KITCHENS AND DINING ROOMS AT POMPEII ... - Get a Free Blog

Culinary information
Methods for preparing food may be handed down by word of mouth or transmitted by
written recipes. This body of information, this cultural system of food preparation, may fairly be
considered the cuisine of a society. 30 A cuisine explains what ingredients, proportions,
procedures, implements and facilities are needed; it is the knowledge of how to turn a mass of
raw materials into a meal. Cuisine has always been closely linked to the cultural, geographical
and ethnic identity of a group of people. Hellenic culture in particular influenced Romans in
cuisine during the third to first centuries B.C. In part because of the military and diplomatic
intervention of the Roman state in Eastern politics, generals, soldiers and traders returned with
foods native to the East, special cooks and new dining furniture. 31 Livy marks what must have
been a long process with the specific date of 187 B.C., just after Cn. Manlius' conquest of Asia:
Banquets began to be prepared with greater care and expense. The cook, whom
the ancients regarded and treated as the lowest type of slave, was rising in value,
and what had been a servile task began to be looked on as a fine art. 32
The response of Roman elites (those who could afford the new foods and cooks) to new culinary
trends was to impose legal limitations on expenditures for meals. Sumptuary legislation
effectively limited the amount of rare imported foods and wine persons could buy, while not
restricting produce from the local fields, vineyards and orchards that the same elites owned. The
legislation was intended to protect the financial (as well as social and political) interests of the
landed aristocracy. 33 These legal restrictions were, however, ineffectual; already in the plays of
Plautus, who died shortly after 187 B.C., Roman and Greek cuisine and culture were inextricably
mixed. 34
One basic difference between Greek and Roman custom was still understood to exist: the
Greek symposium was a drinking-party with food on the side, while the Roman cena was a food
party with drinking on the side. 35 The recipes and meals of the two cultures were nonetheless
30 Rozin 1992, xi.
31 Examples of foods brought to Rome from the East: the lemon from Persia via Greece, cherries from the
Black Sea, the apricot from Armenia, the peach from Persia, dates from Palestine and Africa, and rice from
India (Gozzini Giacosa 1992, 12-14; see also Dosi & Schnell 1986a, 24-28 and André 1961, esp. 219-221, for
detailed discussions of the origins of every type of food available to the Romans, and the particular
influence of Hellenistic civilizations).
32 Liv. 39.6: Epulae quoque ipsae et cura et sumptu maiore apparari coeptae. Tum coquus, vilissimum antiquis
mancipium et aestimatione et usu, in pretio esse, et quod ministerium fuerat, ars haberi coepta (OCT text, Cubberley
et al. 1988 translation). Plin. Nat. 34.14 marks the same date for the introduction of the bronze dining-couch
(see Pirzio Biroli Stefanelli 1990, 39-49, 68-79, 162-180, Figs. 118-149).
33 Clemente 1981; see above, p. 10.
34 Gowers 1993, 65: " 'Greek' influence was by now so firmly entrenched in Roman culture, or indeed was
already equivalent to Roman culture, that it was artificial to mark it off as foreign, or to ascribe the excesses of
festivals to Greek luxury."
35 Paraphrasing Dunbabin 1993, 129 and Gowers 1993, 29. See chapter four, p. 174, n. 16.
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