Banquets, Fact or Fiction?

A large majority of people when they imagine Roman food will automatically think about the lavish banquets of the rich upper class citizens, and may exclude the eating habits of a normal Roman citizen. And it is obvious why they do so. A large majority of modern day literature, TV and film focuses on the lavish banquets thrown by emperors or high class citizens. So in this blog post I want to go back see how accurate these banquets were by looking at how they were presented in ancient sources, alongside with some simple facts about banquets.

Facts:

• A banquet would take place in the Romans house  of the rich and elite or sometimes a social club called a ‘Collegia‘.
• They were held in a ‘Triclinium’, which was a room with 3 sofas shaped in a ‘U’ shape.
• Opposite to what how a modern person to eat, the Romans would eat lying on their sides.
  
  

  
• Unlike the Greek banquets, known as a ‘Symposium’, women were allowed to attend and it is thought that children sometimes did too, in order to educate them in social etiquette.
• Banquets weren’t just about food. Entertainment was massively important, whether that was the dramatic presentation of the food, a trip to the baths or more traditional ideas of entertainment such as poetry reading or dancing. In BBC documentary: ‘The Supersizers eat… Ancient Rome’ it is said that ‘banquets were as much about theatre as they were about the food itself.’
• It is a well-known joke that the Romans would eat so much that they would vomit, just to allow themselves to carry on eating. But this was in fact true. Seneca, an ancient philosopher from the 1^st century BC, said ‘they vomit that they may eat, they eat that they may vomit, and they do not deign even to digest the feasts for which they ransack the whole world.’ [Seneca, Book XII to Helvia His Mother on Consolation].
• Vomiting so that you could eat more food is a totally alien concept to a modern audience, but it was so common in ancient Rome because of emperors such as Nero who promoted gluttony and being greedy.
• Many people nowadays associate the vomiting tradition with the term ‘vomitorium’ however this has just become connected to being sick due to the nature of the two words being similar. However a vomitorium is actually a tunnelled exit or entrance pathway in either a Roman theatre of amphitheatre, therefore has no real connection to vomiting.
  

  
• Banquets were often associated with the ‘Golden age’ or the ‘agrarian era’. This was the idea of Roman greatness through the strength of their agriculture and the idea of self-sufficiency. The term ‘Golden age’ was often associated with Rome under the control of Augustus and in Virgil’s ‘Aeneid’ there is a strong focus on the prosperity of the land which would later for Rome. For this reason banquets where the host could prove that he had produced the food that the guests were eating were highly admirable.
• Banquets were all about showing wealth, it is thought that on some occasions a host would get their staff to prepare food which would just act as a decorative feature and was not intended to be eaten.
• Originally there were laws about how much you could spend on a meal, but as the empire grew and the population became wealthier and wealthier this was abandoned, especially under emperors such as Nero.
• Similarly to this, a lot of the knowledge we have about Roman food comes from when politicians would try to ban a ‘luxury food’ item, but these bans never lasted long
• The night before a gladiator would go into the arena he had a special feast called a ‘Cena Libera’
• The majority of wealthy people would not eat in restaurants as they were associated with the lower classes.
• The emperor Elagabalus, supposedly suffocated his banquet guests by covering them with flower petals as told in The Historia Augusta: ‘In a banqueting-room with a reversible ceiling he once buried his parasites in violets and other flowers, so that some were actually smothered to death, being unable to crawl out to the top’.
  

  The Roses of Heliogabalus by Alma-Tadema (1888)

  The Satyricon

• One of the most well-known descriptions of a Roman banquet comes from Petronius’ ‘The Satyricon’. ‘The Satyricon’ is one of the few surviving Roman novels. Despite the fact that it is heavily fragmented it still tells us a lot about Roman life, even if we do have to take it slightly with a pinch of salt due to its satirical nature.
• The novel follows the life of Encolpius, the narrator, his slave turned lover boy, Giton, and their friend Ascyltus.
• One of the major surviving sections of the novel is a chapter called ‘Trimalchio’s Cena.’ The section describes the lavish banquet thrown by an incredibly wealthy freedman called Trimalchio.
• As part of his dinner party Trimalchio has all kinds of entertainment, from his presentation of food, to the use of his personal baths and the performances from exotic dancers.
• The food he serves his guests is incredibly lavish and extravagant. Just some of the course that are featured within the banquet are:
  • Live birds sown into a pig
  • Wooden hens surrounded by fake pastry eggs which were filled with quails in a peppered yellow sauce
  • A dish which represented each zodiac sign
  • Roast dormice in honey and poppy seeds, served on a bridge
  • Fish which were presented to look as if they were swimming in a peppered sauce
  • A roasted pig, which was stuffed with sausages so that when the pig was cut open it would look as if the pig had not been gutted or cooked properly. The Pig was also surrounded by a pastry piglet for each guest which were supposed to look as if they were suckling from the pig.
• With these just being some of the many dishes we can see how much food would have been laid on by Trimalchio for his guests. It also shows us just how dramatically the food was presented.

Similar to the presentation of Trimalchio’s cena is the lavish banquet of the priests of Julius Caesar.

• Between 74 and 69BC 11 priests held a banquet which was attended by Julius Caesar.
• The occasion was a lavish affair; instead of the traditional triclinium sofas the priest had ebony benches for the guests to lie on.
• Like in Trimalchio’s cena, some of the wives of the priest were present alongside some Mothers-in-laws, and 4 vestal Virgins.
• The cena started with sea urchins, oysters, clams, mussels, thrushes under a thatch of asparagus, a fattened chicken, patina of oysters and clams, and black and white ‘piddocks’
• The second course consisted of; more mussels, clam, sea anemones,  loins of roe deer and wild boar, and fowls force-fed with wheat-meal
• The main course consisted of udder, split head of wild boar, patina of fish, patina of udders, ducks, roast teal, hares, roast fowl, and bread

(Details all from Dalby’s ‘Empire of Pleasures’. Although he says that all of his information comes from Macrobius’ Saturnalia 13.10)

In comparison to this is the banquet presented by Pollux in ‘Daily conversations in Greek Latin’

• 2 aperitifs were offered:
  • Spiced wine or concentrated grape juice mixed with hot or cold water
  • A small boiled marrow, served with a pepper sauce
• This was followed by 2 options for a cold course:
  • Foie gras, thrushes, and bread
  • Satsum (salted meat or fish), sardines and broad beans
• Finally the hot course consisted of: Fowl rapatum with fish sauce, roast chicken,  roast suckling pig, alongside a platter of endive, radishes, mint, green olives, cheese, truffles and mushrooms.

Therefore by comparing the 3 different banquets above, we can see just how different a banquet could be, yet all of them do share the theme that they are extremely lavish with numerous different courses, which matches the presentation which we often seen within modern portrayals of banquets.

Apicius

We have a limited number of ancient sources left that actually tell us recipes from the Ancient world, however one that survives is Apicius, however we also know very little about the works and the author.

• Apicius has become a term known for a work of ancient recipes which has survived over time. I has been given the name Apicius because of a famous glutton called Marcus Gavius Apicius who is thought to have written it.
• Apicius is thought to have been writing in early first century AD because we have sources who tell us about dinner parties held by him with guests that we know were consuls in 28AD.
• We also have a Martial epigraphy which links Apicius with a person called Maecenas, who is thought to be one of Augustus’ close friends.
  • Therefore we can work out a rough date of when Apicius was around.

Apicius, himself, is never presented very well by other writers. The sources who wrote about Apicius provide us with huge amounts of information due to the nature in which they say certain things. They are also the principle reason why we have any information about him.

• Apicius never actually wrote about himself, or included his personal opinions in his recipe book.
• Juvenal wrote: ‘Apicius was the author of how to arrange dinners, who wrote about sauces: for he was an exemplar of a glutton.’ Which reinforces that the same Apicius who was associated with member of the senate in the first century was the same person who wrote these recipes.
• In 160AD we have a reference in Athenaeus to a lost work by Apion called ‘On the Luxury of Apicius’ which we can presume was about the same Apicius seeing as Apion was writing in the first century AD, around the same time as Apicius.

Some sources tell us more about his personality that anything else as Apicius was renowned for being highly extravagant and greedy.

• Juvenal writes ‘The common people find nothing funnier than a poor Apicius’.
• It is also thought that it was due to lavish life style and excessive banquet that he became bankrupt and then killed himself.
• He has even been described as ‘a figure of mythical status’.
  

 

Structure of the book

• The structure of Apicius book is very familiar because it is divided into different types of food, for example meat dishes, vegetables, fowl, luxury dishes and fish, to mention just a few.
• The first chapter of the book is unique, because it does not contain normal recipes. Instead the chapter focuses on ‘mise en place’ which loosely translates to ‘putting in place’ therefore preparing the food.
• This section contains 35 different (what I refer to as) “How to” dishes, as the large majority of them focus on how to preserve different ingredients, or how to make different sauces to accompany dishes.
• Some of the methods within this section may be considered strange to a modern reader, because it is something we never have to deal with due to modern technology.
• However there are a number of methods which might still be useful for readers today.

One example of these methods is the recipe for Spiced wine.

‘1.1 Spiced wine surprise: 15lb of honey by weight is put into bronze pan containing 2 pints of wine so that the honey and wine cook together. Warm the pan on a gentle fire of dry wood and stir with sticks as it cooks. If it begins to boil it is settled with sparkling wine, besides which it ill subside when it is removed from the fire. When it has cooled down, it is heated again. This will be done a second and third time, and then at last it is removed from the hearth, and it is skimmed the day after. Then put in 4oz of ground pepper; 3 scruples of mastic; one dragma each of folium and saffron; 5 roasted date stones and the dates themselves softened in wine of the same kind and quality, added in beforehand so that a smooth paste is produced. When all these are ready you pour on 18 pints of smooth wine. Charcoal is put in when it is finished (to avert the sour taste).’

This may be considered complicated to a modern audience, but that is because it would have been to a roman audience too. Other recipes for spiced wine which have been found are much simpler and featured fewer ingredients and a less complicated method of production. However because of Apicius’ extravagant nature his recipes often reflect this. Here the tradition recipe for spiced wine or Mulsum is more like a conditum which is a spiced wine with a lot more honey and flavours. Due to the sweetness of the drink it was often served as an aperitif just like how nowadays many people choose to serve a form of fruit Bellini’s at a dinner party as an aperitif.

The remains of a sign for a wine shop in Herculaneum 

Other sections of the Mise en Place give details about much simpler things such as; ‘1.10 how to make salted meat sweet: you may make salted meat sweet if you cook it first in milk and afterwards in water.’ Which is a method still used today especially with the fish dishes; poached haddock and mackerel. The section also includes basic ‘how to’ methods about food such as how to tell if honey has gone off.

These were just some of the many basic instructions given out by Apicius which shows us that he must have considered them significant things for people to know. This passing on of simple knowledge is similar to what we see in numerous modern-day cookbooks. A large majority of popular cookbooks in the modern Britain feature a ‘how to’ section, featuring a wide spectrum of topics, ranging from lifestyle tips such as; ‘How to use the book’, or ‘How to keep little mouths happy’, or ‘How to tell the difference between good and bad carbs’; to basic cooking methods such as; ‘How to make short crust pastry’ and ‘How to make the perfect buttercream.’ So the idea of a ’Mise en Place’ is something that is still present in a lot of cook books today, although we have to give the credit to Apicius for being the first one to categorise it in such a way.