Apicius heard that enormous prawns lived off Libya. The report was enough to launch a voyage. He crossed the Mediterranean in search of a specimen larger than anything available near his Italian home. Fishermen came out to meet the arriving ship. Apicius asked whether they possessed prawns greater than the celebrated catch of Campania. They … Read more
Lucius Veratius walked through Rome striking free citizens in the face. An enslaved attendant followed him with a purse. After each blow, the attendant counted out twenty-five bronze asses. Aulus Gellius presents the scene as an argument about old law. The Twelve Tables had attached a fixed payment to one form of personal injury. Once … Read more
In 304 BC, a Roman aristocrat climbed into the role of a painter. Gaius Fabius decorated the Temple of Salus, placed his name on the work and left his descendants a surname: Pictor, the painter. Pliny the Elder considered the choice remarkable. Painting was not an obvious occupation for a man from a leading family, … Read more
Vespasian held a coin beneath his son’s nose and asked whether it smelled. Titus said it did not. The emperor answered that it came from urine. Suetonius tells the exchange in a few lines, but the joke depended on an entire urban process. Roman urine was not merely waste. Fullers used aged urine in cleaning … Read more
A Roman leaving the city did not pass from crowded life into empty countryside. Beyond the gates stood another population: the dead. Tombs, altars and inscribed monuments lined major roads, presenting family names to travelers while keeping bodies and funeral fires outside the civic center. A severe sentence in the Twelve Tables helped create that … Read more
A cup-bearer broke a crystal goblet during a banquet given by Vedius Pollio. The wealthy host ordered the enslaved man thrown to the huge lampreys he kept in reservoirs. Emperor Augustus was dining there. Augustus first asked Vedius not to carry out the punishment. Vedius refused. The emperor then requested every similar or valuable drinking … Read more
Cato the Elder begins his farming handbook by slowing the buyer down. Do not be over-eager to purchase, he warns, and do not consider one inspection enough. A good farm should become more convincing with each visit. The neighbors’ properties, the direction of the slope, water, workers, roads, town and equipment all had to support … Read more
At dinner, a book was read aloud and notes were taken. If the reader mispronounced a word, Pliny the Elder interrupted him. On one occasion, a guest asked why he had not simply let the reader continue. Pliny answered that the correction mattered—and then rebuked the guest for wasting the time in which more than … Read more
The color did not emerge from the sea as purple cloth. It began as a pale fluid in a shellfish’s body, removed with the animal’s tissue, mixed with salt and left for three days. The mass then went into a lead vessel over controlled heat. Flesh was skimmed away. Only after repeated reduction did a … Read more
The jar was built to keep an animal moving in darkness. Its walls carried channels. A hollow held acorns, walnuts or chestnuts. Once the lid went on, the dormouse climbed, ate and accumulated fat inside a container designed for that single purpose. Varro’s account of villa husbandry does not begin at the dining couch. It … Read more
