The document discusses differences in dining practices between wealthy and ordinary Romans in the ancient world. Wealthy Romans would spend exorbitant amounts on lavish banquets and food, sometimes leading to bankruptcy. Commoner meals were more modest, usually consisting of bread, soup, and occasionally meat or fish. Dinner parties among the elite involved reclining on couches according to social status and were seen as opportunities for intellectual discussion in addition to eating and drinking. Emperors hosted grand feasts, though these could attract criticism, and poets often described imperial banquets in flattering terms.

1. The Function of Consumption:
Dining Differences in the
Roman world
Brian Conroy
Prof. Julie Langford-Johnson
HIS 4936

2. Wealthy vs. Ordinary Roman
 All ancient sources told only of upper class
dining and nothing of the common man
 Archaeological sources are the main sources for
common dining
 Fortunes were squandered on grossly expensive
eating that sometimes led to bankruptcy
 Apicius, lived at the time of Tiberius, spent a million
sesterces on food and commited suicide when he
found he only had ten million left in his accounts

4. Wealthy vs. Ordinary Roman (cont.)
 Lucullus’ hosted Pompey and Cicero at a
dinner that cost approximately 200,000
sesterces
 Early Empire inaugural priestly dinner cost
approximately 1 million sesterces
 Elegabalus never spent less than 100,000
sesterces

5. Diet
 Shops and markets of Rome supplied by
markets and gardens of the city, and farms of
Italy and every province
 Basis of traditional diet, but not everywhere,
were:
 Olives: need true Mediterranean climate; competed
with sesame oil in Egypt and Near East
 Cereals: ubiquitous but differed regionally; wheat and
barley to oats and rye
 Vines (legumes): supplied nutrients where cereals
deficient; lentils, peas, and chickpeas

7. Diet (cont.)
 Commoners meal usually consisted of:
 Soup of meal, water, and bread
 Meat (rarely eaten) was pork; Fish in seaside
towns and spread later due to preservation
techniques
 Luxurious/Expensive Roman foods were Hares,
Peacocks, Mullet, Lamprey, Flamingo
 Expensive foods usually called for exotic
flavorings as well (i.e. pepper)

10. Diet (cont.)
 Dinner enjoyed by college ofpontifices for
Lentulus upon inauguration as Flamen Martialis
between 74 and 69 B.C.:
 “For hors d’oeuvres sea urchins, as many raw oysters
as they wanted, palourdes, mussels, thrushes under a
thatch of asparagus, a fattened chicken, a patina (pie)
of oysters and palourdes, black piddocks, white
piddocks. Then more mussels, clams, sea
anemones, blackcaps, loin of roe deer and wild boar,
fowls force-fed on wheatmeal…The dinner was udder,
the split head of a wild boar, patina of fish, patina of
udder, ducks, roast teal, hares, roast fowl, frumenty,
and Picentine loaves (bread).”
 Macrobius, Saturnalia

11. Types of dining
 Breakfast
Bread, cheese, vegetables, leftovers from
night before
 Midday meal in the Thermopolium/taverns
Bread, fried fish, sweets, fruits, sausages
 Dinner in Triclinium (dining room)
Aperitif (akin to cocktail with hors d’oeuvres),
main dishes of fowl, fish, hare), dessert of fruit

15. Dinner Parties
 Didn’t happen every night; sometimes with family and a
few friends
 Convivium was “not merely the appreciation of wine and
food, but the enjoyment of philosophy, literature, music,
and all the arts and entertainment; the observation, too
of fellow human beings, with the flirtations, courtships,
friendship, and love that may follow.”
 Nine was the target number, though sometimes larger
 Vomitorium was actually a passage behind a tier of seats
in an amphitheatre through which crowds would leave at
the end of a show
 A very small minority practiced deliberate vomiting
 Emetics for vomiting endorsed by doctors in antiquity

17. Social Concerns and Levels
 Diners were placed in positions of either
“above” or “below” companions, according
to social status; guest of honor sat in
special place (consular’s spot)
 Host and family were on the lectus imus,
while distinguished guest on the lectus
medius

19. Social Concerns and Levels (cont.)
 Status of person compared to others
shown at dinner
 Guests were frequently graded and given
different food, wine, and table ware
accordingly if they were minor friends,
clients, or freedmen
Example: a freedman would be given an eel
while his host dined on a lamprey

20. Social Concerns and Levels (cont.)
 Client: social inferiors entertained; social barriers
lowered; host attempts pretence of social
equality
 Protégé: prospective recruit into governing class
invited as dinner guest to meet important people;
common practice of aristocracy to keep social
class going
 Peer-Group: social equals; could be purely
social equals, but highly political occasion in
Late Republican Rome

21. Social Concerns and Levels (cont.)
 Women
Roman women were allowed at convivium,
while a Greek symposium was “No Girls
Allowed”
Culture Clash: “It is not the Greeks’ custom
that women should recline in a convivium of
men,” Lampsacene father stiffly says when
Roman administrator Verres hoped to meet
his daughter at dinner

22. Concerning the Emperor
 ‘The Feast of the Divine Twelve’
 The Twelve Caesars, Suetonius
 Strengths: Access to Imperial archives
 Limitations: spiteful letter from M. Antony and
anonymous lampoon; lived after Augustus’ time
 Augustus held banquet with everyone dressed
as a god or goddess
 Happened during time of food shortage: “The
gods have gobbled all the grain!”
 Told of Augustus’ fondness not only of food, but
also vices of expensive furniture (ivory) and
gaming

23. Concerning the Emperor (cont.)
 On Anger, Seneca the Younger
 Strengths: Lived during last ten years of Augustus’ reign;
eyewitness accounts
 Limitations: Because of time period, had to write very carefully
about Augustus because memory still fresh to empire
 Augustus at dinner with friend V. Pollio, and slave broke
a crystal cup and Vedius Pollio ordered him thrown to
flesh eating lampreys
 Augustus intervened and was so angry at Pollio that
ordered all crystal cups smashed and lamprey pond filled
in
 Shows difference years make from vices in ‘Feast of the
Divine Twelve’ to conservativism at V. Pollio’s

24. Concerning the Emperor (cont.)
 ‘A Thank-Offering to the Empeor Augustus Germanicus
Domitianus,’ Silvae, Statius
 Strengths: Huge flatterer, court poet, sincere in flattery
 Limitations: Non-aristocratic lineage, outsider looking in
on aristocracy, writing with anxiety during tense period of
Domitian’s reign
 Writing about how stunned he is to be sitting at the same
dinner table with the emperor
 The gods smile down upon him and they even toil for the
good of his armies
 Day of his invitation was as bright as when Domitian
crowned his for victory at poetry contest