Like the Greeks, the Romans ate three times a day: early in the morning - the first breakfast, around noon - the second, and in the late afternoon - lunch. The first breakfast consisted of bread, cheese, fruit, milk, or wine. So, Emperor Augustus for breakfast ate coarse bread, small fish, wet cheese, pressed by hand, green figs.
The children took breakfast with them to school, since classes began very early.
The second meal consisted of a cold snack, sometimes even food left over from yesterday, and the second breakfast was often taken while standing, without the traditional washing of hands and sitting down at the table.
As Seneca wrote in his Moral Letters to Lucilius, after a cold bath, “I had breakfast with dry bread, not going to the table, so there was no need to wash my hands after breakfast.”
The second breakfast could also include meat dishes, cold fish, cheese, fruit, wine.
The main and most plentiful meal was lunch. Dishes were served to the table in large portions. In ancient times, the Romans dined in the front hall of the house - atria.
Later, when the Roman house took on the features of Greek architecture, food intake moved to the dining room - triclinium. Three couches were placed around the table, so that one side had free access for the servants to serve food. A maximum of nine people could be seated at one table.
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With such a "geometry" of the triclinium, it was probably very cramped. Due to the abundant food and heat, people sweated a lot and, in order not to catch a cold, covered themselves with colored capes. “So that your sweat cannot stagnate in your damp clothes, so that a hot draft cannot get cold on your skin” (Martial). These capes were changed several times during lunch.
The dining table was small and did not hold all the dishes. Therefore, food was brought into the hall and laid out on plates or brought to each separately. In the latter case, there was an auxiliary table in the same dining room - a sideboard. In a similar way, wine was first poured into large vessels (glass or crystal), from which they were poured into glasses with a ladle.
When changing the setting, the tables themselves were removed. As a rule, lunch consisted of three changes. Eggs and other snacks were served first. This is where the Italian proverb "from egg to apples" comes from, corresponding to our "from A to Z" - from beginning to end, because the dinner ended with apples and other meals.
Among the drinks, they especially liked the mullet - wine mixed with honey. The main change included a variety of meat and fish dishes along with various vegetables.
At rich feasts, the table was diversified with exotic products: sea urchins, sea acorns, oysters and other types of molluscs. At the end of the meal, dessert was served, and at large feasts this part of the dinner was very much like a Greek symposium.
The dessert consisted of fruits, fresh or dried (figs, dates), nuts, and spicy delicacies that whetted thirst, since they drank a lot of wine at the end.
Even at the dawn of Roman history, in the household, in addition to cereals, bread cakes were prepared. The first mentions of professional bakers date back to the first half of the 3rd century BC. e. (at Pliny the Elder).
In the IV century. there were already 254 bakeries in Rome. However, the harvest harvested in Italy soon ceased to be enough, and grain began to be imported from the Roman provinces in Africa, primarily from Egypt. But this was not enough, especially during periods of economic difficulties. Grain trade helped to solve this problem.
Merchants and bankers gave it a large scale, bringing huge parties from the provinces and taking over the supply of the Roman army. Naturally, during such operations, there was a wide scope for speculation and all sorts of abuses, especially since the merchants felt safe, since they were patronized by the Senate, and in later times - by the emperor.
Many senators themselves invested money in trade and therefore were involved in financial transactions of merchant enterprises. The emperors cared about maintaining good relations with powerful merchants who had wealth and wide connections; and, moreover, they often borrowed large sums of money from Roman merchants.
So, the emperor Claudius imposed on the state treasury the obligation to compensate the merchants for the losses that they could incur due to shipwrecks.
Already in the early period, the state increasingly began to resort to food supply regulation. For example, the city aedile was also responsible for caring for the quality of baked bread. To improve the quality of baked goods and strengthen the sense of responsibility in bakers, corporate associations of people of this profession were created, moreover, according to the type of baked goods they created; thus, the sigillarii made expensive cakes, intricately decorated and therefore highly prized in wealthy homes.
Bread in Rome was baked in different varieties; many flour products were brought from the islands, including the Rhodes biscuits, popular among the Romans. The most expensive was white bread; from the so-called wallpaper flour, they baked black bread, called village bread. There was bread "camp" - for the army and "plebeian" - for free distribution to the poor or for sale at fixed prices.
Over time, they began to bake not only flat cakes of the usual round shape, but also loaves in the shape of cubes, lyres or braids.
In Pompeii, archaeologists have found round loaves of bread with cuts in the middle to make them easier to break in half.
Many flour products and recipes for their preparation are described in the treatise of Cato the Elder "On Agriculture". In particular, a method of preparing the famous Italian porridge “Punic” is given: “add a pound of the best wheat flour to the water and see that the porridge thickens well; then put it in a clean vessel, add three pounds of fresh cheese and half a pound of honey, one egg and mix everything thoroughly, and then transfer everything back to a new pot.
Further, the author tells in detail about the methods of making dumplings from flour, cheese, honey and poppy; sweet casserole, greased with honey and sprinkled with poppy seeds; honey brushwood in the form of a twisted rope; a sacrificial cake made of grated cheese, wheat flour, eggs and butter, as well as a special cake with cheese and honey.
Not only are given the most accurate recipes for the products, but it is also indicated in all details in what dishes and under what conditions they are supposed to be cooked, and even how to remove the pie from the bowl later in order to transfer it to the dish, serving it on the table.
Note that all recipes feature the same ingredients: wheat flour, sheep cheese, honey, lard, olive oil, and sometimes milk.
The variety of baked goods was achieved by changing the number of components, their ratio and the shape of the cake, cake or cookie.
The list of vegetables used by the Romans was very wide: onions, garlic, cabbage, lettuce, sorrel, turnips, radishes, carrots, cucumbers, peas, etc. The ancients believed that plant foods are the most useful, including for eliminating digestive disorders, headaches, and malaria.
Condiments, roots and spices were an integral part of the Roman table. Seasonings were used to prepare meat dishes and various hot sauces.
Favorite dessert was fruit, and not. only Italic, but also imported from other regions: apples, pears, cherries, plums, pomegranates, figs, grapes, olives.
And yet the main component of the ancient Roman table was meat. In the first place were goat meat and pork. Much less often they ate beef - only when bulls were sacrificed to the gods; the latter were needed for agricultural needs, and they were protected.
Of the hunting trophies, hare and poultry were more likely to fall on the table.
Feast scene, Fresco from Pompeii, 1st century AD e.
As for fish, it was not only a favorite food, but also an object of hobby - many rich people arranged pools for breeding fish in their estates, and its size and water - sea or fresh - corresponded to the breed of fish being farmed.
One of the most popular was the predatory moray eel, which was easy to breed. The morals of that time are evidenced by the fact that the wealthy Vedic rider Pollio fed moray eels with the meat of his slaves.
The gourmet "menu" included snails and oysters. They were bred in cages, and certain types of snails were used - Illyrian and African. To "improve" the taste, they were fed with a mixture of wort and honey.
But what is admirable is the exquisite range of poultry meat. In addition to poultry, pheasants, guinea fowls, and peacocks were bred. This "palette" became more and more rich: storks, songbirds, including nightingales, appeared on the tables.
The cooking technology has also become more sophisticated, which was expressed in such dishes as flamingo tongues, crow's feet with a garnish of rooster combs, etc.
An integral part of the meal was wine, which was given even to slaves. Naturally, the assortment of wines depended on the era, and on the owner's taste, and on his well-being. The most famous were the Falernian from Campania, the Cecubian from Latium, the Massic from the border regions of the first two. In Pompey, they drank Capuan and Surrentine.
Imported wines were also held in high esteem - from Spain, Sicily, from the islands of Crete, Kos, Cnidus. At the beginning of the refectory ceremony, vessels with wine, a salt shaker and vinegar were placed on the tables. Slaves delivered the dishes, stacking them on a high rack - the repository.
Tablecloths used to cover tables appeared in the 1st century. Since they ate with their hands, they used napkins. In addition to their main function, napkins were used by guests of lower rank to wrap up the food left after the feast in order to take it with them.
The poet Marcial mentions a guest who takes away more than half of the dinner in a "wet napkin":
Whatever is put on the table, you rake everything, And nipples and piglet brisket, Turacha that is designed for two, Half barvena and sea bass, Moray eel flank and chicken wing, And a whitewash with spelled gravy.
Putting everything together in a wet napkin, You give the boy to take it home …
The slaves divided the meat into small pieces, and the guests themselves put them on their plates. Knives were used to cut meat into pieces. Spoons were also in use, and they had a different shape depending on the purpose. At the same time, the person who, helping himself with his hands, got dirty less than others was considered more cultured, able to behave at the table.
The relative moderation in food, inherent in the inhabitants of Rome in the early period, eventually gives way to exorbitant gluttony and feasting. The Emperor Alexander Sever served the feasting guests thirty quarters of wine and the same number of pounds of low-grade bread (1 pound equals 327 g), thirty pounds of meat and two pounds of poultry - geese and pheasants, and a great variety of fruits for dessert. But that is an example of the almost "ascetic" ceremonial dinner of imperial Rome.
Much more typical were the feasts described in the novel by Petronius, which were given by the rich man Trimalchion:
“Very delicious snacks have been brought into the dining room. On a tray stood a bronze donkey with two baskets, one containing green olives and the other black. Hot sausages lay on a silver grate, under which were plums and Carthaginian pomegranates.
Meanwhile, while the guests were still busy with their appetizers, a basket was brought into the triclinium on a large tray, where there was a wooden hen with outstretched wings, as if incubating chickens. Two slaves came up and, to the sound of music, began to fumble in the straw, pulling out peacock eggs and distributing them to the feasting.
The guests received huge spoons of half a pound each to break the shells … The more experienced foodies shouting, "There must be something tasty here!" - broke the shell and found a fat woodcock in the pepper-covered yolk.
Under loud cries of approval, another meal was served, which none of the guests expected, but which, by its unusualness, attracted the attention of everyone.
On a large round tray, where all twelve signs of the zodiac were placed, the creator of this dish put on each food corresponding to him: on Sagittarius - a hare, on Capricorn - a lobster, on Aquarius - a goose, on Taurus - a piece of beef, on Gemini - kidneys, on Leo - African figs, etc.
Trimalchion gave a sign, and the guests, overwhelmed by so many dishes, reached for food. Then they brought a huge wild boar on a tray: two baskets woven from palm branches hung from its tusks; one was full of dried dates and the other was full of fresh dates. It was a female boar: this was indicated by small piglets made of dough and laid around her as if they were reaching for her nipples.
The servant cut the boar's side with a hunting knife - and blackbirds flew out of there. The birders who stood at the ready, with the help of sticks smeared with glue, caught all the birds.
Trimalchion ordered to distribute them to the guests and said: "Look, what exquisite acorns this pig ate!"
Meanwhile, the slaves surrounded the feasting with baskets of dates. Then came the turn of small birds, sprinkled with wheat flour and stuffed with raisins and nuts. Next came the fruits of quince, studded with thorns, so that they looked like hedgehogs. They were replaced by oysters, snails, scallops. An endless series of intricately served dishes …"
From this description, the owner's desire is not so much to feed as to amaze his guests, to cause admiration for his wealth.
Emperor Vitellius became famous for his fantastic gluttony in just a few months of his reign. Three or four times a day, he held feasts - at breakfast, afternoon breakfast, lunch and dinner. His stomach was enough for the whole "marathon", as he constantly used emetic. On the day of his arrival in Rome, a feast was held, at which two thousand selected fish and seven thousand birds were served. But this was not the limit.
At one of the feasts, by order of Vitellius, a huge dish called "the shield of Minerva the city holder" was served. It mixed the liver of skar fish, pheasants and peacock brains, flamingo tongues, moray eels, for which he sent ships from Parthia to the Spanish Strait. To make this dish, a smelting furnace had to be built in the open air.
The historian Suetonius wrote about Vitellinus: “Not knowing the measure of gluttony, he did not know the time or decency in it - even during the sacrifice, even on the road he could not resist: right there, at the altar, he grabbed and ate almost from the fire pieces of meat and flat cakes, and on the roadside taverns I did not disdain the smoked food there, even if it were yesterday's leftovers."
Note that during the short time of his reign, Vitellius spent 900 million sesterces on food (for reference: 1 pound of pork cost 48 sesterces, 1 fed goose - 800, a couple of ducks - 160, one hare - 600, river fish (1 pound) - 48, a dozen pumpkins, cucumbers, apples or pears - 16 sesterces).
The dinners were accompanied by a certain “cultural program”. It was attended by jesters, comic actors or dancers, and the women who danced at the tables gradually undressed. Messy speeches were interrupted by obscene sounds.
Many guests vomited - on the floor or in golden tubs. This was either due to an excessive amount of eaten and drunk, or was provoked specifically to cleanse the place in the stomach by tickling the feathers of the throat. "They spew out food to eat, and consume it to spew out" (Seneca).
It cannot be said that such gastronomic "orgies" evoked the approval of the Romans. The immense gluttony of the rich was ridiculed by poets:
Oblong eggs - remember! - tastier than rounded.
They have whiter white and stronger yolk, because
Hidden in him is the embryo of a male sex …
Not everyone is proud of the art of feasts, as long as
You cannot exactly learn all the subtle rules of taste. …
Every connoisseur loves the back of a pregnant hare, Fish and birds to taste and age learn, and breed …
(Horace) …
People, although the dinner is too rich, will never tell you:
“Order this to be removed, Take this dish away! I don’t need ham!
Take the pork! Eel is tasty and cold! Take it! Bring it!"
I can't hear anyone insisting so
- Just to get to food! They climb with their belly on the table!
(Juvenal)
Such vices did not pass by the attention of philosophers.
In one of his letters, Seneca directly says that gluttony and drunkenness lead to many diseases:
“And now what health damage has come to! It is we who pay the penalty for the passion for pleasure, which carries over any measure and law. Count the cooks - and you will cease to be surprised that there are so many diseases … There is not a soul in the schools of philosophers and rhetoricians, but how crowded in the kitchens of gluttonous people, how many young people there are crowded around the stove! I'm not talking about the crowds of bakers, I'm not talking about the servants who scatter at a sign for new dishes; how many people - and one womb gives work to all. …
Do you really think that these festering lumps that go into the mouth directly from the fire cool down in our womb without any harm? What a vile poison it burps then! How disgusting we ourselves are when we smell of wine fumes! You might think that what is eaten is not digested inside, but rots!"
Doctors urged their fellow citizens to eat in moderation and eat rationally. Already from the IV century BC. e. in Greece, dietetics began to develop - a field of medicine that studied the relationship between health and nutrition.
Here are some recommendations from ancient Greek dietitians:
Food should be simple and unassuming; many delicious dishes are harmful to health, especially if they are flavored with spices.
Sour, spicy, too varied, too plentiful foods are difficult to digest; it is equally harmful to greedily pounce on food, absorbing it in large portions.
It is especially important not to overeat in the summer, as well as in old age. From sweet and fatty foods and from drinking people get fat, from dry, crumbling and cold food they lose weight.
As in everything, in food one must observe the measure and refrain from anything that can burden the stomach.
However, if anyone listened to doctors and philosophers and followed their advice, it was their adherents and followers, but by no means Roman gluttons. Therefore, the state was forced to join such efforts.
The first restrictions concerned spending on funeral rites and the cult of the dead, which the Romans attached no less importance to than later the cult of the table. Subsequently, restrictions embraced other aspects of life.
Several decades later, laws appeared forbidding women to drink wine. To prove the observance of these laws, the Romans kissed relatives, thereby convincing them that they did not smell of wine. The only thing they were allowed was a weak wine made from grape pomace or raisins.
Cato the Elder, mentioned above, wrote that in the early period of the Roman Republic, women who drink not only enjoyed the most ill repute, but were also subjected to the same punishments in court as those who cheated on their husbands.
In 161 BC. e. The Senate passed a resolution obliging people who, on the days of the April holiday of the Great Mother of the gods Cybele, are going to visit each other, to take an official oath before the consuls that they will not spend more than 120 asses (48 sesterces) on one feast, not counting the cost of vegetables, flour and wine; however, they will not serve imported wines, only local wines; the silverware will not weigh more than 100 pounds (32.7 kg).
This law was followed by others, also limiting the daily expenses of Roman citizens on different days of the year - holidays and weekdays. On holidays, it was allowed to spend 100 asses, on ordinary days - from 10 to 30 asses. The only exception was wedding celebrations: 200 ases. The daily intake of dried and canned meat was determined. But there were no restrictions on the consumption of vegetables and fruits.
Several decades later, all these harsh laws were consigned to oblivion, and wealthy citizens without fear ruined their families with feasts and receptions.
Then the authorities intervened again - the dictator Sulla passed a law limiting refectory expenses on holidays to 300 sesterces, on other days - to 30.
The so-called Aemilian law of 115 BC had a different character. e. He limited not the amount of expenditure on food, but the number and range of dishes served at the feast. During the reign of Emperor Augustus, the maximum expenses of a Roman citizen were increased to 200 sesterces, and it was allowed to spend as much as a thousand on a wedding.
But nothing could keep within any framework the ever-increasing passion of the rich for gluttony - soon the limit on gastronomic expenses had to be increased: the Roman had the right to spend as many as 2,000 sesterces on the day of the holiday.
But where is the limit to human vices? Some Romans, because of wild gluttony, were ready to lose not only their fortune, but also freedom and honor. Others allowed themselves drunk to appear at meetings of the people, where state affairs were decided.
In other words, the laws passed by the authorities in order to combat exorbitant feasts were violated, and new, more severe ones were adopted in response. For example, the Fannius law (161 BC) forbade the serving of poultry dishes, with the exception of chickens, and even then only those that were not specially fed.
However, a loophole was also found here: since the law deals only with chickens, they began to feed the roosters, giving them milk and other liquid feed, thanks to which the meat became as soft and tender as chicken.
18 years after the Fannia Act, the Didius Act was passed. He extended anti-waste laws not only to Rome, but to all of Italy, as many Italians believed that the Fannian law was binding only on Roman citizens. The same law introduced sanctions for violating the prohibitions both against the host of the feast and against his guests.
However, neither this, nor other similar legislative measures were successful - a small handful of state "inspectors" were unable to resist the growing propensity of the whole society to banter.
The Roman ceremonial dinner had not only a “physiological” meaning as a procedure for taking food, but a deeper one, associated with the relationship of companions. A joint meal brought together not random people, but constituted a stable group, a certain unit. It was attended by blood relatives, persons who joined the family as a result of marriage unions, clients, friends, and at a later time - and let go.
The purpose of the dinners was, in particular, the restoration of peace, the elimination of hostility between those present, the identification of solidarity among the members of this collective. In other words, a Roman meal was always a meal for members of a relatively stable micro-community.
Roman society as a whole in all spheres of life was a conglomerate of such cells-microgroups: surname, rural community, collegia in cities, including priestly ones, etc. There were also craft, cult, funeral colleges, etc.
All of them were organizationally formalized, registered and gathered for their drinking meetings with government permission - without it, the collegium was considered unlawful, and membership in it was severely punished (this refers to imperial Rome; in the republican period, the creation of communities was considered a private matter of citizens and was not subjected to any restrictions).
Collegiality, community and commonwealth were in Ancient Rome rather a socio-psychological need, which was a consequence of the initial principle of ancient society - fragmentation, relative isolation and internal cohesion of limited primary cells of existence.
In addition, such microgroups also had a cult element, which was expressed in the definition of religious rituals during joint meals. Nevertheless, the main thing was not this, but oblivion at the dinner table of antagonisms, the search for solidarity and mutual affection that people needed like air and which they found less and less in the steadily alienating huge state, in the Roman everyday life torn apart by the aggravating contradictions.
Joint feasts created the illusion of democratic solidarity among members of a community, family-clan or other organization. However, new trends in life brought the collapse of community solidarity, oblivion of the traditions of the past and the destruction of the illusion of civil equality. And although this happened in all spheres of Roman activity, the profanation and disintegration of this human solidarity at joint meals affected especially painfully.
In the triclinium of the Roman rich man, relatives, friends, colleagues, let goers and clients gathered at the table, that is, people included in the system of connections that were originally characteristic of the community. This system presupposed the solidarity of the people who were part of this cell of society, as well as mutual assistance, the provision of moral and material support to the “younger” and the poor from the “elders” and the rich, primarily from the patron - clients. For such support, clients and impoverished members of the family went to dinner with their patron.
But at the end of the republic, and then in the era of the Empire, an atmosphere of revelry, bullying, cynicism and humiliation began to develop at these dinners, primarily for people of little influence, clients and freedmen. This was reflected in the custom of dividing the invitees into "important" and "less important". The latter included the mentioned categories of people. This differentiation of guests was condemned by the Romans with a more developed culture and moral consciousness.
Pliny the Younger, describing dinner at such a host, treating guests depending on their position, is indignant at this way of dealing with the guests:
“The owner, in his own opinion, had taste and sense, but in my opinion, he was stingy and at the same time wasteful. He and a few guests were served excellent food in abundance, the rest were bad and in small quantities. He poured wine in small bottles into three varieties: one was for him and for us, the other was simpler for his friends, the third was for freedmen, his and mine …
My boxmate noticed this and asked if I approved of this custom. I answered in the negative.
- "Which one do you stick to?"
- “I serve everyone the same thing; I invite people to treat them, and not to dishonor them, and in everything I equalize those who were equalized by my invitation."
- "Even freedmen?"
- “Even! They are guests for me now, not dismissals."
"Does lunch cost you a lot?"
- "Not at all".
- "How can it be?"
- "Because, of course, my discharged people drink not the wine that I do, but I drink the wine that they are."
The practice of selective hospitality spread throughout the empire. Customers were especially dismissive. The close, almost family ties that existed in the era of the Republic between dependent clients and their patrons, and based on mutual services and assistance, gradually weakened. The rich and noble Romans ceased to need the clients around them, and they turned into mere hangers-on, whom they received reluctantly and who were not given any attention.
Even the slaves, whose duty was to serve all the guests, seeing such an attitude towards one or another guest, serving the latter was considered humiliating: “Will he really come to you? Will your servant appear at the call with boiling water and cold? He disdains, of course, to serve elderly clients; you demand something lying down, but he is standing in front of you. In every rich house there are as many proud slaves as you want”(Juvenal).
With this attitude of the host, the guests, especially the clients, behaved accordingly. In Rome, there was a custom to distribute to those present a part of the meal, which they took with them in napkins specially taken for this occasion.
As the character of Roman meals degraded, those invited of a lower rank began to steal the master's napkins, wrapping in them not only what the person was given, but also what he managed to drag off the table. Then "gifts" at the end of the dinner began to be handed out directly to the hands.
In addition to the most common feasts of the rich, there were also meals of the opposite nature, mainly in provincial conservative families, which preserved the moderate traditions of the past, as well as among the Roman intelligentsia. They were modest and short-lived. Vegetable dishes and fruits played the main role. The entertainment part included playing the flute, lyre, or reciting classical poetry.
Often, “entertainment” consisted only in “Socratic conversations,” that is, conversations on philosophical, literary or everyday topics in a lively and witty form, in which the interlocutors competed in resourcefulness. At such dinners it was possible to create an atmosphere of sincere affection, friendly solidarity, and spiritual joy.
In this hypostasis, lunch was no longer a "physiological" and gastronomic act, but an expression of a spiritual and moral position and community.