Crazy Feasts. Dr. Marilyn Ekdahl Ravicz Ph.D.
loving merchant reputed to be a world-class diner. Dates for Apicius vary, but it is generally agreed he lived during the final years of the last century B.C.E., and dined during Tiberius’ reign (14 to 37 C.E.).
Apicius was reportedly so serious about food that Seneca wrote about him: ‘Having consumed thousands of sesterces for food, Apicius, oppressed by debtors, was forced to review his accounts, and when he discovered he had only a few hundred sesterces left, he poisoned himself for fear of dying of hunger.’ Even if Seneca’s commentary is an exaggeration based on gossip, no other information is needed. Perhaps it is true, however, since Seneca was young Nero’s tutor, and thus a member of the gossipy palace staff.
Some say there was perhaps more than one Apicius, both (or more) noted for their devotion to food. Varying stories were handed down through history. Athenaeus’ several-volume published Greek manuscript entitled, The Deipnosophists (The Learned Ones or Sophists at Dinner), is rich with tales of Greek and Roman culinary history. In this important work, Athenaeus described Apicius’ fixation on seafood – especially giant shrimp – and noted that certain cakes were named ‘Apician’ after him. However, Apicius’ cookbook was never mentioned. Perhaps it was not actually known as a collection until after the third century C.E., when, by that time, his manuscript may have included many additional added recipes.
Although written in Greek, The Deipnosophists tells us much about Greek and Roman food and dining habits. Athenaeus of Naucratis, Egypt, was a learned man from the early to mid-3rd.century C.E. who was perhaps also quite a gourmand. His writings include many tongue-in-cheek feast descriptions. One example is his reference to a notable Greek marriage feast to celebrate the nuptials of Iphierates, who married the daughter of King Cotys of Thrace. The narrative stretches the imagination and mentions how some hosts gave their guests such elaborate take-home memorabilia as gold tiaras, silver cups, and expensive jars of precious unguents. A few selected lines about the Cotys’ wedding feast summarize some details. Clearly the somewhat later Romans were not unique in hosting crazy feasts:
‘At the dinner were your butter-eating gentry, with unkempt hair and in countless numbers. Cotys (the King) himself had an apron on, and brought in soup in a gold pitcher; but what with tasting the wines in the mixing bowls he got drunk before the guests did…. His home does not lack Syrian myrrh, the breather of frankincense, tender-flaked barley cakes, fine meal cakes, octopuses, entrails, suet, sausages, porridges, garlic, beets, stuffed fig leaves, anchovies, mackerel, chops, sea-eel, ray, sole, swordfish, roe-tunny, shark, grapes, figs, flat-cakes, olive-cakes, milk-cakes, cauliflowers, silphium, vinegar, fennel, sesame, periwinkles, grasshoppers, rennet, cress, limpets, mussels, oysters….’
The description continues for pages, and lists more dishes, music, entertainers, semi-nude dancers, guest follies and so forth (see. Vol. II, book IV, pp. 101 and following). At least the Romans had addlepated Greek spendthrift precedents as their models in food as in the visual arts.
Athenaeus also describes how abstemious the early Spartans were during their feasts, but notes that they were eventually corrupted by Persian customs. He mentions that early Spartan rural feasts were typically public and contributed to by all the citizens who dined together in a kind of harvest sharing or thanksgiving banquet. Democracy in action! But customs change or are soon corrupted, whether by the then Persians and/or later Romans.
By imperial Roman times, many dishes were complex, and a collection of herb and spice flavored sauces, variously called garum, liquamen or muria, were widely used. It is possible that Apicius’ first recipes consisted primarily of sauces, and that his earlier collection was later augmented by other dishes and then collected into a single volume cookbook.
During Greek and Roman times, and for centuries afterwards, most of the world considered herbs and spices to be not only flavorful, but medicinal and curative too. Their use was important for health, aside from their tasteful serendipity. A glance at Apicius’ published sauce recipes show they included many ingredients such as: wines, vinegars, celery seed, mustard, broth, oil, pepper, cumin, thyme, coriander, raisins, nuts, dates, dill, mint, honey, onions, caraway and so on. Similarly, the Roman category ‘poultry’ included: chicken, duck, goose, crane, partridge, doves, wood pigeons, figpeckers, squab, pheasant, thrushes and ostrich – any flying bird including the ostrich, which can only run hell-bent and flap vestigial wings.
Questions remain about the identity of some Roman herbs and spices. Whether or not the famous and favorite herb silphium came originally from Asia Minor is not known; however, by Roman times it flourished along North African shores until it disappeared, probably from over-harvesting for gustatory as well as herbal contraception purposes. It may have been the same herb used as late as the Tang dynasty along the Silk Road, where it was considered rare and referred to as laser. Some historians think that both silphium and laser were either asafetida, or closely related to that plant. And in fact, asafetida has largely replaced extinct silphium as a food flavoring around the Mediterranean world where silphium was known and respected.
Consider the ubiquitous sauce garum. Romans made garum from the blood, gills and intestines of heavily salted fish placed in open vats to ferment for weeks (thankfully) outdoors. Daily stirring and natural pickling caused fermentation, which was enhanced with selected herbs. Romans considered garum to be a powerful restorative and frequently added it to meat, fowl or fish dishes, as noted in Apicius’ recipes. Nobody knows exactly how garum tasted, but culinary historians suggest it may have resembled current Southeast Asian fish-based sauces or anchovy sauce. We shall never be certain, since silphium, or related laser, became unavailable by late Roman times. Sadly, the economic fate of some North African cities (Cyrene) rested heavily on the export of silphium until overuse, overgrazing and/or climate change rendered the plant extinct. Foods are important as trade goods through the centuries.
Now onward, if not upward, to our crazy Imperial Roman Feast. Trimalchio’s feast was documented by Petronius, a Roman satirist from the first century C.E. Although a stern social critic on the one hand, Petronius was also the Director of Entertainments for Nero’s court, and thus a well-known man about town. As a critic, Petronius was apparently skilled at keeping one side of his brain from knowing what the other side criticized – a neat trick, in view of Nero’s more debauched proclivities.
The excerpts from Petronius’ Satyricon included here are not merely translated from Latin, they are heavily paraphrased to avoid the rather antique prose of the author’s early translation. However, the tone and sense of the feast is clear either way. Interested readers can refer online to Project Gutenberg, which offers an English translation of the Satyricon, including racy sections sometimes later claimed to be ‘mere forgeries’. Either view is only of passing interest to us now, and the forgery charges may represent monkish censorship.
Trimalchio’s Feast describes one invitee’s experience as a dinner guest. It remains descriptive, but is also a satirical commentary on the host, Trimalchio. The full Satyricon is available in many annotated, abridged and even more fanciful translations. My personal copy is an early translation that appears closer to the original (which my years of Latin scarcely recall), and its language is a bit arcane. Petronius’ style suggests to me it should be rendered in a more casual almost slangy manner; therefore, most parts are paraphrased, and repetitive sections of description are skipped and so noted by using the conventional dots (…) here and in other chapters of this book.
Whether or not this feast actually occurred is unknown; however, Petronius presents a virtual paradigm of Roman feasts described by others. The point of its historical verisimilitude is moot, since its menu and characters are clear and descriptive enough to be of interest as a paradigm of what must have been many crazy Roman feasts.
Petronius made it clear that the host, Trimalchio, was very rich and apparently also somewhat crass in manner. He was doubtless not from an old storied Roman clan or upper class family. This description is echoed in enough other documents to assure us similar feasts were held by wealthy Romans, and imitated in the Roman provinces. Slave-like imitations of banquets and menus should not surprise us, since culinary fashions normally trail wealth in fashionable clumps, even when most avant-garde dishes are often adaptations of past peasant fare, or represent new medical theories and diets.
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