Translated from French (please notify us of errors) Among everything the lava of Vesuvius seized in an instant in 79 CE were eighty-one round loaves, carbonised in the oven of Modestus’s bakery on the Via degli Augustali. They remained buried until 1861, when the archaeologist Giuseppe Fiorelli drew them from the ashes and recorded them […]
From the greco-roman artolaganus to neapolitan pizza
Translated from french (please notify us of errors) In 2023, the discovery of a fresco in Pompeii caused a sensation. On a small table, next to fruit and a cup of wine, one can make out something that looks very much like a pizza. The news of the discovery of the “ancestor of pizza” travelled […]
Homer’s moly: twenty-five centuries of mystery
Translated from french (please notify us of errors) It is the most celebrated plant of antiquity, and the most elusive: moly (μῶλυ). Black root, milk-white flower, uprooted by gods alone. Homer made it the absolute antidote to Circe’s sorcery. Generations of scholars have attempted to identify it. Without incontestable result. But without giving up either. […]
The mandrake, a plant that defends itself
Translated from french (please notify us of errors) Its name is Mandragora, but the Ancients also knew it as kirkaia (κιρκαία) or Circaeon – the plant of Circe the sorceress.[1] The mandrake is one of the rare plants to have crossed the centuries with its reputation intact: mysterious, formidable, and stubbornly resistant to any who […]
Rooted in the cosmos, magical plants in antiquity
Translated from french (please notify us of errors) Nourish, heal, protect, bewitch, kill: in Greek and Roman antiquity, plants do all of this at once. The boundary between cookery, medicine, religion and magic does not exist — or at least not where we would draw it today. A single plant may appear in a recipe, […]
Olive-growing in Italy before Rome
Translated from french (please notify us of errors) It is tempting to assume that Italian olive cultivation began with the Romans – or at least with the Greeks, who supposedly handed down the press, the amphora, and the know-how. A study published in January 2026 in the American Journal of Archaeology by archaeologist Emlyn Dodd[1] […]
Gallo-Roman dodecahedron: twelve faces, zero answers?
Translated from french (please notify us of errors) There exists, in the museums of north-western Europe, an object whose purpose no one knows. Cast in hollow bronze, ranging in size from a fig to an apple depending on the specimen, it presents twelve pentagonal faces each pierced by a circular opening — all of different […]
How the ancient laganon became lasagne
Translated from french (please notify us of errors) In Greece today, Lagana (Λαγάνα) is a light, crispy bread, generously topped with sesame seeds, prepared specially for Clean Monday (Καθαρά Δευτέρα), which marks the beginning of the Orthodox Lenten fast. It is certainly a descendant of the laganon (λάγανον) of the ancient Greeks. Having become laganum […]
Ostrich on the menu
Translated from french (please notify us of errors) For the Greeks, and later the Romans, ostriches belonged to the world of fantastical creatures inhabiting mysterious Africa, alongside crocodiles, camels and elephants. Herodotus, in the 5th century BCE, is the first to mention the bird in a list of Libyan creatures. He calls it the «bird […]
In Apicius’ garden: aromatic plants
Translated from french (please notify us of errors) The vast majority of aromatic plants used in ancient cooking had already been known for millennia and remain indispensable to Mediterranean cuisine today. With a few exceptions, of course! The Romans used many herbs and spices to flavour their dishes. Many of these plants are familiar to […]