Gastronomy of Ancient Rome (gastronomia na Roma Antiga)

In Ancient Rome, the cuisine consisted only of vegetables and fruits.

The Romans liked garlic, onions, turnips, figs, pomegranates, oranges, pears, apples and grapes.

The typical dish was water porridge with barley.

A more sophisticated version included wine and animal brains.

Only the rich ate meat, usually lamb, donkey, pig, goose, duck or pigeon.

They fed the pigs figs to make their meat fragrant and geese were raised in a special way to make patés.

They did the same with the chickens, feeding them anise and other spices.

Most of the food was produced locally with the exception of cereals from Egypt, pepper from India and dates from North Africa.

History

Sources for knowledge of Roman cuisine include texts by authors such as Ennius, Plautus, Horace, Virgil, Aulus Persius Flaccus, Petronius and Pliny the Younger.

Written sources also include technical texts such as De re rustica by Marcus Terentius Varro, De Agricultura by Marcus Porcius Cato, the texts of Columella, and the compilation of recipes De re coquinaria by Apicius.

Art also provides information that is expressed through mosaics, frescoes, paintings and pottery.

There is also archaeological information present in food remains found in tombs, military camps or in the stomachs of mummies.

De re coquinaria

De re coquinaria (or Ars Magirica, or Apicius Culinaris) is a compendium of culinary recipes from ancient Rome, written by the gastronome Marcus Gavius Apicius (25 BC – 37 AD), which became known through manuscripts organized by monks from Fulda in the 8th and 9th centuries and only published in the 19th century.

Originally written in Latin, the recipes include examples of cuisines other than Roman, such as Greek, for example.

The cookbook: The book contains therapeutic recommendations and, in addition to recipes, is the subject of research on aspects of the society of its time and is part of a process of construction of culinary knowledge.

Aulus Persius Flaccus

Aulus Persius Flaccus (Latin: Aulus Persius Flaccus; Volterra, December 4, 34 AD — Rome, November 24, 62 AD), also known simply as Persius, was a satirical poet of Ancient Rome, a follower of Stoicism.

Of Etruscan origin, his works, poems and satires showed a Stoic worldview, combined with a strong critical sense against the abuses of his contemporaries.

His texts, which were especially popular in the Middle Ages, were only published after his death by his friend and mentor, the Stoic philosopher Lucius Annaeus Cornutus.

Persius was born into a family of equites (knights), originally from Volterra (Volaterrae, in Latin), a small Etruscan city located in the current Italian province of Pisa, of noble origin on both his father's and mother's sides.

When he was six years old, he lost his father, and his stepfather died a few years later.

At the age of twelve he was sent to Rome, where he was educated by Remius Pal?mon and the rector Virginius Flavius.

Over the next four years he became friends with several intellectuals of the time, such as Lucius Annaeus Cornutus himself, as well as the lyric poet Caesius Bassus and the poet Marcus Annaeus Lucanus, who would become a generous admirer of all of Persius work.

He also became friends with Publius Clodius Thraseas Paetus, the husband of his relative Arria; over the next ten years Persius and Thraseas Paetus made several trips together.

He later met Seneca, but he was not impressed by his intellect.

In his youth, Persius wrote a tragedy, which dealt with an episode in the history of Rome, as well as another work, probably a travel guide (which would have been written before his travels with Thraseas Paetus).

Influenced by the satires of Lucilius, Persius began work on his own book of satires, which he wrote infrequently and slowly.

An early death (uitio stomachi) prevented him from completing the book.

He was described by his contemporaries as having a quiet wit, a virginal modesty and personal beauty, and is said to have devoted himself exemplarily to his mother, Fulvia Sisena, his sister and his aunt.

He left them his considerable fortune. Cornutus eliminated all of his work except the satires, to which he made minor alterations before handing them over to Bassus for editing.

Marcus Terentius Varro

Marcus Terentius Varro (in Latin Marcus Terentius Varro; Rieti, Italian peninsula, 116 BC – 27 BC), a Roman philosopher and antiquarian of Latin expression. He studied in Rome.

Of his estimated five hundred works, only one complete work has survived: De re rustica (Of the Things of the Country), and another incomplete: De lingua Latina (On the Latin Language).

His work was used as research material by several later scholars, including Marius Servius Honoratus, Aulus Gellius, Macrobius, Solinus and Pliny the Elder.

Varro's thought is best known through Cicero.

And it is also possible to find something in Saint Augustine.

Natural theology: Author of Antiquitates rerum humanarum et divinarum, in which he distinguishes three genres of theology: mythical, narrated by poets; political, related to the institutions and cults of the State; and the natural, about the nature of the divine as it manifests itself in the nature of reality.

Microbiology: Varro was the first scholar to present a theory about the existence of microorganisms, microbes, germs, which were very small animals, imperceptible to the human eye, that would enter the human body through the nose and mouth, causing various diseases.

This theory could not be confirmed at the time (~90 BC).

Marcus Porcius Cato

Marcus Porcius Cato (234 – 149 BC; Latin: Marcus Porcius Cato) was a politician and writer from the Porcian kinship of the Roman Republic who was elected consul in 195 BC with Lucius Valerius Flaccus. He was known as Cato the Elder, Cato the Censor, Cato the Wise, and Cato Priscus to distinguish him from his great-grandson, Marcus Porcius Cato the Younger.

Cato was from an old plebeian family that had distinguished itself in military service but had not yet managed to hold any political office.

He was raised according to the traditions of his Latin ancestors and studied agriculture, an activity he carried out when he was not campaigning.

Despite this, Cato caught the attention of Lucius Valerius Flaccus, who took him to Rome and helped him, with his influence, to climb the various steps of the cursus honorum: tribune in 214 BC, quaestor in 204 BC, praetor in 198 BC, consul in 195 BC (they served together) and, finally, censor in 184 BC.

As censor, Cato stood out for his conservative defense of Roman traditions against the luxury and frivolity of the Hellenistic current arising from Rome's increasing contact with the East.

Because of this, during his term as censor, he led a fierce battle against Scipio Africanus, the hero of the Second Punic War.

As a politician, Cato stood out as the greatest defender and great driving force behind the Third Punic War against Carthage.

In his military campaigns, Cato fought against the Carthaginians in the Second Punic War, between 217 and 207 BC, and participated in the Battle of Metaurus, in which Hasdrubal Barca was killed.

As a result of these battles, Rome annexed all Carthaginian territories in the Iberian Peninsula and was appointed proconsul.

During his term in office, he served in Hispania Citerior, where he led a vengeful campaign, eliminating the insurgent Celtiberians and treating the general population with extreme harshness.

In 191 BC, he intervened, as a military tribune, in the war in Greece against the Seleucid Empire of Antiochus III the Great, participating in the Battle of Thermopylae (191 BC), which gave victory to the Romans.

He is considered the first important writer to write prose in Latin and was the first author of a history of Italy in this language.

Some historians have argued that, had it not been for the impact of his works, Greek would have replaced Latin as the literary language in Rome.

His manual De Agri Cultura (also called De Re Rustica), meaning On Agriculture or Of Rustic Things, is the only work of his to have survived in its entirety.

It describes, among many other subjects, the ritual of suovetaurilia.

Meals

Jentaculum

The Romans ate their first meal of the day - the jentaculum - shortly after waking up. This meal consisted of bread, cheese, eggs and milk.

The bread could be soaked in warmed wine or sprinkled with olive oil and rubbed with garlic.

As for milk, the most consumed was goat's or sheep's milk.

During the Empire era and under the influence of some doctors, the habit of only drinking water in the morning spread.

Prandium

Around noon, people would take the prandium, usually standing up (sine mensa).

It could include leftovers from the previous day's food, cold meats, fruit and cheese. Wine was not drunk during this meal, as it was consumed while they were at work.

Cena

The cena was the main meal of the day and began at the tenth hour, which corresponds to four o'clock in the afternoon (the Romans counted the hours from sunrise), and continued until nightfall.

The meal was divided into three parts: gustatio (or gustus or promulsio), prima mensa and secunda mensa.

The gustatio consisted of a series of appetizers: mushrooms, salads, radishes, cabbage, eggs (including the shells, mainly from goose) and oysters were eaten.

To drink, mulsum was drunk (hence this part of the meal is also called promulsio), which was used to whet the appetite and was said to prolong life.

The prima mensa consisted of vegetables and meat, and the secunda mensa consisted of dessert, with fruit or cakes.

Food With the exception of foods from the American continent (tomatoes, corn, potatoes, chocolate, etc.) and others such as beans, pasta and beef (an animal used in agricultural work and sacrifices), the Romans used some of the same foods in their diet that are used today.

Puls

Puls, a cereal porridge, was the staple food of the ancient Romans.

The cereals used to make puls were wheat or spelt, which were roasted, ground and cooked, first in water and then in milk.

There were several variations of puls: puls fabata (made like broad beans) and puls punica (which contained cheese, honey and an egg yolk).

Bread

In Ancient Rome, a wide variety of breads were produced. Bread-making was initially a female task, until the emergence of bakers (pistores) in the 3rd century BC, who sold bread in bakeries (pistrinae).

There were basically three types of bread: panis mundus, panis secundarius and panis sordidus.

Panis mundus was the top-quality bread, while panis secundarius was bread made with second-quality flour, containing more bran; the latter type of bread was said to have been the favourite of Emperor Augustus.

Panis sordidus was the lowest-quality bread, eaten by the poor.

In order to improve the flavour of the already baked bread, the Romans covered the crust with egg and sprinkled it with seeds of aromatic plants (fennel, anise, oyster mushroom).

The bread was accompanied by figs (fresh or dried), which were not eaten separately.?

Meat and fish

Almost all types of animal meat were consumed: pork, wild boar (aper), hare (lepus), rabbit (cuniculus), chicken and lamb.

A particularly popular delicacy was the tongues of nightingales and flamingos.

Beef was rarely consumed for various reasons, including religious ones: anyone who killed a bovine was subject to death or exile.

In addition, cattle were seen more as animals for draft than for consumption.

As for fish, approximately 150 edible species were known. Molluscs and shellfish were also consumed.

Garo

Garo was a type of sauce obtained by macerating (for about two months) the intestines of fish, preferably tuna and mackerel. It was used in practically all dishes, including desserts.

The most famous garo was made in Cádiz, a town now located in southern Spain.

The largest centre of garo production in the entire Roman Empire was located in what is now Portugal, in Troia, on the Sado River.

There were also important industrial centres for fish products in the Algarve and the Tagus Valley, particularly in Crimea.

Garo is widely mentioned in literary sources, according to which it had an unpleasant smell.

The best was considered to have a colour similar to Falernian wine.

This product has no equivalent in modern European cuisine. It is believed that the fish sauces used in Vietnamese and Southeast Asian cuisine may be the closest thing to ancient garo.

Cat - Learn more

Garo (in Latin: garum) or liquamen was a type of condiment widely used in ancient times, especially in Ancient Rome.

It is made from blood, viscera and other selected parts of tuna or mackerel mixed with crushed small fish, crustaceans and molluscs; all of this was left in brine for about two months or artificially heated.

This product was exported to various parts of the Mediterranean.

There is evidence of garo being exported to Athens in the 5th century BC.

The existence of numerous remains of factories discovered on the Mediterranean coast of the Iberian Peninsula proves a clear growth of this canning industry.

In Rome, garo became a luxury product, reaching a price of 1,000 denarii for just 6.5 L of garo.

Garum was usually produced far from urban areas, as it generated very strong odours.

Condiments

Ancient Roman cuisine made generous use of condiments.

The main condiments used in the preparation of meals were pepper, cumin, oregano, parsley and even honey.

Wines and other drinks

Wine (uinum) accompanied dishes and was drunk diluted with sea water or warm water. In order for the wines to be preserved, they had to be mixed with resin, so they had to be filtered through the sacculus linteus (a linen cloth) or the colum uinarum (a metal utensil perforated with small holes).

In both cases, ice or snow was placed at the bottom, which served to purify and cool the wine.

In addition to Greek wines, wines produced in the Italian peninsula were also appreciated, such as Falernum wine (from Campania) and Caecubum (from Lazio).

Other drinks consumed by the Romans were posca (made with water and vinegar, and widely consumed by the poor and soldiers), zythum (a beer made from barley or wheat), hydromel, camum (a fermented barley drink) and cydoneum (a drink made from quince).

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