298. Beverages. After water and milk, wine was the ordinary drink of the Romans of all classes. It must be distinctly understood, however, that they always mixed it with water and used more water than wine. Pliny the Elder mentions one wine that would stand being mixed with eight times its own bulk of water. To drink wine unmixed was thought typical of barbarism; wine was so drunk only by the dissipated at their wildest revels. Under the Empire the ordinary qualities of wine were cheap enough to be sold at three or four cents a quart (§ 388); the choicer kinds were very costly, entirely beyond the reach, Horace gives us to understand, of a man in his circumstances. More rarely used than wine were other beverages that are mentioned in literature. A favorite drink was mulsum, made of four measures of wine and one of honey. A mixture of water and honey allowed to ferment together was called mulsa. Cider was made by the Romans, and wines from mulberries and dates. They also made various cordials from aromatic plants, but they had no knowledge of tea or coffee.

   299. Style of Living. The table supplies of a given people vary from age to age with the development of civilization and refinement, and in the same age with the means and tastes of classes and individuals. Of the Romans it may be said that during the early Republic, perhaps almost through the second century B.C., they cared little for the pleasures of the table. They lived frugally and ate sparingly. They were almost strictly vegetarians (§ 273), much of their food was eaten cold, and the utmost simplicity characterized the cooking and the service of their meals. Everything was prepared by the māter familiās or by the women slaves under her supervision (§ 90). The table was set in the ātrium (§ 188); the father, mother, and the children sat around it on stools or benches (§ 225), waiting on one another and on their guests (§ 104). Dependents ate of the same food, but apart from the family. The dishes were of the plainest sort, of earthenware or even of wood, though a silver saltcellar was often the cherished ornament of the humblest board. Table knives and forks were unknown; the food was cut into convenient portions before it was served, and spoons were used to convey to the mouth what the fingers could not manage. During this period there was little to choose between the fare of the proudest patrician and the humblest client. The Samnite envoys found Manius Curius, the conqueror of Pyrrhus (275 B.C,), eating his dinner of vegetables (§ 275) from an earthen bowl. A century later the poet Plautus calls his countrymen a race of porridge-eaters (pultiphagōnidae: § 283), and gives us to understand that in his time even the wealthiest Romans had in their households no specially trained cooks. When a dinner out of the ordinary was given, a professional cook was hired, who brought with him to the house of the host his own utensils and his own helpers, just as a caterer does nowadays.

   300. The last two centuries of the Republic saw all this changed. The conquest of Greece and the wars in Asia Minor gave the Romans a taste of Eastern luxury and altered their simple table customs, as other customs had been altered by like contact with the outside world (§§ 6, 101, 112, 192). From this time the poor and the rich no longer fared alike. The former, constrained by poverty, lived frugally as of old; students of Caesar know that the soldiers who won Caesar’s battles for him lived on grain (§ 282, and note), which they ground in their handmills and baked at their campfires. Some of the very rich, on the other hand, aping the luxury of the Greeks but lacking their refinement, became gluttons instead of gourmets. They ransacked the world for articles of food,⁴ preferring the rare and the costly to what was really palatable and delicate. The separate dining room (trīclīnium) was introduced, the great houses having two or more (§ 204), and the oecī (§ 207) were, perhaps, pressed into service for banquet halls. The dining couch (§§ 224, 304) took the place of the bench or stool, slaves served the food to the reclining guests, a dinner dress (§ 249) was devised, and every familia urbāna (§ 149) included a high-priced chef with a staff of trained assistants. Of course, there were always wealthy men (Atticus, the friend of Cicero [§ 155], for example) who clung to the simpler customs of the earlier days, but these could make little headway against the current of senseless dissipation and extravagance. Over against these must be set the fawning poor, who preferred the fleshpots of the rich patron (§§ 181-182) to the bread of honest independence. Between the two extremes was a numerous middle class of the well-to-do, with whose ordinary meals we are most concerned. These meals were the ientāculum, the prandium, and the cēna.

   301. Hours for Meals. Three meals a day were the regular number with the Romans as with us, though hygienists were found then, as they may be found nowadays, who believed two meals more healthful than three, and then as now high livers often indulged in an extra meal taken late at night. Custom fixed more or less rigorously the hours for meals, though these varied with the period, and to a less extent with the occupations and even with the inclinations of individuals. In early times in the city and in all periods in the country the chief meal (cēna) was eaten in the middle of the day, preceded by a breakfast (ientāculum) in the early morning and followed in the evening by a supper (vesperna). In classical times the hours for meals in Rome were about as they are now in our large cities, that is, the cēna was postponed until the work of the day was finished, thus crowding out the vesperna, and a luncheon (prandium) took the place of the old-fashioned “noon dinner.” The late dinner came to be more or less of a social function, as guests were present and the food and service were the best the house could afford. The ientāculum and prandium were in comparison very simple and informal meals.

   302. Breakfast and Luncheon. The breakfast (ientāculum or iantāculum) was eaten immediately after rising, the hour varying, of course, with the occupation and social position of the individual. Usually it consisted merely of bread, eaten dry or dipped in wine or sprinkled over with salt, though raisins, olives, and cheese were sometimes added. Workmen pressed for time seem to have taken their breakfast in their hands to eat as they went to the place of their labor, and schoolboys often stopped on their way to school (§ 122) at a public bakery (§ 286) to buy a sort of shortcake or pancake on which they made a hurried breakfast. More rarely the breakfast became a regular meal: eggs were served in addition to the things just mentioned, and mulsum (§ 298) and milk were drunk with them. It is likely that such a breakfast was taken at a later hour and by persons who dispensed with the noon meal. The luncheon (prandium) came about eleven o’clock. It, too, consisted usually of cold food: bread, salads (§ 276), olives, cheese, fruits, nuts, and cold meats from the dinner of the day before. Occasionally, however, warm meat and vegetables were added, but the meal was never an elaborate one. It is sometimes spoken of as a morning meal, but in this case it must have followed at about the regular interval an extremely early breakfast, or it must itself have formed the breakfast, taken later than usual, when the ientāculum for some reason had been omitted. After the prandium came the midday rest or siesta (merīdiātiō), when all work was laid aside until the eighth hour, except in the law courts and in the senate. In the summer, at least, everybody went to sleep, and even in the capital the streets were almost as deserted as at midnight. The vesperna, entirely unknown in city life, closed the day on the farm. It was an early supper which consisted largely of the leavings of the noonday dinner with the addition of such uncooked food as a farm would naturally supply. The word merenda seems to have been applied in early times to this evening meal, and then to refreshments taken at any time (cf. English “lunch”).

   303. The Formal Meal. The busy life of the city had early crowded the dinner out of its original place in the middle of the day and fixed it in mid-afternoon. The fashion soon spread to the towns and was carried by city people to their country estates (§ 145), so that in classical times the late dinner (cēna) was the regular practice for all persons of any social standing throughout the length and breadth of Italy. It was even more of a function than it is with us, because the Romans knew no other form of purely social intercourse. They had no receptions, balls, musicales, or theater parties, no other opportunities to entertain their friends or be entertained by them. It is safe to say, therefore, that, when the Roman was in town he was, every evening, host or guest at dinner as elaborate as his means or those of his friends permitted, unless, of course, urgent business claimed his attention or some unusual circumstances had withdrawn him temporarily from society. On the country estates the same custom prevailed: the guests came from neighboring estates or were friends who stopped unexpectedly, perhaps, to claim entertainment for a night as they passed on a journey to or from the city (§ 388). These dinners, formal as they were, are to be distinguished carefully from the extravagant banquets of the ostentatious rich. They were in themselves thoroughly wholesome, the expression of genuine hospitality. The guests were friends, their number was limited, the wife and children of the host were present, and social enjoyment was the end in view.

   304. The Dining Couch. The position of the dining-room (trīclīnium) in the Roman house has been described already (§ 204), and it has been remarked (§ 300) that in classical times the stool or bench had given place to the couch. This couch (lectus trīclīniāris) was constructed much as the common lectī were (§ 224), except that it was made broader and lower, had an arm at one end only, was without a back, and sloped from the front to the rear. At the end where the arm was, a cushion or bolster was placed, and parallel with it two others were arranged in such a way as to divide the couch into three parts. Each part was for one person, and a single couch would, therefore, accommodate three persons. The dining-room received its name (trīclīnium) from the fact that it was planned to hold three of these (κλίναι in Greek), set on three sides of a table, the fourth side of which was open. The arrangement varied a little with the size of the room. In a large room the couches were set as in Figure 180, but if economy of space was necessary they were placed as in Figure 179; the latter was, probably, the more common arrangement of the two. Nine may be taken, therefore, as the normal upper limit of the number at an ordinary table. On unusual occasions, a larger room would be used where two or more tables could be arranged in the same way, each accommodating nine guests. In the case of members of the same family, especially if one was a child, or when the guests were very intimate friends, a fourth person might find room on a couch, but this was certainly unusual; probably when a guest unexpectedly presented himself, some member of the family would surrender his place to him. Often the host reserved a place or places for friends that his guests might bring without notice. Such uninvited persons were called umbrae. When guests were present, the wife sat on the edge of the couch (Fig. 181) instead of reclining, and children were usually accommodated on seats.

   305. Places of Honor. The guest approached the couch from the rear and took his place upon it, lying on his left side, with his face to the table, and supported by his left elbow, which rested on the cushion or bolster mentioned above. The position of his body is indicated by the arrows in Figures 179 and 180. Each couch and each place on the couch had its own name according to its position with reference to the others, The couches were called respectively lectus summus, lectus medius, and lectus īmus; it will be noticed that persons reclining on the lectus medius had the lectus summus on the left and the lectus īmus on the right. Etiquette assigned the lectus summus and the lectus medius to guests, while the lectus imus was reserved for the host, his wife, and one other family member, if the host alone represented the family, the two places beside him on the lectus īmus were given to the humblest of the guests.

   306. The places on each couch were named in the same way, (locus) summus, medius, and īmus, denoted respectively by the figures 1, 2, and 3 in Figure 179. The person who occupied the place numbered 1 was said to be above (super, suprā) the person to his right, while the person occupying the middle place (2) was above the person on his right and below (īnfrā) the one on his left. The place of honor on the lectus summus was that numbered 1, and the corresponding place (1) on the lectus īmus was taken by the host. To the most distinguished guest, however, was given the place on the lectus medius marked 3; this place was called by the special name locus cōnsulāris, because if a consul was present, it was always assigned to him. It was next to the place of the host, and, besides, was especially convenient for a public official; if he found it necessary to receive or send a message during the dinner, he could communicate with the messenger without so much as turning on his elbow. In the early years of the Empire a new type of couch was made to be used with the round table. From its semicircular shape it was called sigma, from one form of the Greek letter. The cushion curved around the inner side of the couch, which apparently served for all. The number accommodated seems to have varied. The places of honor were at the ends; the place at the right5 end of the couch was called the locus cōnsulāris.

   307. Other Furniture. In comparison with the lectī the rest of the furniture of the dining-room played an insignificant part. In fact, the only other absolutely necessary article was the table (mēnsa), placed, as shown in Figures 179 and 180, between the three couches in such a way that all were equally distant from it and free access to it was left on the fourth side. The space between the table and the couches was so little that the guests could help themselves. The guests had no individual plates to be kept upon the table; it was used merely to receive the large dishes in which the food was served, and certain formal articles, such as the saltcellar (§ 299) and the things necessary for the offering to the gods. The table, therefore, was never very large, but it was often exceedingly beautiful and costly (§ 227). At first its beauties were not hidden by any cloth or covering; the tablecloth did not come into use until about the end of the first century of our era. The usual tableware in the time of Augustus was the Arretine ware, a red glazed pottery with designs in relief; the cost and the beauty of the dishes were limited only by the means and taste of the owner. Besides the couches and the table, sideboards (abacī) were the only articles of furniture usually found in the trīclīnium. They varied from a simple shelf to tables of different forms and sizes such as are shown in Figures 183 and 184, and open cabinets. They were set out of the way against the walls and served as do ours to display plate and porcelain when such articles were not in use on the table.

   308. Courses. In classical times even the simplest dinner was divided into three parts, the gustus (“appetizer”), the cēna (“dinner proper”), and the secunda mēnsa6 (“dessert”); the dinner was made elaborate by having each part served in several courses. The gustus consisted only of things that were believed to excite the appetite or aid the digestion: oysters and other shell-fish fresh, sea-fish salted or pickled, certain vegetables that could be eaten uncooked, especially onions, and almost invariably lettuce and eggs, all with piquant sauces. With these appetizers mulsum (§ 298) was drunk, as wine was thought too heavy for an empty stomach. From this drink the gustus was also called the prōmulsis; another and more significant name for it was antecēna. Then followed the real dinner, the cēna, which consisted of the more substantial viands, fish, flesh, fowl, and vegetables. With this part of the meal wine was drunk, but in moderation, for it was thought to dull the sense of taste; the real drinking began only when the cēna was over. The cēna almost always consisted of several courses (mēnsa prīma, altera, tertia, etc.). Three were thought neither niggardly nor extravagant; we are told that Augustus often dined on three courses and never went beyond six. The secunda mēnsa closed the meal with all sorts of pastry, sweets, nuts, and fruits, fresh and preserved, with which wine was freely drunk. From the fact that eggs were eaten at the beginning of the meal and apples at the close came the proverbial expression, ab ōvō ad māla (compare our expression “from soup to nuts”).

   309. Bills of Fare. We have preserved to us in literature the bills of fare of a few meals, probably actually served, which may be taken as typical at least of the homely, the generous, and the sumptuous dinner. The simplest is given by Juvenal (60-140 A.D.): for the gustus, asparagus and eggs; for the cēna, young kid and chicken; for the secunda mēnsa, fruits. Two other menus are given by Martial (43-101 A.D,). The first has lettuce, onions, tunny-fish, and eggs cut in slices; sausages with porridge, fresh cauliflower, bacon, and beans; pears and chestnuts, and, with the wine, olives, parched peas, and lupines. The second has mallows, onions, mint, elecampane, anchovies with sliced eggs, and sow’s udder in tunny sauce; the cēna was served in a single course (ūna mēnsa), kid, chicken, cold ham, haricot beans, young cabbage sprouts, and fresh fruits, with wine, inevitably. The last menu we owe to Macrobius (fifth century A.D.), who assigns it to a feast of the pontifices during the Republic, feasts proverbial for their splendor. The antecēna was served in two courses: first, sea-urchins, raw oysters, three kinds of sea-mussels, thrush on asparagus, a fat hen, panned oysters, and mussels; second, mussels again, shell-fish, sea-nettles, figpeckers, loin of goat, loin of pork, fricasseed chicken, figpeckers again, two kinds of sea-snails. The number of courses in which the cēna was served is not given: sow’s udder, head of wild boar, panned fish, panned sow’s udder, domestic ducks, wild ducks, hares, roast chicken, starch pudding, bread. Neither vegetables nor dessert is mentioned by Macrobius, but we may take it for granted that they corresponded to the rest of the feast, and the wine that the pontifices drank was famed as the best.

   310. Serving the Dinner. The dinner hour marked the close of the day’s work, as has been said (§ 301), and varied, therefore, with the season of the year and the social position of the family. In general the time may be said to have been not before the ninth and rarely after the tenth hour (§ 428). The dinner lasted usually until bedtime, that is, three or four hours at least, though the Romans went to bed early because they rose early (§§ 79, 122). Sometimes even the ordinary dinner lasted until midnight, but, when a banquet was expected to be unusually protracted, it was the custom to begin earlier in order that there might be time after it for the needed repose. Such banquets, beginning before the ninth hour, were called tempestīva convīvia; the word “early” here carried with it about the same reproach as the word “late” in “late suppers.” At the ordinary family dinners the time was spent in conversation, though in some good houses (notably that of Atticus: § 155) a trained slave read aloud to the guests. At “gentlemen’s dinners” other forms of entertainment were provided, music, dancing, juggling, etc., by professional performers (§ 153). At elaborate dinners souvenirs were sometimes distributed.

   311. When the guests had been ushered into the dining-room the gods were solemnly invoked, a custom to which our “grace before meat” corresponds. Then the guests took their places on the couches (accumbere, discumbere) as these were assigned them (§§ 305-306), their sandals were removed (§ 250), to be cared for by their own attendants (§ 152), and water and towels were carried around for washing the hands. If napkins were used each guest brought his own. The meal then began, and each course was placed upon the table on a tray (ferculum), from which the various dishes were passed in regular order to the guests. As each course was finished the dishes were replaced on the ferculum, and removed, and water and towels were again passed to the guests, a custom all the more necessary because the fingers were used for forks (§ 299). Between the chief parts of the meal, too, the table was cleared and carefully wiped with a cloth or soft sponge. Between the cēna proper and the secunda mēnsa a longer pause was made, and silence was preserved while wine, salt, and meal—perhaps also ordinary articles of food—were offered to the Larēs. The dessert was then brought on in the same way as the other parts of the meal. When the diners were ready to leave the couches, the guests called for their sandals (§ 250) and immediately took their departure.

   312. The Cōmissātiō. Cicero tells us of Cato the Elder and his Sabine neighbors lingering over their dessert and wine until late at night and makes them find the chief charm of the long evening in the conversation. For this reason Cato is said to have declared the Latin word convīvium, “a living together,” a better word for such social intercourse than the one the Greeks used, symposium, “a drinking together.” The younger men in the gayer circles of the capital inclined rather to the Greek view and followed the cēna proper with a drinking bout, or wine supper, called cōmissātiō or compōtātiō. This differed from the form that Cato approved, not merely in the amount of wine consumed, in the lower tone, and in the questionable amusements, but also in the following of certain Greek customs unknown among the Romans until after the Second Punic War and never adopted in the regular dinner parties that have been described. These were the use of perfumes and flowers at the feast, the selection of a Master of the Revels, and the method of drinking.

   313. The perfumes and flowers were used not entirely on account of the sweetness of their scent, much as the Romans enjoyed it, but because the Romans believed that the scent prevented, or at least retarded, intoxication. This is shown by the fact that they did not use the unguents and the flowers throughout the whole meal, but waited to anoint the head with perfumes and crown it with flowers until the dessert and the wine were brought on. Various leaves and flowers were used for the garlands (corōnae convīvālēs) according to individual tastes, but the rose was the most popular and came to be generally associated with the cōmissātiō. After the guests had assumed their crowns (sometimes garlands were worn also around the neck), each threw the dice, usually calling as he did so upon his sweetheart or upon some deity to help his throw. The one whose throw was the highest (§ 320) was forthwith declared the rēx (magister, arbiter) bibendī. Just what his duties and privileges were we are nowhere expressly told, but it can hardly be doubted that it was his province to determine the proportion of water to be added to the wine (§ 298), to lay down the rules for the drinking (lēgēs īnsānae, Horace calls them), to decide what each guest should do for the entertainment of his fellows, and to impose penalties and forfeits for breaking the rules.

   314. The wine was mixed under the direction of the magister in a large bowl (crātēr), the proportions of the wine and water being apparently constant for the evening, and from the crātēr (Fig. 191), placed on the table in view of all, the wine was ladled by the slaves into the goblets (pōcula: Fig. 192) of the guests. The ladle (cyathus) held about one-twelfth of a pint, or, more probably, was graduated by twelfths. The method of drinking seems to have differed from that of the regular dinner chiefly in this: at the ordinary dinner each guest mixed his wine and water to suit his own taste and drank as little or as much as he pleased, while at the cōmissātiō all had to drink alike, regardless of differences in taste and capacity. The wine seems to have been drunk chiefly in “healths,” but an odd custom regulated the size of the bumpers. Any guest might propose the health of any person he pleased to name; immediately slaves ladled into the goblet of each guest as many cyathī as there were letters in the name mentioned, and the goblets had to be drained at a draft. The rest of the entertainment was undoubtedly wild enough (§ 310); gambling seems to have been common, and Cicero, in his speeches against Catiline, speaks of more disgraceful practices. Sometimes the guests spent the evening roaming from house to house, playing host in turn, and, wearing their crowns and garlands, they staggered through the streets and made night hideous.

   315. The Banquets of the Vulgar Rich. Little need be said of the banquets of the vulgar nobles in the last century of the Republic and of the rich parvenus (§ 181) who thronged the courts of the earlier emperors. They were arranged on the same plan as the dinners we have described, differing from them only in the ostentatious display of furniture, plate, and food. So far as particulars have reached us they were, judged by the canons of today, grotesque and revolting rather than magnificent. Couches made of silver, wine instead of water for the hands, twenty-two courses to a single cēna, seven thousand birds served at another, a dish of livers of fish, tongues of flamingoes, brains of peacocks and pheasants mixed up together, strike us as vulgarity run mad. The sums spent upon these feasts do not seem so fabulous now as they did then. Every season in our great capitals sees social functions that surpass the feasts of Lucullus in cost as far as they do in taste and refinement. As signs of the times, however, as indications of changed ideals, of degeneracy and decay, they deserved the notice that the Roman historians and satirists gave them.



¹ The names are connected respectively with faba, a bean, cicer, a chick-pea, pistor, a miller, caepe, an onion, porcus, a pig, asinus, an ass, vitellus, a calf, and ovis, sheep.

² The word frūmentum occurs fifty-five times in Caesar’s Gallic War, meaning any kind of grain that happened to be grown for food in the country in which Caesar was campaigning at the time. The word “corn” used to translate it in many of our books of reference is the worst possible for the young American student, because to him the word “corn” means a particular kind of grain, a kind which was unknown to the Romans. The general word “grain” is much better for translation purposes.

³ Spoiled wine was used as vinegar (acētum), and vinegar that became insipid and tasteless was called vappa. This latter word was used also as a term of reproach for shiftless and worthless men.

⁴ Gellius (6.16.5) gives a list from a satirical poem of Cicero’s contemporary, Varro: peacock from Samos, heath-cock from Phrygia, crane from Media, kid from Ambracia, young tunny-fish from Chalcedon, mūrēna from Tartessus, cod (?) from Pessinus, oysters from Tarentum, scallops (?) from Chios, sturgeon (?) from Rhodes, scarus from Cilicia, nuts from Thasos, dates from Egypt, chestnuts (?) from Spain.

⁵ “Right” here means right as one stood behind the couch and faced the table.

⁶ This is the most common form of the term for “dessert,” but the plural also occurs, and the adjective may follow the noun.