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

est taken to refer to a domestic latrine." 100 Custom probably varied from household to
household -- slaves coming to the guests at table with portable toilets, or guests venturing into
the service-area of the house to use a latrine in the kitchen. Where the host and guests relieved
themselves during a formal meal must have been based on rules of 'social hygiene'. 101 Would a
host have wanted to keep his guests away from a latrine, preventing them from witnessing dirty
slaves cooking in the kitchen and risking loss of their appetite?
Romans practiced a range and variety of dining practices; fragmentary and anecdotal
literary sources depict largely exaggerated behavior, and the precepts from the Casa del
Moralista are the expressions of an individual. Tastes in food, just as in mixed wine, varied from
person to person; Horace assumes as much when he speaks of his poetic audience in terms of
guests at a dinner-party:
Besides, not everyone likes and admires the same stuff. Lyric pleases you,
another man delights in iambs, still another in Biton's satire and coarse black salt.
Any three guests I have seem almost never to agree; their tastes differ and they
ask for different things. What should I serve? What not serve? You reject their
choices, the other two think yours is bitter, really revolting. 102
Variety in eating habits is actually prescribed by the medical author Celsus, in accordance with
the appropriateness of the occasion:
It is best...not to avoid any particular types of food commonly in use; sometimes
to attend banquets, at other times to stay away; sometimes to eat more than
sufficient and on other occasions eat no more; to eat twice a day rather than once,
and always to eat as much as you need as long as you can digest it. 103
Etiquette is as relevant to the temporal as the social context of the meal -- knowing when to begin
eating, when to stop, how often to eat, and even how quickly or slowly to eat. The hopeless
Santra not only eats and drinks too much, but too fast; in hurrying to bring back his haul of
goodies home, he leaves behind his opportunity to return. Santra does not appreciate that the
timing of meals marks the tempo of orderly society; he cannot keep pace, and is sure to fall back,
and out, of proper society as a result.
100 Scobie 1986, 410. See also Salza Prina Ricotti 1978/80.
101 For physical health risks in juxtaposing the kitchen and latrine, see chapter two, p. 74-75.
102 Hor. Ep. 2.2.58-64: denique non omnes eadem mirantur amantque: carmine tu gaudes, hic delectatur iambis, ille
Bioneis sermonibus et sale nigro. Tres mihi conviviae prope dissentire videntur, poscentes vario multum diverso
palato. Quid dem? Quid non dem? Renuis tu, quod iubet alter; quod petis, id sane est invisum acidumque duobus
(OCT text, Fuchs 1977 translation). See also Plin. Ep. 2.5, 3.1 and 7.3 for variatio in dining.
103 Cels. 1.1.1-2 (translation Hudson 1989, 72).
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