Roman+Diet

In ancient Rome there were many great things that made Rome better than many other ancient civilizations. Some of those things were the mighty coliseum and their armies of immense strength and power, but there’s one thing that never makes it into your textbook or ancient scripts…food. In ancient Rome, food goes through a lot more than it does today. Well in Rome they used red spits and stuck them down the necks of ‘ripe’ cows to make the meat tender, but they had to do it with abiding by this rule: animals must not be teased or tortured and they must be killed with respect and sorrow. The grains in ancient Rome were harvested with a [|scythe] but a roman writer called Pilmy wrote about a very simple reaping machine called a vallus which was pulled by a cow or goat and raped as it walked across the field. The stalk vegetables were beans, peas, lentils and other pod bearing plants. Root vegetables included carrots turnips and greens like broccoli

The crops in ancient Rome were much tougher than the ones today, perhaps even 2 times as tough as the ones today. The crops had to be beaten with a stick. At diner time you would be surprised how many feasts would be going on but most of them would probably a famous feast called Trimalchios feasts and it consists of a :

Starter: Roast any fluffy creature related to the squirrel ([|dormice]) with honey sauce and poppy seeds Sausage on plums with a side of [|pomegranate] seed Fig pecker in a sauce of peppered mayonnaise

1st course: vegetables/ fruit Chick peas

Meat Beef, Kidney, Rams testicles, African [|fig], crow, scorpion fish, lobster, goose, mullet, fat poultry such as chicken, roast hare, pork stuffed with living birds or sausages and black pudding.

Etc Various cakes and bread

Desert: Fruit, Grapes, Poultry, and [|Thrushes] stuffed with raisins and nuts and a big fish made out of pork.

After you’ve had your great dining experience you will go home with an Apophereta which is like a party bag but sometimes they won’t fit in a bag and the presents you may get consist of:

Food including swans, turnips and [|truffles]

Objects such as hairpins, combs, socks and art

Or animals that may be a pony, birds, monkey or a parrot

Then the gifts that are the most popular... slaves may include [|dwarfs], scribes or cooks.

Works Cited

Britannica. "Spices." Brittanica School. Britannica. 31 Oct. 2007

<[|http://www.britannicaschool.eb.com>.]

Jones, Peter. "A Feast for the Senses." SIRS Renaissance. Sept. 2003. Sirs. 28 Oct. 2007

<[|http://www.sirs.com>.]

Steele, Philipe. Food & Feasts in Ancient Rome. Hampshire, England : New Discovery Books, 1994.

vallus : http://www.gnrtr.com/tendencies/_images/gall02.jpg

dining: http://www.royal.gov.uk/files/images/Insight%20Mar05%20Gallery%20Italy1%20Large.jpg