REPUBLICAN AND EMPIRE PERIODS

Dining Patterns
During early centuries, both wealthy and poor Romans lived on simple dietary fare.
Cato of Tusculum, surnamed the Elder, reportedly ate little meat and exhibited a
food pattern of raw, uncooked items in a frugal attempt to save fuel.98 The diet of
most Romans, rich or poor, was boiled wheat porridge eaten with different vegetable-
based flavoring agents and relishes. Contrary to popular 20th to 21st-century views,
Romans did not dine regularly on exotic foods such as sparrow's tongues, nor did
they engage in nightly food and alcoholic debauches, as suggested by Petronius
Arbiter of Rome in his Satyricon.99
The poet Plautus of Sarsina stressed the simplicity of Roman food and identified
his countrymen as a race of porridge-eaters (pultiphagonidae). Plautus wrote that most
wealthy Romans did not employ slaves or cooks trained in the sophisticated culinary
arts, and since most Roman cooks were slaves, their culinary talents, presumably,
would have been mediocre. Hence, some scholars have concluded that most Roman
meals were limited and dull.100-101 Nevertheless, Apicius of Rome produced a cookbook
that revealed a range of interesting, complicated recipes (Table 2).8
Romans commonly ate one meal per day and frequently skipped breakfast or
ientaculum, which, if eaten, usually was at sunrise. Children and adults ate the same
relative fare: wheat biscuits or bread, sometimes served with cheese, dates, eggs,
dried fruits such as dates and raisins, honey, olives, and salt. Ientaculum generally
was ad hoc, not family focused, and irregular.102106
Throughout early Roman history, the main meal, or cena, was at midday and
consisted of heavy fare. In the early years of the Roman Republic, the primary dish
served at the cena was wheat porridge or puls, eaten with green vegetables or olera;
meat was rarely served. Among the wealthy, however, the midday cena consisted of
three parts. Appetizers, collectively called gustatio or promulsio, included eggs,
mushrooms, oysters, radishes, salads, and sardines, followed by a palate-cleansing
drink of mulsum or wine sweetened with honey. Main dishes followed in three or
more separate courses distinguished by fish, poultry, or meat. Mediterranean fish
dominated over freshwater varieties, although wealthy Romans sometimes raised
fish in ponds to assure freshness. Common poultry courses included dishes of
chicken, crane, dove, duck, fig-pecker, goose, ostrich, partridge, peacock/peahen,
pheasant, pigeon, sometimes thrush. Meat courses consisted of game animals,
whether wild boar, goat, hare, venison, or domesticated sources such as beef, goat,
lamb, and pork. After several courses, came dessert or secunda mensa, commonly
honey-sweetened cakes and fruits. The cena beverage usually was wine, always
drunk diluted or mixed with water.103,105-106
During the days of the Roman Empire, the midday meal changed in both name
and content. The heavy midday cena meal shifted to evening and was replaced by
a light, midday meal, prandium, that consisted of leftovers, or light foods such as
bread, cheese, fruits, cold meats, nuts, olives, and salads.102-106
During early Roman history, the evening meal, or vesperna, was a light supper
eaten before retiring. During the Empire Period, however, this changed and the heavy cena pattern shifted to evening. The evening cena, like its earlier predecessor,
consisted of three parts: appetizer or gustus/gustatio, alternatively called antecina
or promulis, dinner proper or cena, which consisted of distinct courses called fercula,
and dessert or secunda mensa/mensae secundae. Appetite was stimulated by the
gustus/gustatio with finger foods such as sliced egg, fresh marine fish, pickled or
salted fish, various herbs, leeks, lettuce, mint, olives, onions, oysters, sea urchins,
and snails. The beverage served at the gustus/gustatio continued to be mulsum. The
cena proper consisted of several courses characterized by fish, fowl, and meat, served
with vegetables. Cena courses were identified as cena prima/mensa prima, cena
secunda/mensa altera, cena tertia/mensa tertia (and such) numbered up to six or
seven. Foods served at various courses included: vegetables in rich sauces, cutlets,
goose, ham, hare, young kid, lamprey, pheasant, turbot and in rare instances sow's
udders and wild boar. The evening meal finished with secunda mensa/secundae
mensae, alternatively called bellaria, and typically included fruits such as apples,
figs, grapes, and pears, nuts of different varieties, pastries, and sweets. The urban
poor and rural peasants continued to eat their "light" vesperna, which usually
consisted of cereal-based porridges or breads served with vegetables.
Common Foods
Composition of Roman diet depended on wealth and class. While considerable
interest has focused on descriptions of dietary and culinary excesses of the wealthiest
Romans, the vast majority of Romans, out of economic necessity, ate simply. Most
Roman diets were based on whole-grain wheat products supplemented with legumes,
vegetables, and limited quantities of fish and meat. Primary meats included beef,
goat, mutton, and pork with wild game such as ass, boar, goat, and hare. Pork was
eaten by both wealthy and poor and was the preferred domestic meat. Beef was a
mark of luxury, eaten only on festive occasions after the bovines had been sacrificed
and their meat dispersed or sold. Three flesh-foods — beef heart, liver, and lungs,
collectively called exta, were reserved exclusively for sacrificial priests. Dormice,
glis or nitedula/nitella, were considered delicacies and fattened at special farms
called gliraria. Wild hare and other game animals were maintained on hunting
preserves; roast shoulder of hare was thought to enhance the consumer's personal
charm. Domesticated fowl such as chickens, ducks, geese, and pigeons were widely
eaten. Wild fowl prominent in the Roman diet included crane, white grouse, par-
tridge, peacock/peahen, pheasant, snipe, thrush, and woodcock. Marine and fresh-
water fish and shellfish also were common — cod, mullet, oyster, pike, and sturgeon.
Salted and pickled fish were esteemed and generically categorized by the word
tarichos. Fish-based condiment sauces, garum, muria, and allex, were prepared from
mackerel, sturgeon, or tunny.108-109
Numerous invertebrates were used as food and medicine. According to Pliny of
Verona, beetle larvae or cossi were fattened on wheat flour and eaten as delicacies;
cockroaches boiled with oil or rose-oil were eaten by those who suffered from asthma
or jaundice; earthworms preserved in honey were eaten as snacks and served with wine;
while cooked scorpions were ashed, and the ash eaten to counter bladder stones.110
Dairy products included cheese, cream, curd, milk, and whey. Butter — as in
ancient Greece — was not eaten by the Romans but was commonly applied externally
to soothe wounds. Honey was the primary sweetener.
Garden crops of both poor and wealthy Romans included herbs and spices,
legumes, and vegetables, among them alexander, anise, artichoke, asparagus, basil,
bay, bean, beet, cabbage, caper, caraway, carrot, celery, chicory, chive, coriander,
cress, cucumber, cumin, dill, fennel, fenugreek, garlic, juniper, lavender, leek, lentil,
lettuce, mallow, marjoram, marrow, melon, mint, mustard, onion, parsley, parsnip,
pea, pennyroyal, poppy, pumpkin, radish, rosemary, safflower, sage, shallot, silph-
ium, thyme, and turnip. Curiously, beans were considered heavy foods recommended
for men engaged in heavy labor, for example, blacksmiths, gladiators, and
slaves.113-115

Wheat was the staple food grain. Barley was considered poor-man's food, rye
was not widely cultivated, and millets and oats served as poverty food or as animal
fodder. The Italian peninsula did not have enough land to grow cereals in quantities
needed to assure the Roman food supply, therefore, wheat was imported from Roman
colonies, especially northwest coastal Egypt.111116
Bread, the mainstay of the Roman diet, was identified by type of grain, fineness
of millstone setting, and flour sieve aperture. Best quality, pure wheat flour, siligo,
produced the bread called panis siligineus. Such siligo-based breads were preferred
to those made from coarse flour, or breads baked from flour mixed with bran or bran
alone. Such second-quality breads had readily identifiable names such as panis
plebeius or panis rusticus.116-117
Cooking shops and taverns in Roman urban centers were under political control.
Tiberius (14-37 C.E.) restricted cook-shops from selling pastries; Caligula (37-41
C.E.) levied taxes on street foods; Claudius (41-54 C.E.) ordered that no boiled
meat or hot water could be sold in Rome; Nero (54-68 C.E.) prohibited sale of all
food in taverns except for vegetables and pea soup; and Vespasian (69-79 C.E.)
reinforced the tavern food sale bans, and limited food sales to legumes only.118
The eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 C.E. presented future archaeologists and
food historians with a unique opportunity to examine foods preserved in the villas
and gardens of the wealthy and in the food shops at Herculaneum and Pompeii.
Examination of these foods reveals a numerical simplicity, since very delicate plants
and some food preparations would have been incinerated, while others that were
more dense were protected, and survived as carbonized remains. Still, the list is
enlightening and some of the foods ready for consumption that terrifying day in 79
C.E. included almond, apple or crabapple, barley, broad bean or fava bean, carob,
cherry and sour cherry, chestnut, chickpea, date, fig, garlic, grape, filbert, lentil,
millet (both broomcorn and foxtail varieties), black mustard, oat, olive, onion, garden
pea, pear, pine nut, plum, pomegranate, walnut, and wheat.