Translated from french (please notify us of errors) Roman towns teemed with establishments selling food and drink. In the excavated portion of Pompeii alone, archaeologists have identified some 160 of them. This is explained by the fact that only a very small fraction of the population could afford the luxury of a home with a […]
The onion in Antiquity: not such a humble bulb
Translated from french (please notify us of errors) A food prized by the masses yet scorned by the elite, a universal remedy yet a contested one, an aphrodisiac that nonetheless gives repellent breath, an object of mockery or a venerated deity: the onion accumulates paradoxes in ancient culture. Beneath its concentric tunics lies a food […]
A “computer” at your fingertips
Translated from french (please notify us of errors) Although we sometimes count on our fingers, it never gets us very far. At ten, we have exhausted our natural resources. Getting round the problem, the Greeks – and after them the Romans – used a system allowing them to count up to 99 on one hand, […]
In Homer, one lotus can hide others
Translated from french (please notify us of errors) One readily imagines the Lotus-eaters offering Odysseus a flower of the Egyptian lotus, its pale blue petals contrasting with yellow stamens. A mistake: what the Homeric hero’s companions eat, to the point of forgetting even their desire to return home, is certainly not the flower of an […]
The Odyssey: Odysseus at table with monsters
Translated from french (please notify us of errors) In the Odyssey, eating is never innocent. Every bite says who one is: man, beast, or god. Homer composed an epic of the failed feast – ten years of wandering in which one devours and is devoured, in which one forgets one’s homeland in a cup, in […]
when wheat sheds its hull, Roman dough rises
Translated from french (please notify us of errors) There was a time when the Romans made do with thick porridges of far, that rustic wheat wrapped in its husks, as Pliny the Elder attests: “For a long time the Romans clearly lived on porridge, not bread.”[1] But as early as the 5th century BCE, a […]
The hulled wheats, rustic ancestors of the Roman cereal system
Translated from french (please notify us of errors) At the origins of Rome, there was einkorn, emmer and spelt, three so-called “hulled” cereals. This is a somewhat technical point, but here it is: after threshing, their grains remain enclosed within their husks (glumes), which requires an additional dehusking step. This drawback is offset by several […]
Grain and humans in pre-Roman Italy
Translated from french (please notify us of errors) Long before Rome was born, cereals were already feeding the societies of the Italian peninsula. Cultivated since the Neolithic, they shaped not only diets, but also landscapes, exchange networks and ritual practices. Thanks to archaeobotany and archaeology, it is now possible to trace their history with growing […]
Barley, millet, rye and oats: the cereals of the margin
Translated from french (please notify us of errors) For centuries barley fed the Greeks, millet sustained Roman peasants, rye survived in the Germanic forests and oats were regarded as a weed. These are the cereals that Rome tolerated, sometimes despised, and yet badly needed. The three previous instalments of this series followed the great trajectory […]
How Rome kept its wine from turning to vinegar
Translated from French (please notify us of errors) Making wine is not a matter of chance but of constant vigilance: from Cato to Galen, the Romans vied in ingenuity to prevent their grape must from turning sour. Wine needs little encouragement to spoil: once oxygen, bacteria and time intervene, must can end up as vinegar. […]