One Empire, One Emperor, One Diet

Bread, olive oil, and wine. The holy trinity of the Romans.

The Roman takeover of the Mediterranean and beyond marks a new era: it is no longer a bipolar world oscillating between Egypt and the Hittite or Assyrian kingdoms, or Greece and Persia. It's a world of a single superpower, where one emperor rules, and there is one law under him. Homogeneity is the name of the game in Rome. The rules are uniform for everyone. The Roman roads – they are all the same. Thus, trade is conducted uniformly and with clear bureaucracy, which has two roles – to ensure everything flows and that no one in Rome goes hungry. For this purpose – goods in the Mediterranean must move incessantly. The provinces need to supply the goods, and agriculture needs to expand accordingly.

The wheat and barley for bread were mainly brought from Spain and North Africa, but also from various regions within Italy. For four months of winter, the wheat arrived from Egypt. For the rest of the year, Rome's granary spread from the fertile plains of North Africa, through the wide valleys in the south and east of Spain, to Tuscany, Umbria, and the Po Valley.

Olive oil came from North Africa, Spain, Northern Greece, Southern Anatolia, and the Levant. The immense number of oil presses dug in Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia on one side of the Mediterranean, and the Levant on the other side, testify to the enormous surplus production, which will be exported to Rome, but also eastward to Persia. Olive oil was the main source of fat for the inhabitants of the empire. In Rome alone, approximately 25 kg of oil per person per year was consumed (according to various calculations). Common desserts in the empire included "halva" – durum wheat cooked in olive oil with spices and honey, or "loukoumades" – dough balls fried in olive oil and eaten dipped in honey. Since the Roman period, the dominance of olive oil in the diet has not only been in the central and eastern Mediterranean but also in northern Africa and the Iberian Peninsula. It's no coincidence that the Roman author Columella described the olive as the "queen of trees."

Wine flowed in the Roman Empire from every corner of the Mediterranean: Judea, the Lebanese Valley, Anatolia and Cappadocia, northern and central Greece, North Africa, Andalusia, Catalonia and Aragon, Gaul – wine, it seems, flowed in Rome no less than water in the fountains.

The meat came from the pastures of southern Italy, the Peloponnese, and North Africa, although it was reserved only for the city's elite. During the Roman Empire, Pork became the main source of meat, and it retained dominance all around the Mediterranean Basin, until the Islamic conquest. Until the 4th century CE, most of the population did not eat a serving of meat or a loaf of bread more than once a month. A significant improvement in the standard of living in the 4th century CE led to better accessibility of culinary wealth to the lower classes, who also began to enjoy a serving of meat and bread loaf once a week and even once a day.

A meal in Rome consisted of wheat/barley porridge (name "Pols"), flatbread, olives, lentil/fava bean stew with olive oil, cheeses, vegetables, and garum (fermented fish paste) that arrived on ships from Spain and North Africa. To the extent of the Romans' aspiration for culinary uniformity, there are findings from the Cologne area (modern-day western Germany) of amphorae with olive oil that reached the Germanic population in the region under Roman control. In Rome, not only do they behave like Romans, but they also eat like Romans.

Despite the Roman effort for uniformity, it was not successful everywhere. The Iberian Peninsula is a good example of this: the Romans implemented a policy of cultivating naked wheat (bread wheat) and durum wheat, instead of other cereal grains. On the Iberian Peninsula, however, they thought differently: the northwest of the island (present-day Galicia) was an area where mainly millet was grown. In the northeast, they cultivated rye, barley, and spelt wheat, while in the south, mainly barley, durum wheat, and spelt wheat. The Spaniards were not quick to adopt the wheat varieties that came from the East and ignored the disdain the Romans had for millet cultivation.

Olives mainly grew in the southern and eastern parts of the island, but the Roman attempt to impose more extensive cultivation of olives and grapes at the expense of other crops also failed: in the northwest, peaches and walnuts were much more common, while throughout the rest of the island, apples, plums, cherries, pomegranates, almonds, hazelnuts, and chestnuts were equally prevalent. On the entire island, they grew peas, lentils, fava beans, and beans on a large scale, as well as melons and cucumbers, celery, rosemary, mint, and geraniums. Spain was also known for its raisins, vinegar, wine, and dried figs. The residents of the peninsula firmly refused to adopt cattle and sheep breeds from the East and zealously preserved the local breeds. The only thing the Romans managed to produce with uniformity serving the empire was the production of garum – a fermented fish sauce that came from the eastern ports of the peninsula and was the most common imperial seasoning. The garum from Spain was known as the best in the empire.

But nothing lasts forever. The decline of the Western Roman Empire, with the invasion of Germanic tribes into its territory, the deterioration of the economic situation, revolts in North Africa over the amount of grain taken from them for the benefit of the residents of Rome, and the climate changes experienced in the Mediterranean between the 4th and 7th centuries CE, bring about a significant change in agriculture and nutrition as well: the vast wheat farms of Italy become more diverse and also raise livestock for grazing, and the cultivation of millet—introduced to Italy by the Germanic tribes—becomes a significant and stable crop.

In Spain, fruit crops are declining in favor of annual grain and legume crops. Except for olives, other fruit crops in Spain are greatly reduced or completely disappear. The millet, a crop that symbolizes times of scarcity, is spreading southward and eastward, while the cultivation of spelt wheat and rye is disappearing. The cultivation of wine is also diminishing, and with no buyers, the production of garum, on which the economy of the coastal cities was based, also decreases until it disappears completely.

The Germanic tribes that invaded the empire adopted the Roman diet, and eventually, things began to stabilize. Just then, when it seemed that the storm had passed, a black swan would arrive, storming through the Levant and Asia Minor, North Africa, and the Iberian Peninsula, forever altering the geopolitical structure, culture, and diet around the Mediterranean.

In the next chapter: The Black Swan – the Arab conquest – will bring with it the second agricultural revolution of the Mediterranean. 10,000 years after humans began to harness and modify plants for their benefit, the Arabs will arrive with extraordinary changes in their hands – the Green Revolution is underway...