophistae. Socrates of Rhodes... describes the banquet given by Cleopatra, the last queen of Egypt, who married the Roman general, Antony . . . His words are: “Meeting Antony in Cilicia, Cleopatra arranged in his honor a royal banquet, in which the service was entirely of gold and jeweled vessels made with exquisite art. Even the walls, says Socrates, were hung with tapestries made of purple and gold threads. And having spread twelve dining couches, Cleopatra invited Antony and his chosen friends. He was overwhelmed with the richness of the display, but she quietly smiled and said that all these things were a present for him.
She also invited him to come and dine with her again the next day, with his friends and his officers. On this occasion, she provided an even more sumptuous banquet by far, so that she caused the vessels which had been used on the first occasion to appear paltry. And once more, she presented him with these also.
As for the officers, each was allowed to take away the couch on which he had reclined. Even the sideboards, as well as the spreads for the couches, were divided among them. And when they departed, she furnished litters for the guests of high rank, with bearers, while for the rest she provided horses . . . with silver-plated harnesses, and for all she sent along Ethiopian slaves to carry the torches. On the fourth day, she distributed fees, amounting to a talent, for the purchase of roses, and the floors of the dining rooms were strewn with them to a depth of 18 inches, in net-like festoons spread everywhere.
Source: Athenaeus: The Deipnosophists. Volume II. Translated by Charles Burton Gulick. London and New York: Loeb Classical Library, 1928.
18. Trimalchio’s Lavish Dinner
The ancient Romans loved to eat, and there is plenty of evidence to illustrate their fondness for eating and drinking. Possibly the most famous Roman dinner party was the one thrown in the first century A.D. by the fictional Trimalchio, a principle character in the Latin novel entitled Satyricon, which was written by the Roman satirist Petronius (A.D. c. 27–65). As the following excerpt from the novel shows, Trimalchio was boastful, arrogant, officious, irritating, and misinformed on many subjects... but rich. And he knew how to put on a spread!
Now that the guests were all in their places, the hors d’oeuvres were served, and very sumptuous they were. Trimalchio alone was still absent, and the place of honor— reserved for the host in the modern fashion—stood empty. But I was speaking of the hors d’oeuvres. On a large tray stood a donkey made of rare Corinthian bronze; on the donkey’s back were two panniers, one holding green olives, the other, black. Flanking the donkey were two side dishes, both engraved with Trimalchio’s name and the weight of the silver, while in dishes shaped to resemble little bridges there were dormice, all dipped in honey and rolled in poppyseed. Nearby, on a silver grill, piping hot, lay small sausages, while beneath the grill, black damsons and red pomegranates had been sliced up and arranged so as to give the effect of flames playing over charcoal...
We, meanwhile, were still occupied with the hors d’oeuvres when a tray was carried in and set down before us. On it lay a basket, and in it a hen, carved from wood, with wings outspread as though sitting on her eggs. Then two slaves came forward and, to a loud flourish from the orchestra, began rummaging in the straw and pulling out peahen’s eggs, which they divided among the guests. Trimalchio gave the whole performance his closest attention. “Friends,” he said, “I ordered peahen eggs to be set under that hen, but I’m half afraid they may have hatched already. Still, let’s see if we can suck them.” We were handed spoons—weighing at least half a pound apiece—and cracked open the eggs, which turned out to be baked from rich pastry. To tell the truth, I had almost tossed my share away, thinking the eggs were really addled. But I heard one of the guests, obviously a veteran of these dinners, say, “I wonder what little surprise we’ve got in here.”
So I cracked the shell with my hand, and found inside a fine fat oriole, nicely seasoned with pepper... The [next] course... failed to measure up to our expectations of our host, but it was so unusual that it took everybody’s attention. Spaced around a circular tray were the twelve signs of the zodiac, and over each sign, the chef had put the most appropriate food. Thus, over the sign of Aries were chickpeas, over Taurus a slice of beef, a pair of testicles and kidneys over Gemini, a wreath of flowers over Cancer, over Leo an African fig, virgin sowbelly on Virgo, over Libra a pair of scales with a tartlet in one pan and a cheesecake in the other, over Scorpio a crawfish, a lobster on Capricorn, on Aquarius a goose, and two mullets over the sign of the Fishes. The centerpiece was a clod of turf with the grass still green on top and the whole thing surmounted by a fat honeycomb.
Meanwhile, bread in a silver chafing dish was being handed around by a slave with long hair who was shrilling in an atrocious voice some song from the pantomime called Asafoetida. With some reluctance, we began to attack this wretched fare, but Trimalchio kept urging us, “Eat up, gentlemen, eat up!”
Suddenly, the orchestra gave another flourish and four slaves came dancing in and whisked off the top of the tray. Underneath, in still another tray, lay fat capons and sowbellies and a hare decked out with wings to look like a little Pegasus. At the corners of the tray stood four little gravy boats, all shaped like the satyr Marsyas, with... a spicy hot gravy dripping down over several large fish swimming about in the lagoon of the tray. The slaves burst out clapping, we clapped too, and turned with gusto to these new delights. Trimalchio, enormously pleased with the success of his little tour de force, roared for a slave to come and carve.
The carver appeared instantly and went to work, thrusting with his knife like a gladiator practicing to the accompaniment of a water-organ. But all the time Trimalchio kept mumbling in a low voice, “Carver, carver, carver, carver.” I suspected that this chant was somehow connected with a trick, so I asked my neighbor, an old hand at these party surprises. “Look,” he said, “you see that slave who’s carving? Well, he’s called Carver, so every time Trimalchio says ‘Carver’, he’s also saying ‘Carve ’er!’, and giving him orders to carve”...Servants came with a tray on which we saw a wild sow of absolutely enormous size. Perched rakishly on the sow’s head was the cap of freedom which newly freed slaves wear in token of their liberty, and from her tusks hung two baskets woven from palm leaves. One was filled with dry Egyptian dates, the other held sweet Syrian dates. Clustered around her teats were little suckling pigs made of hard pastry, gifts for the guests to take home as it turned out, but intended to show that ours was a brood-sow.
The slave who stepped up to carve, however, was not our old friend Carver who had cut up the capons, but a huge fellow with a big beard, a coarse hunting cape thrown over his shoulders, and his legs bound up in cross-gaiters. He whipped out his knife and gave a savage slash at the sow’s flanks. Under the blow, the flesh parted, the wound burst open and dozens of thrushes came whirring out! But bird-catchers with limed twigs were standing by, and before long they had snared all the birds as they thrashed wildly around the room. Trimalchio ordered that a thrush be given to each guest, adding for good measure, ‘Well, that old porker liked her acorns juicy all right.’ Then servants stepped forward, removed the baskets hanging from the sow’s nose, and divided the dry and sweet dates out equally among the guests...
He [Trimalchio] was still chattering away when the servants came in with an immense hog on a tray almost the size of the table. We were, of course, astounded at the chef’s speed and swore it would have taken longer to roast an ordinary chicken, all the more since the pig looked even bigger than the one served to us earlier. Meanwhile, Trimalchio had been scrutinizing the pig very closely and suddenly roared, ‘What! What’s this? By god, this hog hasn’t even been gutted! Get that cook in here on the double!’ Looking very miserable, the poor cook came shuffling up to the table and admitted that he had forgotten to gut the pig.
“You forgot?” bellowed Trimalchio. “You forgot to gut a pig?” And I suppose you think that’s the same thing as merely forgetting to add salt and pepper. Strip that man!” The cook was promptly stripped and stood there stark naked between two bodyguards, utterly forlorn. The guests, to a man, however, interceded for the chef. “Accidents happen,” they said, “please don’t whip him. If he ever does it again, we promise we won’t say a word for him.” My own reaction was anger, savage and unrelenting.
I could barely restrain myself and leaning over, I whispered to Agamemnon [one of the other dinner guests], “Did you ever hear of anything worse? Who could forget to gut a pig? By god, you wouldn’t catch me letting him off, not if it was just a fish he’d forgotten to clean.” Not so Trimalchio, however. He sat there, a great grin widening across his face, and said: “Well, since your memory’s so bad, you can gut the pig here in front of us all.” The cook was handed back his clothes, drew out his knife with a shaking hand and then slashed at the pig’s belly with crisscross cuts. The slits widened out under the pressure from inside, and suddenly out poured, not the pig’s bowels and guts, but link upon link of tumbling sausages and blood puddings.
Source: From The Satyricon by Petronius, translated by William Arrowsmith, copyright © 1959, renewed © 1987 by William Arrowsmith. Used by permission of Dutton Signet, a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
19. Horace’s Refined Dinner
In contrast to the excesses of Trimalchio’s dinner party, the Roman poet Horace (65–8 B.C.), in this excerpt from the second satire of Book II of his Satires, recommends a somewhat less luxurious eating regimen. When hard work and toil has knocked the daintiness out of you, when you are thirsty and hungry, refuse, if you can, plain food. Refuse to drink any mead, unless the honey is from Hymettus, and the wine from Falernum. How do you think this comes about? The chief pleasure lies, not in the costly dinner, but in yourself. So earn your sauce with hard exercise. The man who is bloated and pale from excess will find no comfort in oysters or trout or foreign grouse.
Yet, if a peacock is served for dinner, I will hardly root out your longing to tickle your palate with it rather than with a pullet. You are deceived by the peacock’s vain appearance, because the rare bird costs gold and makes a brave show with the picture of its outspread tail—as though that had anything to do with the case! Do you eat the feathers you so admire? Does the bird look as fine when cooked? Yet, though in their meat they are on a par, to think that you crave the one rather than the other, duped by the difference in appearance!...
Now learn what and how great are the blessings that simple living brings with it. First of all, good health. For how harmful to a person a variety of dishes is, you may realize if you recall that plain food which agreed with you in other days. But as soon as you mix boiled and roast, shell fish and thrushes, the sweet will turn to bile, and the thick phlegm will cause intestine feud. Do you see how pale the guests are as they arise from this smorgasboard? Furthermore, clogged with yesterday’s excess, the body drags down with itself the mind as well.
Source: Horace: Satires, Epistles, and Ars Poetica. Translated by H. Rushton Fairclough. Cambridge and London: Loeb Classical Library, 1926.
20. The Dinner Party Thrown by Nasidienus Rufus
In this passage from Book II of Satire VIII, the Roman poet Horace (65–8 B.C.) describes a dinner party given by a certain Nasidienus Rufus. Horace: How did you like your dinner with the rich Nasidienus? Yesterday, when I tried to get you as my own guest, I was told you had been dining there since midday. Fundanius: So much so that never in my life did I have a better time.
Horace: Tell me, if you don’t mind, what was the first dish to appease an angry appetite? Fundanius: First, there was a wild boar. It was caught when a gentle south wind was blowing, as the father of the feast kept telling us. Around it were pungent turnips, lettuces, radishes—such things as whet a jaded appetite—skirret, fish-pickle, and Coan lees. When these were removed, a high-girt slave wiped the maple-wood table with a purple napkin, while a second swept up the scraps and anything that could offend the guests...
Horace: . . . Who, Fundanius, were those at dinner, with whom you had so fine a time? I am eager to know. Fundanius: Myself at the top, then next to me Viscus of Thurii, and below, if I remember, Varius. Then Vibidius and Servilius Balatro, the two moochers. Above our host was Nomentanus; below him, Porcius, who made us laugh by swallowing whole cheesecakes in one bite. Nomentanus was there to see that if anything might escape our notice, he would point it out with his forefinger. For the rest of the guests—we, I mean—eat fowl, oysters, and fish, which had a flavor far different from any we knew, as, for instance, was made clear at once, after he had handed me the livers of a plaice and a turbot, a dish I had never tasted before. After this he informed me that the honey apples were red because they were picked in the light of a waning moon. What difference that would make, you could better learn from him . . .
Then is brought in a lamprey, outstretched on a platter, with shrimps swimming all around it. Upon seeing this, the master said: “This was caught before spawning. If it were taken later, its flesh would have been poorer. The ingredients of the sauce are these: oil from Venafrum of the first pressing; roe from the juices of the Spanish mackerel; [Italian] wine five years old, poured in while it is on the boil... white pepper, and vinegar” ...
Then follow servants, bearing on a huge charger the limbs of a crane sprinkled with much salt and meal, and the liver of a white goose fattened on rich figs, and hares’ limbs torn off, as being more dainty than if eaten with the loins. Then we saw blackbirds served with the breast burned, and pigeons without the rumps—real dainties... But off we ran, taking our revenge on [our host] by tasting nothing at all, as though the things were... more deadly than African serpents.
Source: Horace: Satires, Epistles, and Ars Poetica. Translated by H. Rushton Fairclough. Cambridge and London: Loeb Classical Library, 1926.
21. Horace Invites His Friend Torquatus to Dinner
The Roman poet Horace (65–8 B.C.) enjoyed entertaining friends at dinner, but certainly never on the lavish scale of a Trimalchio. He once issued the following dinner invitation to his friend Torquatus.
"Torquatus, you’re expected at my house this evening at sunset,
That is, if you think you can stretch out your legs comfortably On the old-fashioned couches that Archias designed for me,
And can put up with a modest meal served on plain plates.
The wine we’ll drink is Second Consulate Taurian [i.e., from the second consulship of Titus Statilius Taurus, 26 b.c.], Poured off at Villa Petrinum, near Sinuessa, Below the salt flats of Minturnae. Or have you a better Vintage to offer? If so, send it round with your slave. If not, you’ll have to take your orders from me.
My hearth has been gleaming for days now, just for your sake,
My furniture cleaned up and set right.
Drop everything,
Those airy ambitions, that drive to make still more money,
Your defense of Moschus on that poisoning charge.
Tomorrow [September 22] is Caesar’s birthday. We’re all excused, to sleep late,
To stretch the summer night with copious talk.
What is my fortune for, if I can’t make use of it?
Someone who, out of regard for his heir, is stingy,
And much too hard on himself, sits next to a madman.
So I will begin the rites, the scattering of flowers...
I take it upon myself to vouch for the following,
And do so gladly: that no tattered linen of mine,
No dirty napkin, will make you turn up your nose
In disgust; that pitchers and plates reflect your image
Like mirrors; that no one is present who will gossip outside
About what is said among faithful friends, so that equals
May be intimate with equals. I’ll invite Septicius
And Butra to meet you, and add Sabinus to the list,
Unless a prior engagement or a slyer girl
Detains him. There are places enough for a few of your shades,
But when goats get too close together, the air’s a bit thick.
You’ve only to write back how many you want us to be,
Then drop everything: the client you’re supposed to see,
Your business. Sneak out the back. Come to my dinner party!"
Source: The Satires and Epistles of Horace. Translated by Smith Palmer Bovie. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1959. Copyright © 1959 by The University of Chicago Press. All rights reserved. Reprinted with permission of the publisher.
22. Stiffed for Dinner!
The Roman writer Pliny the Younger (A.D. 62–114) dropped the following note to his friend Septicius Clarus, who was supposed to join him for dinner, but who never showed up. How did it happen, my friend, that you did not keep your appointment the other night to have dinner with me? Now take notice: the court is in session, and you will fully reimburse me the expense I laid out to treat you, which, let me tell you, was no small sum. I want you to know that I had prepared a lettuce and three snails apiece, along with two eggs, barley water, some sweet wine and snow—I most certainly will charge the snow to your account, as it was spoiled in the serving. Besides all these curious dishes, there were olives, beets, gourds, shallots, and a hundred other delicacies, equally sumptuous.
Likewise, you would have been entertained either with an interlude, the rehearsal of a poem, or a piece of music, as you like best, or—such was my generosity—with all three. But the oysters, chitterlings, seas urchins, and Spanish dancers, of a certain, I know not who, were, it seems, more to your taste. However, I’ll have my revenge; you can count on it. What kind of revenge will be a secret for now.
In good truth, it was not kind of me to humble a friend—I almost said yourself, and upon second thought, I do say so. How pleasantly would we have spent the evening, in laughing, joking, and friendship! You can get a better dinner at many other places, I’m sure. But you can be treated nowhere, believe me, with more unrestrained cheerfulness, forthrightness, and freedom. Please give it a try. And if you do not forever after prefer my dinner parties to any others, then never dine with me again. Farewell.
Source: Pliny’s Letters. Volume I. Translated by William Melmoth, with revisions by W.M.L. Hutchinson. Cambridge and London: Loeb Classical Library, 1915.
23. Treat the Help Kindly
The Roman philosopher Seneca (4 B.C.–A.D. 65) was no Trimalchio eithe, when it came to dinner etiquette. Unlike Trimalchio, Seneca believed that servants and slaves, who prepared and served the food, always deserved to be treated respectfully.
I smile at those who think it degrading for a man to share a meal with his slave. But why should they think it degrading? It is only because a purse-proud etiquette surrounds a householder at his dinner with a mob of standing slaves. The master eats more than he can hold, and with monstrous greed loads his belly until it is stretched and at length ceases to do the work of a belly, so that he is at greater pains to discharge all the food than he was to stuff it down. All this time, the poor slaves may not move their lips, even to speak...
When we recline at a banquet, one slave mops up the disgorged food, another crouches beneath the table and gathers up the leftovers of the tipsy guests. Another carves the priceless game birds. With unerring strokes and skilled hand, he cuts the choice morsels along the breast or the rump. Poor fellow, to live only for the purpose of cutting fat capons correctly, unless the other man is still more unhappy than he, who teaches this art for pleasure’s sake, rather than he who learns it because he must.
Another, who serves the wine, must dress like a woman and wrestle with his advancing years . . . Another, whose duty it is to put a valuation on the guests, must stick to his task, unlucky man, and watch to see whose flattery and whose immodesty, whether of appetite or of language, is to get them an invitation for tomorrow. Think also of the poor purveyors of food, who note their masters’ tastes with delicate skill, who know what special flavors will sharpen their appetite, what will please their eyes, what new combinations will rouse their cloyed stomachs, what food will excite their disgust through sheer superabundance, and what will stir them to hunger on that particular day. The master cannot bear to dine with slaves like these. He would think it beneath his dignity to associate with his slave at the same table! God forbid!
Source: Seneca: Ad Lucilium Epistulae Morales. Volume I. Translated by Richard M. Gummere. Cambridge and London: Loeb Classical Library, 1917.
24. The Emperor Augustus’s Meal Routines
The dining and entertaining habits of the emperor Augustus (reigned 27 B.C.–A.D. 14) were hardly sumptuous, according to this excerpt from the writings of the Roman biographer Suetonius (A.D. c. 70–c. 140). He gave dinner parties constantly and always formally, with great regard to the rank and personality of his guests... He would sometimes come to table late on these occasions 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 good fellowship. For he drew into the 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...
He was a light eater... and as a rule ate plain food. He particularly liked coarse bread, small fishes, hand-made moist cheese, and green figs of the second crop. And he would eat even before dinner, wherever and whenever he felt hungry. I quote word for word from some of his letters: “I ate a little bread and some dates in my carriage.” And again: “As I was on my way home... in my litter, I devoured an ounce of bread and a few berries from a cluster of hard-fleshed grapes.” Once more: “Not even a Jew ... fasts so scrupulously on the Sabbaths as I have today. For it was not until after the first hour of the night that I ate two mouthfuls of bread in the bath before I began to be anointed.”
Because of this irregularity, he sometimes ate alone either before a dinner party or after it was over, touching nothing while it was in progress. He was by nature most sparing also in his use of wine. [The historian] Cornelius Nepos writes that in camp before Mutina [during a military campaign], it was his habit to drink not more than three times at dinner. Afterwards, when he indulged most freely, he never exceeded a pint, or if he did, he used to throw it up. He ... rarely drank before dinner. Instead, he would eat a bit of bread soaked in cold water, a slice of cucumber, a sprig of young lettuce, or an apple with a tart flavor, either fresh or cold.
Source: Suetonius. Translated by J. C. Rolfe. Cambridge and London: Loeb Classical Library, 1913.
25. A Pompous Host
The Roman writer Pliny the Younger (A.D. 62–114), never one to hobnob with the rich and famous (at least according to his statement in the following letter), nevertheless accepted a dinner invitation from a self-important host, with predictable results.
[A letter] to Avitus:
It would be a long and trivial story, were I to recount in too much detail by what accident I—who am not fond at all of polite society—had dinner recently with a person who in his own opinion lives in splendor combined with fiscal prudence, but according to my opinion, in a distasteful but expensive manner. Some very elegant dishes were served up to himself and a few more of the dinner guests, while those which were placed before the rest were cheap and paltry. He had apportioned in three pitchers three different sorts of wine, but you are not to suppose it was that the guests might take their choice. On the contrary, they were not allowed to choose at all. One was for himself and me; the next for his friends of a lower order—you must know that he measures out his friendship according to the degrees of quality—and the third for his own freedmen and mine.
Someone who sat next to me noticed this, and asked me if I approved of it. “Not at all,” I told him. “Tell me, then,” he said, “what do you do [when you host a dinner party under similar circumstances]?” “My practice,” I replied, “is to give all my guests the same food and drink, because when I send out dinner invitations, it’s for dinner, not for a property assessment. Every person whom I have placed on an equal plane with myself by inviting him to dinner, I treat as an equal in every way.” “Even freedmen?” he asked. “Even them,” I replied, “for on these occasions, I do not regard them as freedmen, but as pleasant dinner companions.” “This must put you to great expense,” he said. I assured him not at all; and on his asking how that could be, I said, “You must understand that my freedmen don’t drink the same wine I do—but I drink what they do.”
And certainly, if a man is wise enough to moderate his own gluttony, he will not find it so very burdensome a thing to entertain all his visitors in general as he does himself. Restrain and, so to speak, humble that failing, if you seriously wish to spend your money wisely. You will find your own temperance a much better method of saving expenses than insults to other people.
What is my point in all this, you ask? Why to hinder a young man of your excellent disposition from being imposed upon by the self-indulgence which prevails at some men’s dinner parties, under the guise of frugality. And whenever any foolishness of this nature falls within my observation, I will, as a result of that kind feeling which I bear you, point it out to you as an example which you should avoid. Remember, therefore, that nothing is more to be avoided than this modern conjunction of self-indulgence and stinginess, qualities which are exceedingly distasteful even when existing separately, but still more distasteful when they meet together in the same person. Farewell.
Source: Pliny’s Letters. Volume I. Translated by William Melmoth, with revisions by W.M.L. Hutchinson. Cambridge and London: Loeb Classical Library, 1915.
26. The Benefits of Fasting
On the other hand, some Romans occasionally fasted, or at least subsisted on very little food, as the philosopher Seneca (4 B.C.–A.D. 65) describes, and even recommends, in the following passage from one of his Epistles. I am so firmly determined to test the constancy of your mind that, drawing from the teachings of great men, I will give you also a lesson: Set aside a certain number of days, during which you will be content with the scantiest and cheapest food, with coarse and rough clothing, saying to yourself all the while: “Is this the condition that I feared?” It is precisely in times of immunity from care that the soul should toughen itself beforehand for occasions of greater stress, and it is while Fortune is kind that it should fortify itself against her violence . . .
You need not suppose that I mean meals [of complete deprivation]. Let the dish be a real one, and the coarse cloak. Let the bread be hard and grimy. Endure all this for three or four days at a time, sometimes for more, so that it may be a test of yourself instead of a mere hobby. Then, I assure you, my dear Lucilius, you will leap for joy when filled with a penny’s worth of food, and you will understand that a person’s peace of mind does not depend on Fortune. For, even when angry, she grants enough for our needs. There is no reason, however, why you should think that you are doing anything great. For you will merely be doing what many thousands of slaves and many thousands of poor men are doing every day. But you may credit yourself with this item: that you will not be doing it under compulsion, and that it will be as easy for you to endure it permanently as to make the experiment from time to time...
Even Epicurus, the teacher of pleasure, used to observe stated intervals, during which he satisfied his hunger in scanty fashion. He wished to see whether he thereby fell short of full and complete happiness, and if so, by what amount he fell short ... Do you think that there can be fullness on such food? Yes, and there is pleasure also—not that shifty and fleeting pleasure... but a pleasure that is steadfast and sure. For although water, barley meal, and crusts of barley bread are not a cheerful diet, yet it is the highest kind of pleasure to be able to derive pleasure from this sort of food, and to have reduced one’s needs to that modicum which no unfairness of Fortune can snatch away.
Even prison food is more generous, and those who have been set apart for capital punishment are not so poorly fed by the man who is to execute them. Therefore, what a noble soul one must have, to descend of one’s own free will to a diet which even those who have been sentenced to death have not to fear! This is indeed forestalling the spear-thrusts of Fortune. So begin, my dear Lucilius, to follow the custom of these people, and set apart certain days on which you will withdraw from your business, and make yourself at home with the scantiest food. Establish business relations with poverty.
Source: Seneca: Ad Lucilium Epistulae Morales. Volume I. Translated by Richard M. Gummere. Cambridge and London: Loeb Classical Library, 1917.
27. A Roman Cookbook
A Roman gourmet by the name of Apicius, who lived in the first century A.D., compiled a book of recipes, a sort of Roman cookbook. Below are some recipes from Apicius’s work.
Honey refresher for travelers:
The wayfarer’s honey refresher (so called because it gives endurance and strength to pedestrians), with which travelers are refreshed by the wayside, is made in this manner: Flavor honey with ground pepper and skim. In the moment of serving, put honey in a cup, as much as is desired to obtain the right degree of sweetness, and mix with spiced wine, not more than a needed quantity; also, add some wine to the spiced honey to facilitate its flow and the mixing.
To keep grapes:
Take perfect grapes from the vines, place them in a vessel, and pour rain water over them that has been boiled down one third of its volume. The vessel must be pitched and sealed with plaster, and must be kept in a cool place to which the sun has no access. Treated in this manner, the grapes will be fresh whenever you need them. You can also serve this water as honey mead to the sick. Also, if you cover the grapes with barley, you will find them sound and uninjured.
Supreme style cooked peas:
Cook the peas with oil and a piece of sow’s belly. Put in a sauce pan broth, leek heads, green coriander, and put on the fire to be cooked. Of tid-bits [i.e., finely-chopped meats or seasonings] cut little dice. Similarly cook thrushes or other small [game] birds, or take sliced chicken and diced brain, properly cooked. Further cook, in the available liquor or broth, Lucanian sausage and bacon; cook leeks in water. Crush a pint of toasted pignolia nuts. Also crush pepper, lovage, origany, and ginger, dilute with the broth of pork, tie. Take a square baking dish, suitable for turning over; oil it well.
Sprinkle [on the bottom] a layer of crushed nuts, upon which put some peas, fully covering the bottom of the squash dish. On top of this, arrange slices of the bacon, leeks, and sliced Lucanian sausage. Again cover with a layer of peas and alternate all the rest of the available edibles in the manner described until the dish is filled, concluding at last with a layer of peas, utilizing everything. Bake this dish in the oven, or put it into a slow fire [covering it with live coals], so that it may be baked thoroughly. [Next make a sauce of the following]: Put yolks of hard-boiled eggs in the mortar with white pepper, nuts, honey, white wine, and a little broth. Mix, and put it into a sauce pan to be cooked. When [the sauce is] done, turn out the peas into a large [silver dish], and mask them with this sauce, which is called white sauce.
Crane or duck with turnips:
Take out [entrails]. Clean, wash, and dress [the bird], and parboil it in water with salt and dill. Next, prepare turnips, and cook them in water, which is to be squeezed out. Take them out of the pot and wash them again, and put into a sauce pan the duck, with oil, broth, a bunch of leeks, and coriander. The turnips, cut into small pieces: these put on top of the [duck], in order to finish cooking. When half done, to give it color, add reduced must. The sauce is prepared separately: pepper, cumin, coriander, laser root moistened with vinegar and diluted with its own broth [of the fowl]. Bring this to a boiling point, thicken with roux. [In a deep dish, arrange the duck]; on top of the turnips [strain the sauce over it]. Sprinkle with pepper and serve.
Pig’s paunch. Clean the paunch of a suckling pig well with salt and vinegar, and presently wash with water. Then fill it with the following dressing: pieces of pork pounded in the mortar, three brains—the nerves removed—mix with raw eggs, add nuts, whole pepper, and sauce to taste. Crush pepper, lovage, silphium, anise, ginger, a little rue; fill the paunch with it, not too much, though, leaving plenty of room for expansion, so that it does not burst while being cooked. Put it in a pot with boiling water, retire and prick with a needle so that it does not burst. When half done, take it out and hang it into the smoke to take on color. Now boil it over again and finish it leisurely. Next take the broth, some pure wine, and a little oil, open the paunch with a small knife. Sprinkle with the broth and lovage; place the pig near the fire to heat it, turn it around in bran [or bread crumbs], immerse it in brine, and finish [the outer crust to a golden brown].
Spiced hare:
[The well-prepared hare]: Cook in wine, broth, water, with a little mustard [seed], dill, and leeks with the roots. When all is done, season with pepper, satury, round onions, Damascus plums, wine, broth, reduced wine and a little oil; tie with roux, let boil a little longer, [baste], so that the hare is penetrated by the flavor, and serve it on a platter masked with sauce.
Source: Apicius: Cookery and Dining in Imperial Rome. Translated by Joseph Dommers Vehling. New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1936.
28. Priestly Banquets
In this excerpt from his Saturnalia, the fifth-century A.D. writer Macrobius describes a banquet enjoyed by Roman priests of what he calls “early times.” You must understand that extravagant profusion was found among the highest dignitaries, for I would remind you of a pontifical banquet of early times . . . There were served, for the preliminary service, sea urchins, unlimited raw oysters, scallops, cockles, thrushes on asparagus, fattened fowls, a dish of oysters and scallops, acorn fish (both black and white), then another service of cockles, mussels, sea nettles, figpeckers, haunches of venison and boar, fattened fowls cooked in pastry, more figpeckers, murex, and purple fish. For the main dishes were served sow’s udders, boar’s head, stewed fish, stewed sow’s udders, ducks, boiled teal, hares, fattened fowls roasted, creamed wheat, and rolls of Picenum. With a pontiff’s table loaded with all those delicacies, one would suppose that no charge of extravagance would thereafter any longer lie. But is it not enough to make one blush even to speak of the kinds of food indulged in?
Macrobius describes the many varieties of figs: The dried figs... suggest that we should make a list of the varieties of fig:... the African fig, the white fig, the reed fig, the donkey fig, the black fig, the marsh fig, the Augustan fig, the fig that yields two crops, the Carian fig, the white and black Chalcidic fig, the white and black Chian fig, the white and black Calpurnian fig, the gourdshaped fig, the hard-skinned fig, the fig of Herculaneum, the Livian fig, the Lydian fig, the small Lydian fig, the Marsic fig, the dark Numidian fig, the Pompeian fig, the early-ripening fig, and the black Tellanian fig.
Source: From Macrobius: The Saturnalia. Translated by Percival Vaughan Davies. Copyright © 1969 Columbia University Press. Reprinted with permission of the publisher.
29. Exotic Foods, Gluttonous Romans
In this passage from his Attic Nights, Aulus Gellius (A.D. c. 125–c. 180) references a poem by the grammarian Marcus Terentius Varro (116–27 B.C.), about the gluttonous tendencies of some of his fellow Romans, and their love of exotic foods. Marcus Varro, in the satire which he entitled On Edibles, in verses written with great charm and cleverness, discusses exquisite elegance in banquets and foods. He has set forth and described in poetry the greater number of things of that kind which such gluttons seek out on land and sea.
As for the verses themselves, he who has leisure may find and read them in the book which I have mentioned. So far as my memory goes, these are the varieties and names of the foods surpassing all others, which is bottomless gullet has hunted out and which Varro has assailed in his satire, with the places where they are found: a peacock from Samos, a woodcock from Phrygia, cranes of Media, a young goat from Ambracia, a young tuna from Chalcedon, a lamprey from Tartessus, codfish from Pessinus, oysters from Tarentum, cockles from Sicily, a swordfish from Rhodes, pike from Cilicia, nuts from Thasos, dates from Egypt, acorns from Spain.
But this tireless gluttony, which is ever wandering about and seeking for flavors, and this eager quest of dainties from all quarters, we shall consider deserving of the greater detestation, if we recall the verses of Euripides of which the philosopher Chrysippus made frequent use, to the effect that gastronomic delicacies were sought and desired not because of the necessary uses of life, but because of a spirit of luxury that disdains what is easily attainable.
Source: The Attic Nights of Aulus Gellius. Volume II. Translated by John C. Rolfe. Cambridge and London: Loeb Classical Library, 1927.
See also Israel, China, India and Egypt
By David Matz (volume editor) in the book 'Daily Life Through World History in Primary Documents' Lawrence Morris, General Editor, Volume 1: The Ancient World, p.149-167, First published in 2009 by Greenwood Press,Westport, USA. Adapted and illustrated to be posted by Leopoldo Costa.
GREECE
In his biography of Alexander the Great, the Greek biographer Plutarch (A.D. c. 45–c. 120) provides the following details about Alexander’s eating and drinking habits. He had the most complete mastery over his appetite... When, in the kindness of her heart [referring to a queen whom he knew], she used to send him, every day, many fancy dishes and sweets, and finally offered him bakers and cooks reputed to be very skillful, he said that he wanted none of them, for he had better cooks who had been given to him by his tutor, Leonidas: For his breakfast, namely, a night march, and for his supper, a light breakfast ...
He was less addicted to wine than was generally believed. The belief arose from the great amount of time he would spend over each cup, more in talking than in drinking ... After he had taken quarters for the night... he would inquire of his chief cooks and bakers whether the arrangements for his supper had been made. When it was late and already dark, he would begin his supper, reclining on a couch, and his care and moderation at the dinner table were remarkable... over the wine, as I have said, he would sit long, for the sake of conversation ... After the drinking was over, he would take a bath and sleep, often until mid-day, and sometimes he would actually spend the entire day in sleep.
In the matter of delicacies, too, he was master of his appetite, so that often, when the rarest fruits or fish were brought to him from the seacoast, he would distribute them to each of his friends until he was the only one for whom nothing remained. His suppers, however, were always magnificent, and the outlay on them increased with his successes.
Source: Plutarch’s Lives. Volume VII. Translated by Bernadotte Perrin. London and Cambridge: Loeb Classical Library, 1919.
10. Avoid Superfluous Food
In this excerpt from his Moralia, the Greek biographer Plutarch (A.D. c. 45–c. 120) comments on the dangers of overeating. Just as the scents of flowers are weak by themselves, whereas when they are mixed with oil, they acquire strength and intensity, so a great mass of food to start with provides substance and body, as it were, for the causes and sources of disease that come from the outside. Without such material, none of these things would cause any trouble, but they would readily fade away and be dissipated, if clear blood and an unpolluted spirit are at hand to meet the disturbance.
But in a mass of superfluous food a sort of turbulent sediment is stirred up, which makes everything foul and hard to manage, and hard to get rid of. Therefore, we must not act like those much-admired ship captains who, because of greed, take on a big cargo, but then are continually engaged in baling out the sea water. So we must not stuff and overload our body, and afterwards employ purgatives and injections, but rather keep it trim all the time.
Source: Plutarch’s Moralia. Volume II. Translated by Frank Cole Babbitt. London and New York: Loeb Classical Library, 1928.
In the following excerpt, the Greek historian Xenophon (c. 430–c. 354 B.C.) describes a Greek banquet in which the diners discuss the properties of the onion. And beside this, I know something else, which you may test immediately. For Homer says somewhere: “An onion, too, a relish for the drink.” Now if someone will bring an onion, you will receive this benefit, at any rate, without delay, for you will get more pleasure out of your drinking. “Gentlemen,” said Charmides, “Niceratus is intent on going home smelling of onions to make his wife believe that no one would even have conceived the thought of kissing him.”
“Undoubtedly,” said Socrates. “But we run the risk of getting a different sort of reputation, one that will bring us ridicule. For though the onion seems to be in the truest sense a relish, since it adds to our enjoyment not only of food, but also of drink, yet if we eat it not only with our dinner, but after it as well, take care that someone does not say of us that [during our banquet], we were merely indulging our appetites.” “Heaven forbid, Socrates!” was the reply. “I grant that when a man is setting out for battle, it is well for him to nibble an onion, just as some people give their fighting birds a feed of garlic before pitting them together in the ring. As for us, however, our plans perhaps look more to getting a kiss from someone than to fighting.”
Source: Xenophon: Symposium and Apology. Translated by O. J. Todd. Cambridge and London: Loeb Classical Library, 1923.
12. A Sensible Diet
As a medical writer, the fourth-century B.C. Greek physician Hippocrates recognized the important of diet in maintaining good health. For the art of medicine would never have been discovered to begin with, nor would any medical research have been conducted... if sick people had profited by the same mode of living and regimen as the food, drink, and mode of living of people in health... To trace the matter yet further back, I assert that not even the mode of living and nourishment enjoyed at the present time by healthy people would have been discovered, had a person been satisfied with the same food and drink as satisfy an ox, a horse, and every animal except humans; for example, the products of the earth: fruits, wood, and grass.
For on these, animals are nourished, grow, and live without pain, having no need at all of any other kind of living. In my opinion, to begin with, humans also used this sort of nourishment... the ancients seem to me to have sought for nourishment that which harmonized with their constitution, and to have discovered that which we use now. So from wheat, after steeping it, winnowing, grinding and sifting, kneading, baking, they produced bread, and from barley, they produced cake.
Experimenting with food, they boiled or baked, after mixing, many other things, combining the strong and uncompounded with the weaker components, so as to adapt all to the constitution and power of humans, thinking that from foods which, being too strong, the human constitution cannot assimilate when eaten, will come pain, disease and death, while from such as can be assimilated will come nourishment, growth and health . . . [This] discovery was a great one, implying much investigation and skill. At any rate, even in the present day, those who study gymnastics and athletic exercises are constantly making some fresh discovery by investigating on the same method what food and what drink are best assimilated and make a person grow stronger.
Source: Hippocrates. Translated by W.H.S. Jones. Cambridge and London: Loeb Classical Library, 1923.
13. The Pythagoreans Did Like Beans
The second-century A.D. Roman author Aulus Gellius, in this passage from his Attic Nights, debunks the notion that the sixth-century B.C. Greek philosopher Pythagoras excluded meat and beans from his diet. An erroneous belief of long standing has established itself and become current, that the philosopher Pythagoras did not eat meat, and also that he abstained from eating beans. In accordance with that belief, the poet Callimachus wrote:
"I tell you too, as did Pythagoras, Withhold your hands from beans, a hurtful food. Also, as the result of the same belief, Cicero wrote these words in the first book of his work On Divination: “Plato therefore bids us go to our sleep in such bodily condition that there may be nothing to cause delusion and disturbance in our minds. It is thought to be for that reason, too, that the Pythagoreans were forbidden to eat beans, a food that produces great flatulency, which is disturbing to those who seek mental calm.”
So then, Cicero. But Aristoxenus the musician, a man thoroughly versed in early literature, a pupil of the philosopher Aristotle, in the book On Pythagoras which he has left us, says that Pythagoras ate no vegetable more often than beans, since that food gently loosened the bowels and relieved them. I add Aristoxenus’ own words: “Pythagoras among vegetables especially recommended the bean, saying that it was both digestible and loosening; and therefore, he most frequently ate it.”
Aristoxenus also relates that Pythagoras ate very young pigs and tender kids. This fact he seems to have learned from his close friend Xenophilus the Pythagorean and from some other older men, who lived not long after the time of Pythagoras. And the same information about animal food is given by the poet Alexis, in the comedy entitled The Pythagorean Bluestocking. Furthermore, the reason for the mistaken idea about abstaining from beans seems to be, that in a poem of Empedocles, who was a follower of Pythagoras, this line is found: “O wretches, utter wretches, from beans withhold your hands . . . ” Plutarch, too, a man of weight in scientific matters, in the first book of his work On Homer, wrote that Aristotle gave the same account of the Pythagoreans, namely that except for a few parts of the flesh, they did not abstain from eating meat.
Source: The Attic Nights of Aulus Gellius. Volumes I and III. Translated by John C. Rolfe. Cambridge and London: Loeb Classical Library, 1927.
In this excerpt from his Attic Nights (see also Document 13, above), the Roman author Aulus Gellius (A.D. c. 125–c. 180) references some passages from the fourth-century B.C. Greek philosopher Aristotle, about the unhealthiness of drinking water from melted snow. In the hottest season of the year, with some companions and friends of mine who were students of eloquence or of philosophy, I had withdrawn to the country place of a rich friend at Tibur. There was with us a good man... well trained, and especially devoted to [the writings of ] Aristotle. When we drank a good deal of water made of melted snow, he tried to restrain us, and rather severely scolded us. He cited for us the authority of famous physicians, and in particular of the philosopher Aristotle ... who declared that snow water was indeed helpful to grain and trees, but was a very unwholesome drink for human beings, and that it gradually produced wasting diseases in the body, which made their appearance only after a long time.
This advice he gave us repeatedly, in a spirit of prudence and good will. But when the drinking of snow water went on without interruption, from the library of Tibur, which... was well supplied with books, he pulled out a volume of Aristotle and brought it to us, saying, “At least believe the words of the wisest of men, and stop ruining your health.”
In that book it was written that water from snow was very bad to drink, as was also that water which was more solidly and completely congealed, which the Greeks call krystallos, or “clear ice”; and the following reason was there given for this: “That when water is hardened by the cold air and congeals, it necessarily follows that evaporation takes place and that a kind of very thin vapor, so to speak, is forced from it and comes out of it. But its lightest part,” he said, “is that which is evaporated. What remains is heavier and less clean and wholesome, and this part, beaten upon by the throbbing of the air, takes on the form and color of white foam. But that some more wholesome part is forced out and evaporated from the snow is shown by the fact that it becomes less than it was before it congealed.”
I have taken a few of Aristotle’s own words from that book, and I quote them: “Why is the water made from snow or ice unwholesome? Because from all water that is frozen, the lightest and thinnest part evaporates. And the proof of this is that when it melts after being frozen, its volume is less than before. But since the most wholesome part is gone, it necessarily follows that what is left is less wholesome.” After I read this, we decided to pay honor to the learned Aristotle. And so I for my part immediately declared war upon snow and swore hatred against it, while the others made truces with it on various terms.
Source: The Attic Nights of Aulus Gellius. Volumes I and III. Translated by John C. Rolfe. Cambridge and London: Loeb Classical Library, 1927.
15. Plato Did Not Approve of Excessive Drinking
In another passage from his Attic Nights (see Documents 13 and 14, above), Aulus Gellius (A.D. c. 125–c. 180) relates a story about a man who drank to excess at parties in the mistaken belief that the Greek philosopher Plato (428–347 B.C.) approved of such behavior. A man from the island of Crete, who was living in Athens, gave out that he was a Platonic philosopher, and desired to pass himself off as one. He was, however, a man of no worth, a trifler, boastful of his command of Grecian eloquence, besides having a passion for wine which made him a laughing stock.
At the parties which it was the custom of us young men to hold at Athens at the beginning of each week, as soon as we had finished eating and an instructive and pleasant conversation had begun, this fellow, having called for silence that he might be heard, began to speak, and using a cheap and disordered rabble of words after his usual fashion, urged all to drink. He declared that he did this in accordance with the opinion of Plato, maintaining that Plato in his work On the Laws had written most eloquently in praise of drunkenness, and had decided that it was beneficial to good and strong men.
And at the same time, while he was speaking like this, he drenched such wits as he had with frequent and huge beakers of wine, saying that it was a kind of kindling wood and tinder to the intellect and the faculties, if mind and body were inflamed with wine. However, Plato, in the first and second books of his work On the Laws did not, as that fool thought, praise that shameful intoxication which generally undermines and weakens people’s minds.
Source: The Attic Nights of Aulus Gellius. Volume III. Translated by John C. Rolfe. Cambridge and London: Loeb Classical Library, 1927.
The Greek biographer and essayist Plutarch (A.D. c. 45–c. 120) knew that people tend to eat and drink to excess at banquets, so in this excerpt from his Moralia he offers some advice on avoiding this kind of unhealthy over-indulgence. Something was said to the effect that, while less expensive things are always more healthful for the body, we ought especially to guard against excess in eating and drinking, and against all self-indulgence when we have immediately on hand some festival or a visit from friends, or when we are expecting an entertainment of some king or high official, with its unavoidable social engagements. And so we should, as it were, make our body trim in fair weather, and buoyant against the oncoming wind and wave. It is indeed a hard task, in the midst of good friends and good cheer, to keep to moderation and one’s habits, and at the same time to avoid the extreme disagreeableness which makes one appear annoying and boring to the whole group.
Therefore, to avoid adding fire to fire—as the proverb has it—and gorging to gorging, and strong drink to strong drink, we ought with all seriousness to imitate the polite joke of Philip. It goes like this: a man had invited Philip to dinner in the country, assuming that he had only a few friends with him, but when later the host saw Philip bringing a large contingent of people, and since the host had not made preparations for such a crowd, he was much disconcerted. Philip, becoming aware of the situation, sent word privately to each of his friends to “leave room for cake.”
Following the advice, and looking for more to come, they ate sparingly of what was before them, and so there was plenty of food for everyone. In this manner, then, we ought to prepare ourselves in anticipation of our obligatory round of social engagements by keeping room in the body for elaborate dishes and pastry and, may I say it, for indulgence in strong drink also, by bringing to these things a fresh and willing appetite.
Source: Plutarch’s Moralia. Volume II. Translated by Frank Cole Babbitt. London and New York: Loeb Classical Library, 1928.
ROME
The Egyptian queen Cleopatra (69–30 B.C.) knew how to throw a dinner party, especially when the guest of honor was the Roman soldier and politician Mark Antony (83–30 B.C.). The Greek author Athenaeus, who wrote at the end of the second century A.D., provides the particulars of one banquet in the following excerpt from his Deipnosophistae. Socrates of Rhodes... describes the banquet given by Cleopatra, the last queen of Egypt, who married the Roman general, Antony . . . His words are: “Meeting Antony in Cilicia, Cleopatra arranged in his honor a royal banquet, in which the service was entirely of gold and jeweled vessels made with exquisite art. Even the walls, says Socrates, were hung with tapestries made of purple and gold threads. And having spread twelve dining couches, Cleopatra invited Antony and his chosen friends. He was overwhelmed with the richness of the display, but she quietly smiled and said that all these things were a present for him.
She also invited him to come and dine with her again the next day, with his friends and his officers. On this occasion, she provided an even more sumptuous banquet by far, so that she caused the vessels which had been used on the first occasion to appear paltry. And once more, she presented him with these also.
As for the officers, each was allowed to take away the couch on which he had reclined. Even the sideboards, as well as the spreads for the couches, were divided among them. And when they departed, she furnished litters for the guests of high rank, with bearers, while for the rest she provided horses . . . with silver-plated harnesses, and for all she sent along Ethiopian slaves to carry the torches. On the fourth day, she distributed fees, amounting to a talent, for the purchase of roses, and the floors of the dining rooms were strewn with them to a depth of 18 inches, in net-like festoons spread everywhere.
Source: Athenaeus: The Deipnosophists. Volume II. Translated by Charles Burton Gulick. London and New York: Loeb Classical Library, 1928.
The ancient Romans loved to eat, and there is plenty of evidence to illustrate their fondness for eating and drinking. Possibly the most famous Roman dinner party was the one thrown in the first century A.D. by the fictional Trimalchio, a principle character in the Latin novel entitled Satyricon, which was written by the Roman satirist Petronius (A.D. c. 27–65). As the following excerpt from the novel shows, Trimalchio was boastful, arrogant, officious, irritating, and misinformed on many subjects... but rich. And he knew how to put on a spread!
Now that the guests were all in their places, the hors d’oeuvres were served, and very sumptuous they were. Trimalchio alone was still absent, and the place of honor— reserved for the host in the modern fashion—stood empty. But I was speaking of the hors d’oeuvres. On a large tray stood a donkey made of rare Corinthian bronze; on the donkey’s back were two panniers, one holding green olives, the other, black. Flanking the donkey were two side dishes, both engraved with Trimalchio’s name and the weight of the silver, while in dishes shaped to resemble little bridges there were dormice, all dipped in honey and rolled in poppyseed. Nearby, on a silver grill, piping hot, lay small sausages, while beneath the grill, black damsons and red pomegranates had been sliced up and arranged so as to give the effect of flames playing over charcoal...
We, meanwhile, were still occupied with the hors d’oeuvres when a tray was carried in and set down before us. On it lay a basket, and in it a hen, carved from wood, with wings outspread as though sitting on her eggs. Then two slaves came forward and, to a loud flourish from the orchestra, began rummaging in the straw and pulling out peahen’s eggs, which they divided among the guests. Trimalchio gave the whole performance his closest attention. “Friends,” he said, “I ordered peahen eggs to be set under that hen, but I’m half afraid they may have hatched already. Still, let’s see if we can suck them.” We were handed spoons—weighing at least half a pound apiece—and cracked open the eggs, which turned out to be baked from rich pastry. To tell the truth, I had almost tossed my share away, thinking the eggs were really addled. But I heard one of the guests, obviously a veteran of these dinners, say, “I wonder what little surprise we’ve got in here.”
So I cracked the shell with my hand, and found inside a fine fat oriole, nicely seasoned with pepper... The [next] course... failed to measure up to our expectations of our host, but it was so unusual that it took everybody’s attention. Spaced around a circular tray were the twelve signs of the zodiac, and over each sign, the chef had put the most appropriate food. Thus, over the sign of Aries were chickpeas, over Taurus a slice of beef, a pair of testicles and kidneys over Gemini, a wreath of flowers over Cancer, over Leo an African fig, virgin sowbelly on Virgo, over Libra a pair of scales with a tartlet in one pan and a cheesecake in the other, over Scorpio a crawfish, a lobster on Capricorn, on Aquarius a goose, and two mullets over the sign of the Fishes. The centerpiece was a clod of turf with the grass still green on top and the whole thing surmounted by a fat honeycomb.
Meanwhile, bread in a silver chafing dish was being handed around by a slave with long hair who was shrilling in an atrocious voice some song from the pantomime called Asafoetida. With some reluctance, we began to attack this wretched fare, but Trimalchio kept urging us, “Eat up, gentlemen, eat up!”
Suddenly, the orchestra gave another flourish and four slaves came dancing in and whisked off the top of the tray. Underneath, in still another tray, lay fat capons and sowbellies and a hare decked out with wings to look like a little Pegasus. At the corners of the tray stood four little gravy boats, all shaped like the satyr Marsyas, with... a spicy hot gravy dripping down over several large fish swimming about in the lagoon of the tray. The slaves burst out clapping, we clapped too, and turned with gusto to these new delights. Trimalchio, enormously pleased with the success of his little tour de force, roared for a slave to come and carve.
The carver appeared instantly and went to work, thrusting with his knife like a gladiator practicing to the accompaniment of a water-organ. But all the time Trimalchio kept mumbling in a low voice, “Carver, carver, carver, carver.” I suspected that this chant was somehow connected with a trick, so I asked my neighbor, an old hand at these party surprises. “Look,” he said, “you see that slave who’s carving? Well, he’s called Carver, so every time Trimalchio says ‘Carver’, he’s also saying ‘Carve ’er!’, and giving him orders to carve”...Servants came with a tray on which we saw a wild sow of absolutely enormous size. Perched rakishly on the sow’s head was the cap of freedom which newly freed slaves wear in token of their liberty, and from her tusks hung two baskets woven from palm leaves. One was filled with dry Egyptian dates, the other held sweet Syrian dates. Clustered around her teats were little suckling pigs made of hard pastry, gifts for the guests to take home as it turned out, but intended to show that ours was a brood-sow.
The slave who stepped up to carve, however, was not our old friend Carver who had cut up the capons, but a huge fellow with a big beard, a coarse hunting cape thrown over his shoulders, and his legs bound up in cross-gaiters. He whipped out his knife and gave a savage slash at the sow’s flanks. Under the blow, the flesh parted, the wound burst open and dozens of thrushes came whirring out! But bird-catchers with limed twigs were standing by, and before long they had snared all the birds as they thrashed wildly around the room. Trimalchio ordered that a thrush be given to each guest, adding for good measure, ‘Well, that old porker liked her acorns juicy all right.’ Then servants stepped forward, removed the baskets hanging from the sow’s nose, and divided the dry and sweet dates out equally among the guests...
He [Trimalchio] was still chattering away when the servants came in with an immense hog on a tray almost the size of the table. We were, of course, astounded at the chef’s speed and swore it would have taken longer to roast an ordinary chicken, all the more since the pig looked even bigger than the one served to us earlier. Meanwhile, Trimalchio had been scrutinizing the pig very closely and suddenly roared, ‘What! What’s this? By god, this hog hasn’t even been gutted! Get that cook in here on the double!’ Looking very miserable, the poor cook came shuffling up to the table and admitted that he had forgotten to gut the pig.
“You forgot?” bellowed Trimalchio. “You forgot to gut a pig?” And I suppose you think that’s the same thing as merely forgetting to add salt and pepper. Strip that man!” The cook was promptly stripped and stood there stark naked between two bodyguards, utterly forlorn. The guests, to a man, however, interceded for the chef. “Accidents happen,” they said, “please don’t whip him. If he ever does it again, we promise we won’t say a word for him.” My own reaction was anger, savage and unrelenting.
I could barely restrain myself and leaning over, I whispered to Agamemnon [one of the other dinner guests], “Did you ever hear of anything worse? Who could forget to gut a pig? By god, you wouldn’t catch me letting him off, not if it was just a fish he’d forgotten to clean.” Not so Trimalchio, however. He sat there, a great grin widening across his face, and said: “Well, since your memory’s so bad, you can gut the pig here in front of us all.” The cook was handed back his clothes, drew out his knife with a shaking hand and then slashed at the pig’s belly with crisscross cuts. The slits widened out under the pressure from inside, and suddenly out poured, not the pig’s bowels and guts, but link upon link of tumbling sausages and blood puddings.
Source: From The Satyricon by Petronius, translated by William Arrowsmith, copyright © 1959, renewed © 1987 by William Arrowsmith. Used by permission of Dutton Signet, a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
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| Horace |
In contrast to the excesses of Trimalchio’s dinner party, the Roman poet Horace (65–8 B.C.), in this excerpt from the second satire of Book II of his Satires, recommends a somewhat less luxurious eating regimen. When hard work and toil has knocked the daintiness out of you, when you are thirsty and hungry, refuse, if you can, plain food. Refuse to drink any mead, unless the honey is from Hymettus, and the wine from Falernum. How do you think this comes about? The chief pleasure lies, not in the costly dinner, but in yourself. So earn your sauce with hard exercise. The man who is bloated and pale from excess will find no comfort in oysters or trout or foreign grouse.
Yet, if a peacock is served for dinner, I will hardly root out your longing to tickle your palate with it rather than with a pullet. You are deceived by the peacock’s vain appearance, because the rare bird costs gold and makes a brave show with the picture of its outspread tail—as though that had anything to do with the case! Do you eat the feathers you so admire? Does the bird look as fine when cooked? Yet, though in their meat they are on a par, to think that you crave the one rather than the other, duped by the difference in appearance!...
Now learn what and how great are the blessings that simple living brings with it. First of all, good health. For how harmful to a person a variety of dishes is, you may realize if you recall that plain food which agreed with you in other days. But as soon as you mix boiled and roast, shell fish and thrushes, the sweet will turn to bile, and the thick phlegm will cause intestine feud. Do you see how pale the guests are as they arise from this smorgasboard? Furthermore, clogged with yesterday’s excess, the body drags down with itself the mind as well.
Source: Horace: Satires, Epistles, and Ars Poetica. Translated by H. Rushton Fairclough. Cambridge and London: Loeb Classical Library, 1926.
20. The Dinner Party Thrown by Nasidienus Rufus
In this passage from Book II of Satire VIII, the Roman poet Horace (65–8 B.C.) describes a dinner party given by a certain Nasidienus Rufus. Horace: How did you like your dinner with the rich Nasidienus? Yesterday, when I tried to get you as my own guest, I was told you had been dining there since midday. Fundanius: So much so that never in my life did I have a better time.
Horace: Tell me, if you don’t mind, what was the first dish to appease an angry appetite? Fundanius: First, there was a wild boar. It was caught when a gentle south wind was blowing, as the father of the feast kept telling us. Around it were pungent turnips, lettuces, radishes—such things as whet a jaded appetite—skirret, fish-pickle, and Coan lees. When these were removed, a high-girt slave wiped the maple-wood table with a purple napkin, while a second swept up the scraps and anything that could offend the guests...
Horace: . . . Who, Fundanius, were those at dinner, with whom you had so fine a time? I am eager to know. Fundanius: Myself at the top, then next to me Viscus of Thurii, and below, if I remember, Varius. Then Vibidius and Servilius Balatro, the two moochers. Above our host was Nomentanus; below him, Porcius, who made us laugh by swallowing whole cheesecakes in one bite. Nomentanus was there to see that if anything might escape our notice, he would point it out with his forefinger. For the rest of the guests—we, I mean—eat fowl, oysters, and fish, which had a flavor far different from any we knew, as, for instance, was made clear at once, after he had handed me the livers of a plaice and a turbot, a dish I had never tasted before. After this he informed me that the honey apples were red because they were picked in the light of a waning moon. What difference that would make, you could better learn from him . . .
Then is brought in a lamprey, outstretched on a platter, with shrimps swimming all around it. Upon seeing this, the master said: “This was caught before spawning. If it were taken later, its flesh would have been poorer. The ingredients of the sauce are these: oil from Venafrum of the first pressing; roe from the juices of the Spanish mackerel; [Italian] wine five years old, poured in while it is on the boil... white pepper, and vinegar” ...
Then follow servants, bearing on a huge charger the limbs of a crane sprinkled with much salt and meal, and the liver of a white goose fattened on rich figs, and hares’ limbs torn off, as being more dainty than if eaten with the loins. Then we saw blackbirds served with the breast burned, and pigeons without the rumps—real dainties... But off we ran, taking our revenge on [our host] by tasting nothing at all, as though the things were... more deadly than African serpents.
Source: Horace: Satires, Epistles, and Ars Poetica. Translated by H. Rushton Fairclough. Cambridge and London: Loeb Classical Library, 1926.
21. Horace Invites His Friend Torquatus to Dinner
The Roman poet Horace (65–8 B.C.) enjoyed entertaining friends at dinner, but certainly never on the lavish scale of a Trimalchio. He once issued the following dinner invitation to his friend Torquatus.
"Torquatus, you’re expected at my house this evening at sunset,
That is, if you think you can stretch out your legs comfortably On the old-fashioned couches that Archias designed for me,
And can put up with a modest meal served on plain plates.
The wine we’ll drink is Second Consulate Taurian [i.e., from the second consulship of Titus Statilius Taurus, 26 b.c.], Poured off at Villa Petrinum, near Sinuessa, Below the salt flats of Minturnae. Or have you a better Vintage to offer? If so, send it round with your slave. If not, you’ll have to take your orders from me.
My hearth has been gleaming for days now, just for your sake,
My furniture cleaned up and set right.
Drop everything,
Those airy ambitions, that drive to make still more money,
Your defense of Moschus on that poisoning charge.
Tomorrow [September 22] is Caesar’s birthday. We’re all excused, to sleep late,
To stretch the summer night with copious talk.
What is my fortune for, if I can’t make use of it?
Someone who, out of regard for his heir, is stingy,
And much too hard on himself, sits next to a madman.
So I will begin the rites, the scattering of flowers...
I take it upon myself to vouch for the following,
And do so gladly: that no tattered linen of mine,
No dirty napkin, will make you turn up your nose
In disgust; that pitchers and plates reflect your image
Like mirrors; that no one is present who will gossip outside
About what is said among faithful friends, so that equals
May be intimate with equals. I’ll invite Septicius
And Butra to meet you, and add Sabinus to the list,
Unless a prior engagement or a slyer girl
Detains him. There are places enough for a few of your shades,
But when goats get too close together, the air’s a bit thick.
You’ve only to write back how many you want us to be,
Then drop everything: the client you’re supposed to see,
Your business. Sneak out the back. Come to my dinner party!"
Source: The Satires and Epistles of Horace. Translated by Smith Palmer Bovie. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1959. Copyright © 1959 by The University of Chicago Press. All rights reserved. Reprinted with permission of the publisher.
The Roman writer Pliny the Younger (A.D. 62–114) dropped the following note to his friend Septicius Clarus, who was supposed to join him for dinner, but who never showed up. How did it happen, my friend, that you did not keep your appointment the other night to have dinner with me? Now take notice: the court is in session, and you will fully reimburse me the expense I laid out to treat you, which, let me tell you, was no small sum. I want you to know that I had prepared a lettuce and three snails apiece, along with two eggs, barley water, some sweet wine and snow—I most certainly will charge the snow to your account, as it was spoiled in the serving. Besides all these curious dishes, there were olives, beets, gourds, shallots, and a hundred other delicacies, equally sumptuous.
Likewise, you would have been entertained either with an interlude, the rehearsal of a poem, or a piece of music, as you like best, or—such was my generosity—with all three. But the oysters, chitterlings, seas urchins, and Spanish dancers, of a certain, I know not who, were, it seems, more to your taste. However, I’ll have my revenge; you can count on it. What kind of revenge will be a secret for now.
In good truth, it was not kind of me to humble a friend—I almost said yourself, and upon second thought, I do say so. How pleasantly would we have spent the evening, in laughing, joking, and friendship! You can get a better dinner at many other places, I’m sure. But you can be treated nowhere, believe me, with more unrestrained cheerfulness, forthrightness, and freedom. Please give it a try. And if you do not forever after prefer my dinner parties to any others, then never dine with me again. Farewell.
Source: Pliny’s Letters. Volume I. Translated by William Melmoth, with revisions by W.M.L. Hutchinson. Cambridge and London: Loeb Classical Library, 1915.
The Roman philosopher Seneca (4 B.C.–A.D. 65) was no Trimalchio eithe, when it came to dinner etiquette. Unlike Trimalchio, Seneca believed that servants and slaves, who prepared and served the food, always deserved to be treated respectfully.
I smile at those who think it degrading for a man to share a meal with his slave. But why should they think it degrading? It is only because a purse-proud etiquette surrounds a householder at his dinner with a mob of standing slaves. The master eats more than he can hold, and with monstrous greed loads his belly until it is stretched and at length ceases to do the work of a belly, so that he is at greater pains to discharge all the food than he was to stuff it down. All this time, the poor slaves may not move their lips, even to speak...
When we recline at a banquet, one slave mops up the disgorged food, another crouches beneath the table and gathers up the leftovers of the tipsy guests. Another carves the priceless game birds. With unerring strokes and skilled hand, he cuts the choice morsels along the breast or the rump. Poor fellow, to live only for the purpose of cutting fat capons correctly, unless the other man is still more unhappy than he, who teaches this art for pleasure’s sake, rather than he who learns it because he must.
Another, who serves the wine, must dress like a woman and wrestle with his advancing years . . . Another, whose duty it is to put a valuation on the guests, must stick to his task, unlucky man, and watch to see whose flattery and whose immodesty, whether of appetite or of language, is to get them an invitation for tomorrow. Think also of the poor purveyors of food, who note their masters’ tastes with delicate skill, who know what special flavors will sharpen their appetite, what will please their eyes, what new combinations will rouse their cloyed stomachs, what food will excite their disgust through sheer superabundance, and what will stir them to hunger on that particular day. The master cannot bear to dine with slaves like these. He would think it beneath his dignity to associate with his slave at the same table! God forbid!
Source: Seneca: Ad Lucilium Epistulae Morales. Volume I. Translated by Richard M. Gummere. Cambridge and London: Loeb Classical Library, 1917.
The dining and entertaining habits of the emperor Augustus (reigned 27 B.C.–A.D. 14) were hardly sumptuous, according to this excerpt from the writings of the Roman biographer Suetonius (A.D. c. 70–c. 140). He gave dinner parties constantly and always formally, with great regard to the rank and personality of his guests... He would sometimes come to table late on these occasions 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 good fellowship. For he drew into the 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...
He was a light eater... and as a rule ate plain food. He particularly liked coarse bread, small fishes, hand-made moist cheese, and green figs of the second crop. And he would eat even before dinner, wherever and whenever he felt hungry. I quote word for word from some of his letters: “I ate a little bread and some dates in my carriage.” And again: “As I was on my way home... in my litter, I devoured an ounce of bread and a few berries from a cluster of hard-fleshed grapes.” Once more: “Not even a Jew ... fasts so scrupulously on the Sabbaths as I have today. For it was not until after the first hour of the night that I ate two mouthfuls of bread in the bath before I began to be anointed.”
Because of this irregularity, he sometimes ate alone either before a dinner party or after it was over, touching nothing while it was in progress. He was by nature most sparing also in his use of wine. [The historian] Cornelius Nepos writes that in camp before Mutina [during a military campaign], it was his habit to drink not more than three times at dinner. Afterwards, when he indulged most freely, he never exceeded a pint, or if he did, he used to throw it up. He ... rarely drank before dinner. Instead, he would eat a bit of bread soaked in cold water, a slice of cucumber, a sprig of young lettuce, or an apple with a tart flavor, either fresh or cold.
Source: Suetonius. Translated by J. C. Rolfe. Cambridge and London: Loeb Classical Library, 1913.
25. A Pompous Host
The Roman writer Pliny the Younger (A.D. 62–114), never one to hobnob with the rich and famous (at least according to his statement in the following letter), nevertheless accepted a dinner invitation from a self-important host, with predictable results.
[A letter] to Avitus:
It would be a long and trivial story, were I to recount in too much detail by what accident I—who am not fond at all of polite society—had dinner recently with a person who in his own opinion lives in splendor combined with fiscal prudence, but according to my opinion, in a distasteful but expensive manner. Some very elegant dishes were served up to himself and a few more of the dinner guests, while those which were placed before the rest were cheap and paltry. He had apportioned in three pitchers three different sorts of wine, but you are not to suppose it was that the guests might take their choice. On the contrary, they were not allowed to choose at all. One was for himself and me; the next for his friends of a lower order—you must know that he measures out his friendship according to the degrees of quality—and the third for his own freedmen and mine.
Someone who sat next to me noticed this, and asked me if I approved of it. “Not at all,” I told him. “Tell me, then,” he said, “what do you do [when you host a dinner party under similar circumstances]?” “My practice,” I replied, “is to give all my guests the same food and drink, because when I send out dinner invitations, it’s for dinner, not for a property assessment. Every person whom I have placed on an equal plane with myself by inviting him to dinner, I treat as an equal in every way.” “Even freedmen?” he asked. “Even them,” I replied, “for on these occasions, I do not regard them as freedmen, but as pleasant dinner companions.” “This must put you to great expense,” he said. I assured him not at all; and on his asking how that could be, I said, “You must understand that my freedmen don’t drink the same wine I do—but I drink what they do.”
And certainly, if a man is wise enough to moderate his own gluttony, he will not find it so very burdensome a thing to entertain all his visitors in general as he does himself. Restrain and, so to speak, humble that failing, if you seriously wish to spend your money wisely. You will find your own temperance a much better method of saving expenses than insults to other people.
What is my point in all this, you ask? Why to hinder a young man of your excellent disposition from being imposed upon by the self-indulgence which prevails at some men’s dinner parties, under the guise of frugality. And whenever any foolishness of this nature falls within my observation, I will, as a result of that kind feeling which I bear you, point it out to you as an example which you should avoid. Remember, therefore, that nothing is more to be avoided than this modern conjunction of self-indulgence and stinginess, qualities which are exceedingly distasteful even when existing separately, but still more distasteful when they meet together in the same person. Farewell.
Source: Pliny’s Letters. Volume I. Translated by William Melmoth, with revisions by W.M.L. Hutchinson. Cambridge and London: Loeb Classical Library, 1915.
26. The Benefits of Fasting
On the other hand, some Romans occasionally fasted, or at least subsisted on very little food, as the philosopher Seneca (4 B.C.–A.D. 65) describes, and even recommends, in the following passage from one of his Epistles. I am so firmly determined to test the constancy of your mind that, drawing from the teachings of great men, I will give you also a lesson: Set aside a certain number of days, during which you will be content with the scantiest and cheapest food, with coarse and rough clothing, saying to yourself all the while: “Is this the condition that I feared?” It is precisely in times of immunity from care that the soul should toughen itself beforehand for occasions of greater stress, and it is while Fortune is kind that it should fortify itself against her violence . . .
You need not suppose that I mean meals [of complete deprivation]. Let the dish be a real one, and the coarse cloak. Let the bread be hard and grimy. Endure all this for three or four days at a time, sometimes for more, so that it may be a test of yourself instead of a mere hobby. Then, I assure you, my dear Lucilius, you will leap for joy when filled with a penny’s worth of food, and you will understand that a person’s peace of mind does not depend on Fortune. For, even when angry, she grants enough for our needs. There is no reason, however, why you should think that you are doing anything great. For you will merely be doing what many thousands of slaves and many thousands of poor men are doing every day. But you may credit yourself with this item: that you will not be doing it under compulsion, and that it will be as easy for you to endure it permanently as to make the experiment from time to time...
Even Epicurus, the teacher of pleasure, used to observe stated intervals, during which he satisfied his hunger in scanty fashion. He wished to see whether he thereby fell short of full and complete happiness, and if so, by what amount he fell short ... Do you think that there can be fullness on such food? Yes, and there is pleasure also—not that shifty and fleeting pleasure... but a pleasure that is steadfast and sure. For although water, barley meal, and crusts of barley bread are not a cheerful diet, yet it is the highest kind of pleasure to be able to derive pleasure from this sort of food, and to have reduced one’s needs to that modicum which no unfairness of Fortune can snatch away.
Even prison food is more generous, and those who have been set apart for capital punishment are not so poorly fed by the man who is to execute them. Therefore, what a noble soul one must have, to descend of one’s own free will to a diet which even those who have been sentenced to death have not to fear! This is indeed forestalling the spear-thrusts of Fortune. So begin, my dear Lucilius, to follow the custom of these people, and set apart certain days on which you will withdraw from your business, and make yourself at home with the scantiest food. Establish business relations with poverty.
Source: Seneca: Ad Lucilium Epistulae Morales. Volume I. Translated by Richard M. Gummere. Cambridge and London: Loeb Classical Library, 1917.
A Roman gourmet by the name of Apicius, who lived in the first century A.D., compiled a book of recipes, a sort of Roman cookbook. Below are some recipes from Apicius’s work.
Honey refresher for travelers:
The wayfarer’s honey refresher (so called because it gives endurance and strength to pedestrians), with which travelers are refreshed by the wayside, is made in this manner: Flavor honey with ground pepper and skim. In the moment of serving, put honey in a cup, as much as is desired to obtain the right degree of sweetness, and mix with spiced wine, not more than a needed quantity; also, add some wine to the spiced honey to facilitate its flow and the mixing.
To keep grapes:
Take perfect grapes from the vines, place them in a vessel, and pour rain water over them that has been boiled down one third of its volume. The vessel must be pitched and sealed with plaster, and must be kept in a cool place to which the sun has no access. Treated in this manner, the grapes will be fresh whenever you need them. You can also serve this water as honey mead to the sick. Also, if you cover the grapes with barley, you will find them sound and uninjured.
Supreme style cooked peas:
Cook the peas with oil and a piece of sow’s belly. Put in a sauce pan broth, leek heads, green coriander, and put on the fire to be cooked. Of tid-bits [i.e., finely-chopped meats or seasonings] cut little dice. Similarly cook thrushes or other small [game] birds, or take sliced chicken and diced brain, properly cooked. Further cook, in the available liquor or broth, Lucanian sausage and bacon; cook leeks in water. Crush a pint of toasted pignolia nuts. Also crush pepper, lovage, origany, and ginger, dilute with the broth of pork, tie. Take a square baking dish, suitable for turning over; oil it well.
Sprinkle [on the bottom] a layer of crushed nuts, upon which put some peas, fully covering the bottom of the squash dish. On top of this, arrange slices of the bacon, leeks, and sliced Lucanian sausage. Again cover with a layer of peas and alternate all the rest of the available edibles in the manner described until the dish is filled, concluding at last with a layer of peas, utilizing everything. Bake this dish in the oven, or put it into a slow fire [covering it with live coals], so that it may be baked thoroughly. [Next make a sauce of the following]: Put yolks of hard-boiled eggs in the mortar with white pepper, nuts, honey, white wine, and a little broth. Mix, and put it into a sauce pan to be cooked. When [the sauce is] done, turn out the peas into a large [silver dish], and mask them with this sauce, which is called white sauce.
Crane or duck with turnips:
Take out [entrails]. Clean, wash, and dress [the bird], and parboil it in water with salt and dill. Next, prepare turnips, and cook them in water, which is to be squeezed out. Take them out of the pot and wash them again, and put into a sauce pan the duck, with oil, broth, a bunch of leeks, and coriander. The turnips, cut into small pieces: these put on top of the [duck], in order to finish cooking. When half done, to give it color, add reduced must. The sauce is prepared separately: pepper, cumin, coriander, laser root moistened with vinegar and diluted with its own broth [of the fowl]. Bring this to a boiling point, thicken with roux. [In a deep dish, arrange the duck]; on top of the turnips [strain the sauce over it]. Sprinkle with pepper and serve.
Pig’s paunch. Clean the paunch of a suckling pig well with salt and vinegar, and presently wash with water. Then fill it with the following dressing: pieces of pork pounded in the mortar, three brains—the nerves removed—mix with raw eggs, add nuts, whole pepper, and sauce to taste. Crush pepper, lovage, silphium, anise, ginger, a little rue; fill the paunch with it, not too much, though, leaving plenty of room for expansion, so that it does not burst while being cooked. Put it in a pot with boiling water, retire and prick with a needle so that it does not burst. When half done, take it out and hang it into the smoke to take on color. Now boil it over again and finish it leisurely. Next take the broth, some pure wine, and a little oil, open the paunch with a small knife. Sprinkle with the broth and lovage; place the pig near the fire to heat it, turn it around in bran [or bread crumbs], immerse it in brine, and finish [the outer crust to a golden brown].
Spiced hare:
[The well-prepared hare]: Cook in wine, broth, water, with a little mustard [seed], dill, and leeks with the roots. When all is done, season with pepper, satury, round onions, Damascus plums, wine, broth, reduced wine and a little oil; tie with roux, let boil a little longer, [baste], so that the hare is penetrated by the flavor, and serve it on a platter masked with sauce.
Source: Apicius: Cookery and Dining in Imperial Rome. Translated by Joseph Dommers Vehling. New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1936.
28. Priestly Banquets
In this excerpt from his Saturnalia, the fifth-century A.D. writer Macrobius describes a banquet enjoyed by Roman priests of what he calls “early times.” You must understand that extravagant profusion was found among the highest dignitaries, for I would remind you of a pontifical banquet of early times . . . There were served, for the preliminary service, sea urchins, unlimited raw oysters, scallops, cockles, thrushes on asparagus, fattened fowls, a dish of oysters and scallops, acorn fish (both black and white), then another service of cockles, mussels, sea nettles, figpeckers, haunches of venison and boar, fattened fowls cooked in pastry, more figpeckers, murex, and purple fish. For the main dishes were served sow’s udders, boar’s head, stewed fish, stewed sow’s udders, ducks, boiled teal, hares, fattened fowls roasted, creamed wheat, and rolls of Picenum. With a pontiff’s table loaded with all those delicacies, one would suppose that no charge of extravagance would thereafter any longer lie. But is it not enough to make one blush even to speak of the kinds of food indulged in?
Macrobius describes the many varieties of figs: The dried figs... suggest that we should make a list of the varieties of fig:... the African fig, the white fig, the reed fig, the donkey fig, the black fig, the marsh fig, the Augustan fig, the fig that yields two crops, the Carian fig, the white and black Chalcidic fig, the white and black Chian fig, the white and black Calpurnian fig, the gourdshaped fig, the hard-skinned fig, the fig of Herculaneum, the Livian fig, the Lydian fig, the small Lydian fig, the Marsic fig, the dark Numidian fig, the Pompeian fig, the early-ripening fig, and the black Tellanian fig.
Source: From Macrobius: The Saturnalia. Translated by Percival Vaughan Davies. Copyright © 1969 Columbia University Press. Reprinted with permission of the publisher.
29. Exotic Foods, Gluttonous Romans
In this passage from his Attic Nights, Aulus Gellius (A.D. c. 125–c. 180) references a poem by the grammarian Marcus Terentius Varro (116–27 B.C.), about the gluttonous tendencies of some of his fellow Romans, and their love of exotic foods. Marcus Varro, in the satire which he entitled On Edibles, in verses written with great charm and cleverness, discusses exquisite elegance in banquets and foods. He has set forth and described in poetry the greater number of things of that kind which such gluttons seek out on land and sea.
As for the verses themselves, he who has leisure may find and read them in the book which I have mentioned. So far as my memory goes, these are the varieties and names of the foods surpassing all others, which is bottomless gullet has hunted out and which Varro has assailed in his satire, with the places where they are found: a peacock from Samos, a woodcock from Phrygia, cranes of Media, a young goat from Ambracia, a young tuna from Chalcedon, a lamprey from Tartessus, codfish from Pessinus, oysters from Tarentum, cockles from Sicily, a swordfish from Rhodes, pike from Cilicia, nuts from Thasos, dates from Egypt, acorns from Spain.
Source: The Attic Nights of Aulus Gellius. Volume II. Translated by John C. Rolfe. Cambridge and London: Loeb Classical Library, 1927.
See also Israel, China, India and Egypt
By David Matz (volume editor) in the book 'Daily Life Through World History in Primary Documents' Lawrence Morris, General Editor, Volume 1: The Ancient World, p.149-167, First published in 2009 by Greenwood Press,Westport, USA. Adapted and illustrated to be posted by Leopoldo Costa.
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