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

couches, or seated at a separate and more rustic table with other young nobles. 199 Imperial
children were of course of the highest rank, and therefore would have been socially acceptable
company at imperial dinners. Their status as children however compelled them sometimes to eat
together and slightly separate from the adults. The point at which free youths would be allowed
to dine formally as an adult at table is not entirely clear, but it was probably marriage for girls,
and the assumption of the toga virilis for boys. Both were considered marks of adulthood, and
were celebrated by feasts. 200
Dinners at which morally unacceptable language and behavior were expressed were not
considered suitable by some authors for children or young adults to attend. 201 Furthermore,
Juvenal warns that bad habits such as gluttony are passed on from parents to children:
As soon as he has passed his seventh year, before he has cut all his second teeth,
though you put a thousand bearded preceptors on his right hand, and as many
on his left, he will always long to fare sumptuously, and not fall below the high
standard of his cookery. 202
The 'child' in this passage is satiric shorthand for persons who are not mature enough to control
their own physical desires. 203 So Seneca moralizes about the decline of youths in terms of their
dining habits:
You need not wonder that diseases are beyond counting: count the cooks!...The
halls of the professor and the philosopher are deserted: but what a crowd there
is in the cafés! How many young fellows besiege the kitchens of their gluttonous
friends! I shall not mention the troops of luckless boys who must put up with
other shameful treatment after the banquet is over. 204
199 Reclining on the lowest couch: Suet. Aug. 64 (echoed by Plu. Moralia 619D); sitting at the ends of the
couches: Suet. Cl. 32; sitting at a separate table: Tac. Ann. 13.16.
200 Dixon 1992, 101-102. Feast for the assumption of the toga virilis: Plin. Ep. 10.16; Cic. Att. 9.6. The
wedding feast (cena nuptialis): Catul. 62.3; D.C. 48.44.
201 Var. Men. Ag. 6 advises maidens to avoid the banquet lest they learn too much of the speech of love
(Salza Prina Ricotti 1983, 23).
202 Juv. 14.10-14: Cum septimus annus transierit puerum, nondum omni dente renato, barbatos licet admoveas mille
inde magistros, hinc totidem, cupiet lauto cenare paratu semper et a magna non degenerare culina (Loeb text and
translation).
203 Gowers 1993, 24: "...the sorts of people depicted relishing food in Roman literature are children, slaves,
parasites, cooks, gluttons, and gourmets; in other words, uncontrolled people who cannot be identified with
the author or his accomplice the reader." In pp. 181-182, Gowers opposes "raw", or "uncooked" youth (who
cannot get enough) to the "overcooked" elderly (who have had far too much).
204 Sen. Ep. 95.23: Innumerabiles esse morbos non mirabis: cocos numera...In rhetorum ac philosophorum scholis
solitudo est: at quam celebres culinae sunt, quanta circa nepotum focos iuventus premit! Transeo puerorum
infelicium greges quos post transacta convivia aliae cubiculi contumeliae expectant (Loeb text and translation).
46