Friends, Romans, and Countrymen--which was Shakespeare, not Roman
While the Greeks were likely to drink wine at a Symposium, the Romans drank wine with food. Although they certainly had wild drinking parties, the center of their social life was the dinner party, not the Symposium. They took great delight in the joys of the table, and this included wine in all its forms. They drank cool wine in the summer, and warm wine in the winter, and enjoyed beautifully decorated wine vessels—which were luxury items for the very rich—especially after the conquest of Spain, which had large silver deposits.
Roman wines were aged, up to 125 years, and blended with fresh water or sea water. They were concentrated by heating, complemented with resin, and flavored in almost every way possible. They had aperitif wines, usually mixed with pepper, honey, or even grape juice.
Roman wine literature tells many stories that we still see in the wine media today. There were famous vineyards, famous appellations, over-cropping, appellation frauds, and a fear that the monoculture of grapes would replace wheat—thus starving the empire. This is a recurring theme, even through the French Revolution—and today.
The Roman Villa
On hillsides above rivers, to protect against frost, to provide transportation, and coincidentally, to provide wine to the Roman Legions who used those rivers as both transport and border.
The central concept of Roman agriculture was the villa, or private estate. Each Roman villa produced its own wine—and when the Empire fell, Goths and Vandals took over those estates, often controlling the production of food, and wine, for that region. These estates will continue to play a role in the world of wine for centuries.
In Rome, all agriculture was based on slave labor—with slave life-spans as part of the financial projections for the project. The Romans also spread grapevines across the Empire—almost always near rivers to allow for ease of transportation. In this way, the great wine regions of Europe, the Rhone, the Loire, the Gironde, and the Rhine, owe their roots to the Romans. And they were always located on a hillside, to protect against frost, as the cold air of spring would flow down into the river below, and leave the vines safe. Wine production was carefully studied and organized—barrel aging and hillside vineyards all became commonplace at this time.
In Italy, grapevines were cultivated both in the north by the Etruscans and in the south by Greek colonists. In fact, the Greeks often imported wine from Sicily in the later years of their power. Wine growing was less important to the Romans, who, in the early years of the Republic, were fighting to expand their domination of the peninsula. By the middle of the second century BC, however, Rome controlled the Mediterranean. They have the power and wealth to invest in vineyards, and potential profits to justify those investments.
The earliest written work on wine and agriculture was written in Punic--that's the language of the Phonicians, who founded Troy. After the destruction of Carthage in 146 BC, the Senate decreed that this treatise be translated into Latin, and it subsequently became the source for all Roman writing on viticulture. Ironically, it was Cato, who wrote/translated De Agri Cultura, the first survey of Roman viticulture. This treatise is now the earliest surviving prose work in Latin. In it, he discusses the production of wine on large slave-based villa estates. Clearly, wine had evolved from its earlier days of a supplemental crop to basic subsistence farming.
Wine became such a profitable crop that new plantings were outlawed for a time because the Empire found itself should of food---wheat was being supplanted by grapevines.
Even then, there were vineyard-designated wines
By 154 BC, Pliny notes that wine production in Italy was both important and successful. To protect that industry, the cultivation of vines was prohibited beyond the Alps, and, for the first two centuries BC, wine was exported to the provinces, especially to Gaul, in exchange for the slaves whose labor was needed to cultivate the large estate vineyards. (Pliny claims that the wine trade with Gaul was so extensive because the early Frenchmen were enchanted with wine, and drank it constantly.)
As the Roman Villas took over more and more land, the displaced rural population was forced to emigrate to Rome. By the first century BC, the city had approximately one million inhabitants. There, the sweetened wine called muslum was freely distributed at games and circuses to solicit political support. Demand became so great that it was more profitable to sell wine at home than to export it. By the first century AD, the domestic market had grown so strong that wine had to be imported from Iberia (Spain) and Gaul.
Interestingly enough, one of the few wines from Iberia that was considered on a quality level comparable with Roman wines was Ceretano wine--which quite probably came from the town of Ceret, or Jerez. It is still a wine-producing region today, and some of the wines of Jerez are still sweet and aromatic, perhaps a living memory of the ancient wines of Rome.
In 37 BC, Varro wrote Res Rusticae ("Country Matters"), a manual on all farming. While Varro is not as specific about viticulture, he does say that some grapes produce wines that must be drunk within a year, before they become too bitter, while others, such as the famous Falernian, mature with age and increase in value. (A century later, Pliny wrote same thing: that nothing experienced a greater increase in value than wine that had been cellared up to twenty years, or a greater decrease in value afterwards. That's good advice, even for most wine collectors today!)
The most comprehensive account of Roman viticulture is De Re Rustica ("On Country Matters") by written by Columella in A.D. 65. The best wine, he says, is that "which has given pleasure by its own natural quality," although he also mentions the pitch that sometimes was used to seal the inside of amphorae that may very well have given a resinous taste to the wine. By now, viticulture was highly developed, and many of the practices about which Columella writes still are in use: hillside vineyards, careful pruning, etc. But imports from the provinces and a decrease in the supply of slaves were depressing the market.
In AD 77, two years before his death, Pliny completed his Natural History. (He died trying to observe the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius!) In Natural History he reviews the history of wine, its viticulture and vinification. Pliny laments the increased production of cheap wines and the loss of quality wines from top vintages. Traditionally, the best wine was reputed to have been Caecuban from Latium, but it no longer existed, the neglected vineyards having been dug up by Nero for the construction of a canal. Progress and urbanization were destroying the great vineyards of the Empire.
In Pliny's time, the best wine was considered to be Falernian, grown on the slopes of Mount Falernus on the border between Latium and Campania. This is one of the legendary wines of the ages. Next in rank were the wines of the Alban Hills southeast of Rome, and Surrentine and Massic (among others) from the Campania. Finally, there was Mamertine from Messina, first brought into favor by Julius Caesar, who had it served at public banquets. Marsala, a rich sweet wine from Sicily, was famous then, and was re-created in the 1700's to match the legends of the Messina wines of nearly 2,000 years before.
Falernian was perhaps the first real cult wine. Made from the Aminean grape, "a producer of exceedingly good wine," according to Columella, it was brought to Italy by Greek colonists who first settled at Cumae near the Bay of Naples. Pliny says that three types were recognized: Caucinian, which was grown on the higher slopes; and then, midway down, Faustian (grown on the estate of Faustus, the son of the dictator Sulla, and regarded as the best and most carefully produced); and, on the lower slopes, plain Falernian. Even then, there were individual vineyard designated wines!
(In his Meditations, Aurelius also speaks of Falernian. As a Stoic he was less impressed with the wine he drank, and reminds himself: "Surely it is an excellent plan, when you are seated before delicacies and choice foods, to impress upon your imagination...that the Falernian wine is grape juice.") Falernian, like all great wines of the time, would have been served to the Emperor in goblets carved of fluorspar, rock crystal, precious metal or blown glass.
Falernian Wine is being made today...albeit with a modern recipe
“The Mediterranean--the sea in the middle of the Earth”
Romans also used wine in medicine. Galen, a doctor at a gladiatorial school and later the personal physician to Marcus Aurelius, used wine to treat the wounds of gladiators and to protect the emperor from poison. Apparently, he felt that Falernian was far and away the best of these potions. And he discovered it by tasting through all of the wines in the Emperors cellars, from youngest to oldest. That must have been quite a job.
Distillation was unknown in the ancient world (it took the scientists of the Arabic world to discover it in the early Middle Ages); so wine was the strongest drink of the Romans. Falernian was full-bodied (firmissima), with an alcohol content as much as fifteen or sixteen percent (at which point the yeast is killed by the alcohol it produces). A white wine, it was aged for ten to twenty years or more, until it became the color of amber. The great wine of 121 BC was a Falernian, the same year that Opimius was consul and had rebuilt the Temple of Concord. This is the wine that Petronius, in The Satyricon, has Trimalchio serve at his dinner banquet, and it is this wine that Pliny says still survived, although so concentrated as to be barely drinkable, to his own time 200 years later. He also speaks of Opimian Falernian being offered to Caligula that was 160 years old.
Vintage wines could be kept for such lengths of time because they were stored in amphorae. These were large tapering two-handled clay jars, with a narrow neck that was sealed with cork plastered over with cement, and held approximately 26 liters or almost 7 gallons. By the first century BC, the Romans were distributing wine throughout the Mediterranean in amphorae known as Dressel 1. By the end of the century, this type had been replaced by Dressel 2-4, which were much lighter and had a greater volume-to-weight ratio. They continued in use until the end of the first century AD, when there was a precipitous drop in wine exports.
(The airtight amphorae were replaced by wooden barrels in the second century AD. The barrels deteriorated over time, so we have fewer archeological relics of wine from this date. And because barrels are not airtight, this also changed the style of wines. Vintage wines would not reappear until the seventeenth century, with the development of the glass bottle and cork.)
How was wine made in Roman Times?
Vines were pruned and tended, and the grapes cut and brought in baskets to be trodden or crushed in the wine press. The must (juice) then underwent fermentation and maturation. Weaker wines were aged in large clay containers partially buried in the floor. More full-bodied wines, such as those from the Campania region, were fermented in the open air to promote the oxidation characteristic of a mature wine—exposed, says Pliny, to the sun and moon, wind and rain. The wine then was racked (transferred) to amphorae either for storage, sometimes in a warm, smoky loft to promote aging; or for transport, which was almost always by boat. (It was cheaper to ship wine from one end of the Mediterranean to the other than to haul it 75 miles overland, which is one reason why most vineyards tended to be situated on the coast or near major rivers.)
At the time of Caesar Augustus, the taste was for strong, sweet wines, which meant that the grapes were left to ripen on the vine as long as possible, sometimes until the first frost of autumn, to concentrate the sugar that could be converted to alcohol. Boiling the must also reduced and concentrated the sugar and flavors, which was then used to improve or sweeten other wines. Honey also was added as a sweetener, and wine was flavored with spices, resin, or even seawater, all of which helped to act as a preservative or mask sour wine that was turning to vinegar.
The food that matched these wines was strongly seasoned, too, as one can read in the cookbook of Apicius. Fermented fish sauce called garum, garlic, fruits such as figs and apricots (which would have been sweetened and preserved in sapa), honey, and wine all were used to flavor the food. Sometimes these condiments completely overwhelmed the natural taste of the food, which was just as well given the lack of refrigeration.
Wine almost always was mixed with water for drinking; undiluted wine (merum) was considered a drink only appropriate for provincials and barbarians. The Romans usually mixed one part wine to two parts water (sometimes hot or salted with sea water). The Greeks tended to dilute their wine with three or four parts water, which they always mixed by adding the wine. The intention of the Greek symposium was to enjoy the aesthetic pleasure of the wine, to be intoxicated just enough to have the mind released from inhibition and conversation stimulated. The Roman counterpart, the convivium, was much more likely to result in drunken behavior. It gives us the English word “convivial,” which is a little more pleasant in meaning.
The hot and dry conditions caused by the volcanic ash that buried Pompeii in AD 79 preserved remarkable remains of fruit, nuts, beans and seeds. Together with the careful excavation of cavities left in the soil by the decay of roots, these remains demonstrate that sizeable areas of Pompeii were used as orchards, vineyards and market gardens.
The Campanian coast around Pompeii was popular with upper class Romans, many of whom had vineyards and villas there. Smothered by ash in the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius in AD 79, Pompeii gives us a wonderful picture of Roman life at the time.
There were a lot of bars in Pompeii. About two hundred have been identified. On one street near the public baths, eight bars stand in a row. Pliny wrote about this area as part of his observations about the Pompeians. First, he says, they went to the hot baths, staying there until they were almost unconscious, then they rushed out, sometimes still naked, to grab a large jug of wine at an outdoor thermopolium. They drank this so quickly that they often vomited it up again, but this only allowed them to drink more. This must be the origin of the fraternity toga party.
Wine prices were posted and varied for wines of different quality (one, two, three, or four asses per sextarius or pint; by comparison, a loaf of bread cost two asses). On one wall, a price list reads, "For one as you can drink wine; for two, you can drink the best; for four, you can drink Falernian." It's pretty unlikely that genuine Falernian was available in the neighborhood bars in Pompeii—it's more likely that the wine was some kind of facsimile thereof. Most of these taverns sold young red wine siphoned off from amphorae stored at the counter. It was drunk from earthenware mugs. Slaves and other less fortunates would have drunk Lora, a thin, bitter wine made from the lees or dregs of the press. Low ranking soldiers and the urban poor usually got something similar.
The Roman Villa
The classic Roman villa was a complex of buildings, often in a rectangle, and included a house (villa urbana) and farmyard (villa rustica), with walled or colonnaded gardens and a courtyard. On surrounding slopes you would find larger polygonal enclosures for either livestock or growing crops. If it were in Provence today it would be called a "mas" and would risk being modernized for a summer home.
Most would have rooms for olive and grape presses and a mill. Underneath were the wine cellars for both fermentation and storage. The house, processing rooms, and even slave quarters were all located around an open onto a courtyard. The villa rustica was nothing more than a farmyard surrounded by small rooms and a granary/store building. Each villa was a self-contained farm, growing all that was needed for life, and ideally producing at least some surplus to sell on the open market.
Pompeii
The countryside around Pompeii is famous for its large number of villas, and a part of their economic function has always been assumed to be the supply of food to the town, normally envisaged as densely occupied by houses, workshops and businesses. An analysis of Pompeii shows that ten percent of the excavations in that area found farms and food production facilities.
Ancient Pompeii must have been very beautiful. It had many green gardens, parks, vineyards, orchards, and vegetable plots. Because Vesuvius erupted in August, many plants and other crops were preserved for study, including a number which were bearing fruit. The remains of seeds, beans, pips, nuts and stones can all be found n the volcanic dust of the city. Part of the excavation of Pompeii includes making root castings of plants.
One area was filled by orderly rows of vines, placed 4m apart and supported by a wooden stake. As you might expect in polyculture, trees were found between the second and third rows of vines. Some were olive trees, and others may well have other kinds of fruit trees. This would allow the vines to use the trees as a trellis system--a system still in use in parts of Italy today. The vineyard also contained two outdoor dining areas with reclining benches (triclinia). It is pleasant to think of the ancient Romans visiting these villas for picnics and outdoor dining. One such vineyard actually overlooked the amphitheater, so diners could well have enjoyed dinner and a show.
Near the owner's house in one vineyard was a winemaking facility, capable of producing about 3,000 gallons of wine. This included underground storage jars for the full production. Another part of the house also had a wine shop which opened up onto the street—now known as the Via dell'Abbondanza.
Like the modern bars, there were several different types of this bars, each with its own name, size and function. There were taberna, popina, caupona, thermopolium, or ganea. All of these were places for food and drink, but each one had a slightly different meaning.
A popina was an informal place to get a quick bite and something to drink. They were small, and didn't even have dining accommodations. They opened late, and stayed open until the wee hours. They were also usually near brothels and gambling houses, so one could imagine the clientele going back and forth from one spot to the other.
One popina in the center of Pompeii had an oven for cooking pastries and other warm goods, and a small bar at the front that was equipped with dolia, or built-in bowls for wine. There were amphorae behind the counter that held more wine, so that the supply in the dolia could be easily replenished. Since we have also found food service implements here, some clients would have chosen to eat right at the counter. And to complete the picture, a dice box on the second floor would have given the clients additional entertainment.
The caupona was quite different, and gave patrons several options for both meals and entertainment. The bar may have been similar to that of a popina, but the customers could visit a back room or garden for a relaxing meal, or go to other areas that featured gambling tables. Just as in the popina, prostitutes would have been available here as well. Again, only lower-class citizens would have been seen in a caupona.
Some caupona, also known as tabernae, had rooms available for lodging. While tabernae may have had restaurants, lavatories, and bedrooms with locks and keys, there was still always the danger of cold, illness, or a lack of safe drinking water. Rooms were usually shared by two to four guests, and prostitutes were often among the services offered. This was not a place for the upper classes, who would normally stay overnight at a friend's house on the way. As you might expect, the owners of these inns had a mixed reputation as well.
While the eruption of Mt Vesuvius destroyed some of the best vineyards in Italy, wine was being grown throughout the Roman Empire. Iberia was an important producer of wine, and wine first was beginning to be imported from Gaul, with new vines being planted at Narbonensis in the south (viticulture would spread northward and new vines introduced that were more suitable to the region, one of which was the biturica, the ancestor of carbernet varieties). Eventually, there was an Imperial wine glut. In AD 92. Domitian banned the planting of any new vineyards in Italy and ordered the removal of half the vines in the provinces. Only Roman citizens were allowed to grow vines.
When, in AD 212, Caracalla gave citizenship to all free inhabitants of the empire, it opened up new areas for grapes. Finally, in AD 280, the Domitian edict was completely revoked. While it may not have been enforced very stringently, this opened the doors for new plantings everywhere in the Empire. A millennium and a half later, the wines of the Roman Empire continue to be enjoyed.
The three most important agricultural products traded in the Roman world were grain, wine and olive oil. The three together are known as the 'Mediterranean triad', and when they are grown in the same fields, it is a simple example of 'polyculture'.
This is an important development in human civilization, and very different from hunting and gathering. The olive and grape need different soil conditions from cereals and other crops, and are usually harvested later than those crops. This allows farmers to make the most of their land. And while it is not the best way to grow great wines, it is a system that is still practiced in much of Spain and Italy today. At its heart is the need to make full use of the land and limited water of the Mediterranean climate.
This became even more important around 200 AD, as world-wide temperatures rose. Vines grew in many parts of England, and crops were grown in the Northern latitudes that have never been grown successfully since. The population grew as well, and expanded into what had been pretty marginal lands before that. Later, during the Little Ice Age, the Thames froze regularly enough for fairs to be held on the ice.
Dining in Ancient Rome
In Rome, how and what you ate and drank depended upon who you were, and who you knew. Age strongly determined one's participation at meals. Mothers (or nurses in households with slaves or freedwomen) commonly breast-fed their infants for six months to two or three years, and then provided pre-masticated food for a time after their weaning. Infants were then fed plain food like baby's gruel and bread soup
Children ate in the same room as their parents. Imperial children were seated at the ends of the couches, or seated at a separate and more rustic table with other young nobles. Imperial children were of course of the highest rank, and would have been socially acceptable company at imperial dinners. But as children, sometimes they would have had to eat together, slightly separate from the adults.
The point at which children became adults at the 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.
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." This was also a satire about those with poor table manners, comparing them to children.
How food-making chores were divided up in Rome is somewhat like our own societal stereotypes. Columella looked back on the good old days, and said that men worked outdoors and in public, and domestic chores fell to women until they became 'lazy' and these duties fell to the housekeeper. As Rome became more powerful, a treaty with the Sabines banned the new wives of the Romans from grinding grain or baking bread. According to Pliny, however, women at Rome baked their own bread until 174 B.C
Not only women cooked meals; men appear as 'cooks' in the course of giving professional advice. Cato, Columella, and Varro all provide recipes in their agricultural treatises, and the most famous cook of antiquity was the wealthy M. Gavius Apicius. Male cooks are depicted as professionals, experts in fine cuisine. Other solitary males, such as the mythological Falernus or the hero Manius Curius, cook basic fare for themselves—a mark of their solid, honest and 'traditional' character.
Women's professional cooking expertise is considerably more sinister, and frequently featured the art of poison-making or witchcraft, performed by characters such as Medea, Canidia or Locusta. But many texts tell of country-women and men working harmoniously together in the preparation of a meal. Varro claims that the barbarian Illyrian men and women were equally able to herd flocks, gather wood, keep house, or cook food.
Nowhere are the men and women of the Roman elite shown working together to prepare a meal, because slaves did the job for them. And as in Greece, men were deeply suspicious of women who drank—Cato wrote that a man never kisses his wife, except to smell the wine on her breath.
There were apparently no strict gender divisions among servile cooks in wealthier families. Apuleius depicts slave cooks of both sexes in his novel. The celebrated cook in the Cena Trimalchionis, or the comic cooks of early Roman theater, were, however, male. The only traditionally female servile household job that involved food was the management position of vilica, or housekeeper.
The woman's role was to manage all elements of the home. Women valued this administrative role highly; when Pomponia, the wife of Quintus Cicero, is not given the responsibility of organizing a meal at an estate where they were to spend the night, she complains that she is 'just a guest' in her own household. Later, she refuses to eat the meal in her husband's and brother-in-law's company.
Most sources agree that Romans in general ate three meals a day (Shelton 81). The first two meals of the day would be very light for the majority of people, from everyday citizens to the well-to-do. The very poor might be glad, of course, to enjoy even one meal a day. The bulk of the population, however, would follow a pattern of daily eating as described by Simon Goodenough in Citizens of Rome.
Breakfast (ientaculum) might consist of bread dipped in watered down wine. Sometimes a little honey would be used, and perhaps a few dates or olives would be included.
Lunch (prandium), if eaten at all, would probably be made up of bread, fruit, cheese, or perhaps some leftovers from dinner the night before.
Dinner (cena) was the main meal of the day, generally served in the late afternoon. Cena could consist simply of vegetables with olive oil for those of the lower class, or a most elaborate several-course meal for the well-to-do (or anywhere in-between, depending upon the circumstances). The typical dinner, however, had three courses.
The first course, the "gustus" was the appetizer course. Mulsum (wine mixed with honey) would be served along with salads, eggs, shellfish, mushrooms and other appetizers.
The second course, the meat course, or "lena", might provide pork, poultry, fish, game, and/or exotic birds, served with vegetables.
The final course, called the "secundae mensae", or "second table" was given its name because at dinner parties, the entire table was removed after the first two courses, and a new one put in its place for the final desert course. This course offered fruits, plain, stuffed and in sauces, honey cakes, nuts and, of course, wine (Goodenough 57-59).
ARMY FOOD
Soldiers in the Roman Army subsisted on a diet made up of very plain foods. Soldiers were required to pay up to one third of their wages for their food. They ate mostly bread, perhaps porridge, cheese or beans with cheap wine to wash it down--but the wine was condiered part of their "GI" rations. Important both because it improved morale, and because it limited the amount of local water they might drink. In those days, the water would kill you.
By the way, the soldiers called this wine ration "vinegar," which may shed some light on the story of the Roman soldier offering vinegar to Christ on the cross...
Soldiers retired after twenty years in the service, and were granted a small plot of land to farm. Many of these retires chose to farm near the outposts of their old comrade, providing food and selling it to the men with whom they had served.
COUNTRY FOOD
Those in the country ate simple food, without the elaborate spices or cooking techniques of the big city. And the many slaves who worked on the farm were fed a minimal diet to keep costs low--just enough to keep them working.
Vegetables, grains, onions, etc. were a big part of the diet. The very best of everything would always have been sent into the city to feed the wealthy, but we can imagine that an occasional celebration called for a local animal to be butchered. Other than that, it would have been porridge, veggies, and tiny amounts of meat, cheese and a bit of olive oil.
CITY
The poorest people in the city ate very much like their country cousins, but the food would have certainly lacked freshness. Rome was a massive city, and provide bread for the poor--one o f the Emperors began the tradition, and anyone who ended it would have a rebellion oh his hands.
But houses in the cities were different from today. The first floor of each building in a city might have a shop in it, and the wealthiest families lived on the first floor--above the hustle and bustle of the street. Since there were no elevators, the poorer you were, the higher you lived in the walk-up apartments. The poorest lived on the very top floors, far from water, in wood, rather than stone rooms, and at high risk of fires as well. Most apartments did not have a stove, so you would have to take your dough to a local oven or baker to have it cooked.
Or you could eat in a local bar or pub, thermopolii, of which there were many. These would not have been much different from local fast food cafes and food trucks of today, but the list of ingredients would have been much smaller than now. Bread for breakfast, or maybe gruel/porriddge. Lunch, if you got it, might be something left over from dinner, and dinner something from a thermopolii.
FOOD OF THE RICH AND FAMOUS
The the rich were different. The wealthy ate food from around the Roman Empire. Rare spices, animals and fish, and all sorts of foods would have found a market in Rome, and part of hosting a dinner part was showing off what you could get---and what others could not.
When we hear about life in ancient Rome, it is the lavish dinner parties, or orgies, given by these people that come to mind.
You might not have noticed a huge different at breakfast, because this was not an elegant meal, even in wealthy homes, although the quality would have been much higher.
But it was at dinner that rich Romans gloried in excess. These were a chance to show off, and getting invited to a dinner was always an important occasion. To make sure that the dinners included the proper number of people, hosts always kept a list of available guests who could be invited at the last minute to fill a place. These last minute guests were called para sitos (for the place) and gives us our word, parasite.
Diners did not sit at a table, buy lay on benches or sofas, in a room called the triclinium, because it held three such benches. Each bench had a social level, and you could tell where you stood (or sat!) in the company by where you had been seated, at the top, middle, or lower status bench. There are stories of hosts who placed the food on tall tables, far from some of the guests, to show them their proper place in the proceedings.
Every ate while laying down on these benches...and leaning on their left arm. To be left-handed in Rome was to go hungry! All the food was eaten with the hands--not silverware at this point yet, and guests were usually allowed to take home the leftovers--which may have been a double blessing for those para sitos.
As the size and importance of the dinner grew, so did the number of courses and complexity of the celebration. And Romans loved to show off. They described their menus in great detail, and made every effort to impress their guests (and local gossips) with the rarity and spectacle of their dinners. In one famous story, a host made a grand show of ordering his servants to bring out the fish--at which point the servants carried out an enormous fish that they then dropped on the floor. Fish, in Roman times was a rare delicacy. The host was not worried. He ordered them to bring out the bigger fish, which they did. That's when the guests realized that the first fish was all for show...
The dinners, like the Greek Symposia, would have included entertainment, from music and poetry to dancing and more. The role of women at the Roman dinner is still open to interpretation. At many dinners, the only women allowed were servants and prostitutes. But at wealthier homes, it appears that some women were join dinners in their own homes.
And manners were something else. It was considered polite to belch, and diners regularly chose to relieve themselves, fart, or vomit at or near the table--thus showing that they felt completely at home and welcome. Nice huh?
How well you hosted a dinner party was a key element to your social success in Rome. And social success was hugely important. You were somebody or you were nobody in Rome. The status and quality of your guests, your food, and your wine helped determine your role in society...much they was it did in Victorian Britain.
The seating plan for the dinner was most important. Even meals between friends might well be full of social dangers. The guest of honor traditionally had the choice location at table, with proximity and primary access to the host. All other guests were placed at the discretion of the host, usually according to their rank and status. If they were present, members of the host's family would lie on his couch in the places of lowest status. Slaves were not normally allowed to recline at dinner or eat during dinner because they were busy cooking and serving the meal, and were not of adequate rank to join the company regardless.
The goal was to create a relaxed atmosphere of conviviality and friendship; but that was easier said than done—much like dinner parties of today. In fact, knowledge of proper social ordering at banquets was a necessary and powerful tool to run a successful affair, and if properly wielded, could advance or solidify the status of the host himself. This sounds a lot like the business power lunch of American society.
Slaves cooked and served the free family and guests of wealthy households. The larger and more elaborate a dinner affair, the more and more specialized slaves were needed. Household slaves had their own social hierarchy; vocatores and nomenclatores worked on invitations and overall management; store-masters (cellarii) made sure that groceries had been purchased. Kitchen slaves (focarii and focariae) and specialized cooks proceeded to transform dirty, raw food into clean, cooked food, which they then served in the dining room. There was always the danger of poisoning in the imperial household, requiring a special food-tasting slave for the emperor
Slaves provided 'dinner-theater' entertainment for the guests while they served: singing, playing musical instruments, reciting verse, dancing, acrobatics, and playing dramatic farces. Attractively dressed (or undressed!) serving boys or girls dispensed the wine. While slaves were accepted as part of the banquet's course and (sometimes) admired for their entertainment, they were simultaneously segregated from the real camaraderie of the meal. In a sense, they were performing puppets, subject to derision, degradation, abuse and punishment.
Slaves were filthy because they had to 'slave' over a burning stove in ill- lit kitchens filled with smoke, blood and food remains, sweat to keep the meal in proper synchronization, and periodically clear the table of dirty dishes and clean the floor of trash
Slaves were socially as well as physically dirty. Except for the Saturnalia, they tended not to dine in a well-decorated room with nice furnishings and service of their own; they are pictured instead snacking in the kitchen. Some slaves were allowed only the leftovers of the leftovers of the meal, taking what the guests left behind after filling their own napkins. Slaves on some country estates are shown receiving rations from the bailiff and eating them around a fire.
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