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Eating establishments
On a daily basis, commercial eating establishments offered food and socializing to
persons who could not afford to belong to a collegium. The businesses at which people could buy
cooked food and often a place to eat it were many and varied. In any hotel or inn (hospitium,
deversorium, stabulum), food and wine were also available. 145 A 'diner' that combined the features
of a restaurant, a tavern and sometimes a brothel was known commonly as a caupona; a more
disreputable version was a ganea, ganeum or gurgustium (Figs. 1.19, 2.48-49). 146 A 'lunch counter'
that offered only food and wine, not lodging, was usually called a popina or a taberna (Figs. 2.18,
5.46, 5.55, 5.83, 5.108). 147 Finally there were bakeries (pistrina) and pastry-shops (pistrina
dulciaria) where bread and pastries could be purchased directly, and where individuals could
have their own items of prepared dough baked in the large ovens. 148
Inns, taverns, diners, and lunch counters all offered food and wine, and sometimes
entertainment, lodging, or sex. Most importantly, they provided places in the neighborhood for
social interaction, especially for those who were not regularly invited to dinners in private
homes. Latin authors, people of privileged rank and status, almost never spoke positively of
taverns or diners, but then they rarely seem to have visited them. 149 Elites equated the
establishments with their clientele, which stereotypically consisted of cut-throats, sailors, thieves,
145 All three terms refer primarily to a place of lodging with food and drink. A deversorium refers further to
hostels located on country roads between towns, and a stabulum may have additional stables for housing
carts and animals (Kleberg 1957 is the primary study of hotels, inns and taverns; he details the evolution of
these terms in pp. 6-19. Packer 1978 provides archaeological examples, and Laurence 1994, 78-87 discusses
their place in the urban fabric).
146 A caupona essentially offered the services of a stand-up food and drink counter, often with benches or
chairs at a table, and sometimes private dining rooms with masonry triclinia or a garden. Dining benches
are present in the cauponae I.8.15-16 and IX.2.26 of the study sample; proper dining rooms are attached to the
cauponae at I.8.8-9 and I.8.15-16. Kleberg 1957, 1-11 demonstrates that the meaning of caupona became more
pejorative over time, akin to the terms ganeum and gurgustium, which are best translated as 'dives' or 'holes'
(see also La Torre 1988, 76-78; Stambaugh 1988, 208-209; Jashemski 1979, 167-181).
147 Kleberg 1957, 16-18, 24-25 has shown convincingly that the lunch counter (commonly mislabeled
thermopolium, a word that does not appear outside of Plautus), is best described by the term popina. In the
Republican age, the term taberna also meant "shop", but this meaning eventually gave way to "tavern,
cabaret". A taberna which associated itself primarily with the servicing and selling of wine was known as a
taberna vinaria. See Gassner 1986, esp. 1-45; Kleberg 1957, 18-23; Packer 1978; Dosi & Schnell 1986b, 36-61;
Stambaugh 1988, 208-209; La Torre 1988, 76-78 (where popinae are unfortunately called thermopolia). See
chapter three, pp. 122-123 for the architectural definitions of commercial eating establishments used in this
thesis.
148 Mayeske 1972; Mayeske 1979; La Torre 1988, 84, Peacock 1989.
149 Kleberg 1957, 1-25; Gowers 1993-15-16 quotes Sen. de Vit. Beat. 7.3, a moral mapping of the topography of
the city: "Virtue is something high, exalted, and regal, unconquerable and indefagitable; pleasure is
something lowly, servile, weak, and perishable, which haunts the brothels and cookshops."; Altum quiddam
est virtus, excelsum, regale, invictum, infatigabile: voluptas humile, servile, imbecillum, caducum, cuius statio ac
domicilium fornices et popinae sunt (OCT text, Gowers translation).
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