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

fugitives, hangmen, coffin-makers and eunuch priests, all of them drunk and dangerous. 150 The
crowds at these establishments perhaps did include a number of social undesirables, but the
majority must have been ordinary citizens and freedmen. Ancient authors exhibit a curious mix
of disgust and fascination with diners and cook shops. On the surface, depicting taverns as
havens of crime and vice reinforced their own high status by degrading those of lower status.
But underneath, elites' self-imposed segregation from taverns inspired vicarious speculation
about what the seedy dives were like, and contributed to their numerous and exaggerated
descriptions. Authors lambasted the emperor Nero (who submitted to his curiosity) for visiting
cook shops in disguise; their criticism was rooted in Nero's refusal to eat with his own social
order. 151 Social relations in the Roman world were inexorably bound to the company kept at
dinner; where one ate clearly indicated who one was in terms of rank and status.
Lunch counters and diners (popular lunch destinations) were not the regular source of
dinners for members of society who did not have their own formal kitchens or dining rooms. 152
A visit to a caupona did not mean that an individual did not first dine at home. In small shops,
apartments or houses where there was no room to host a meal, people still cooked their own food
over cooking stands or braziers. Plebs visited the local tavern after dinner for a drink, some
snacks, gambling and the conversation and camaraderie that could not be furnished at home. 153
In the first century A.D. a series of laws were enacted that restricted the types of food
that could be sold in Roman diners and lunch counters. These laws originally prohibited baked
goods, cooked meat and hot water for diluting wine, and they finally restricted the menu in
popinae to chick-peas and beans. 154 This legal action seems to have been taken to reduce persons'
150 Paraphrasing Juv. 8.146-182, which mocks the penchant of the consul Lateranus to frequent the mean
popinae of his humble upbringing. Lateranus' sin is his association as an honored public official with the
poor free and slave population, and his consequent rejection of dinner with more elite company. See also
Hor. S. 1.14.21-25; Mart. 5.70; Stambaugh 1988, 208-209.
151 C.D. 61.8.1, 62.14.2; Suet. Nero 26; see Goddard 1994, 74-75; Balsdon 1974, 152-154.
152 La Torre 1988, 93, n.26 assumes that residents of small shops or houses with no obvious kitchen had no
choice but to eat out, but he cites no evidence supporting this assumption. The gustus of the meal in Mart.
11.52 (set in his home next to a bath-house) only imitates the sort of menu that might be found in a bathhouse
popina. In this poem, Martial mocks his own 'take-out' hors d'ouvres, and then constructs fantasy
main courses that disguise his comically meager meal from the guests whom he is inviting: "These are
enough for starters. Would you like to know the rest? I'll lie, so that you'll come."; Haec satis in gustu. Cetera
nosse cupis? Mentiar, ut venias (OCT text, author's translation; see Gowers 1993, 264-267).
153 For example, CIL 4.575 records the inscription outside caupona (VII.2.44) of the "Late Drinkers
Association" (Seri bibi), who are more likely a group of bar 'regulars' than a collegium, as has been supposed
(Fisher 1988, 1223; Della Corte 1954, #334). See also below, pp. 170-171.
154 Under the reigns of Tiberius, Claudius, Nero and Vespasian: Suet. Tib. 34, Ner. 16; D.C. 60.6.6-7, 60.10.3,
62.14.2. See Kleberg 1957, 98-123; Stambaugh 1988, 209 and n.11; Salza Prina Ricotti 1987, 121. Packer 1978,
47-49 argues strongly that the dolia set into the counters fronting popinae and tabernae held only dry snacks
such as nuts, dried fruit, vegetables and smoked goods, which were in accordance with most of the
sumptuary legislation on popinae (if the laws applied beyond Rome), and which would not have been
nutritionally sufficient to serve as regular meals for the urban poor.
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