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Choreography of the ancient banquets

by Eugenia Salza Prina Ricotti

Banqueting choreography
Starting from the I cent B.C. the art to serve all the dishes arranged and decorated in a very elaborate way was introduced in the Roman banquets. When all the guests were comfortably lying on the tricliniar couches, slaves brought in the dining room heavy silver trays, and set them on very elegant stands that they placed in the middle of the tricliniar couches. Some time those stands were made of silver, as the ones represented in some frescoes, and other times they were fashioned in precious wood inlaid with silver or ivory.
Thus we read about a luxurious vessel brought at Trimalchio banquet, a splendid one covered by a hemispheric top. This silverware is not a fruit of fantasy. Also Petronius might have seen it, and exactly he must have known the one represented in a fresco decorating the little triclinium of Oplontis’s villa, a residence that belonged to Poppea and, in consequence, to her husband Nero, the writer’s friend. As a matter of fact it was common to represent the most precious objects belonging to the families on the walls of their Pompeian houses and thus we suspect that this interesting covered trays and its beautiful stand had been part of Nero’s furniture and that it was often used in the banquets to which Petronius was a frequent guest.
Under the hemispherical top of Trimalchio’s tray there was a complicate arrangement of different delicacies dominated by a hare that, to represent Pegasus the mythical flying horse had been adorned with wings. Around were roasted chickens and, to complete everything, the tray was circled by a small canal in which fishes had been arranged as if they were swimming in the sauce. A baroque arrangement, but fascinating and probably similar to the one that was served in the Oplontis’ covered tray.
Other impressive food arrangements consisted in bringing in the triclinium large animals cooked whole: big fishes, boars, pigs and even veal. As people ate taking the food with their fingers, these colossal roasts had to be cut in appropriate sizes. To do this there were carvers, special servants trained in this art at specific schools, as the one kept in the Suburra by a certain Tryferus. It was here that those young men learned how to cut rapidly and in a perfect way any roast and not only this because the carvers, whom Petronius describes in his book, were dressed as mythological characters and, rushing in the triclinium, improvised amusing sketches in which the roast animal played the part of a dangerous enemy, and the carver was the hero who risked his life to cut it.
In those times all courses were arranged with great refinement. Also the pastry cooks tried always to find spectacular presentations for their sweet creations. In Trimalchio’s banquet the dessert was a statue of honeyed dough representing Priapus with all the kinds of fruits in his lap, a form quite common for this mythical character’s statuary. All this, of course, was not present only in Trimalchio’s dinner and, also if, to amuse his readers, in his description of this banquet Petronius forced and caricatured everything, the arrangements and the presentations of the several courses in all Roman triclinia could not have been very different from the vulgar libertus’s rich dinners, and the same delicacies might have been served at many tables, included the imperial ones.
The menu was fixed by the Roman’s ancient customs, thus it always followed the traditional pattern: it started with hardboiled eggs, preceded with elaborate hors d’oeuvres followed by tasty roasts and then finished with pastries, flowers, perfumes that were handed as gifts to the guests.
Then when the dinner was finished, began the symposium a part of all the ancient banquets. With different forms of course. At Rome it was a quite moderate affair, nothing to do with the golden times drinking parties of Greece. But this was predictable, because Roman wives and daughters took part of their husband’s social life, and their presence at dinners forced all guests to behave themselves. The most lascivious show that was accepted by a Roman community were the dances of the Gaditanes girls, charming Spanish young women who, to the sound of clacking castanets and while around them all the audience rhythmically clapped their hands as people still do in Andalusia, danced rotating their haunches,. Also if from time to time some poet attacked them accusing the poor girls to be too lewd, it does not seem that they were really cause of scandal and, as a matter of fact, it seems that it was with their wives laying beside them on the tricliniar couch that many husbands enjoyed the spectacle.
For the rest of the time people spent the symposium chatting and, of course, drinking. In the late republican-imperial times the wines that were served were excellent. The Romans, being now the established lords of the world, could buy whatever they wanted and have on their “mensae” anything that pleased their tastes. Thus they bought the Greek wines, very expensive “amphorae”, but also the ones that were considered the best of the ancient world. Of course, remarkably good wines were now made also in Italy and we know all of them because in their descriptions of the long Roman after dinner the poets recorded and described all of them. Anyway many hosts would never renounce to the Greek ones. After all they were considered the more chic.
When all the wines had been brought in the hall where the symposium would be held, the party began. First thing in Rome as in Greece the guests elected one of them as their director, a man that in Rome was called the “Magister Bibendi”. After having given orders to the slaves on how much water had to be mixed with the wine it was always the “Magister Bibendi” who decided to whom the guests would toast. That meant that he also decided how much they would drink, because, to toast someone, the Romans drank as many small cups as many letters formed his three names, and the Roman names were exceptionally long. Thank to God, as the more frequent custom was to put three part of water for one of wine, the drink was much diluted.
In wintertime wine was watered with piping hot water, and in summer with snow. Thus, to always have boiling water ready, artistic boilers, working just like the Russian samovars, were kept near the “mensal vineries” (the stand where the drinks were prepared). A very fine one is kept in Pompeii’s Antiquarium.
In summertime the wine was diluted with the snow that in wintertime had been collected on the top of the mountains, then stored in subterranean cells, where, covered by straw, it lasted till the end of summer.
The most beautiful of those snow deposits are Villa Adriana’s ones. They were cut in the tufa’s platform and were composed by a central subterranean gallery slanted toward north and with a concave bottom to collect the melting water. On the two flanks of it many orthogonal galleries 1.20 m wide, 2 m high and 5 m long opened themselves and in them was stored the snow that, well pressed and covered by hay or straw, lasted for a very long time. Every time the slaves had to fetch some snow only one of these side galleries was used. The others, left intact, were not disturbed. Snow’s preservation was also helped by the cement covering its walls, a very light one (probably pumice was mixed in it) that transformed the subterranean structure in a kind of gigantic thermos.
In the ancient Rome snow was widely used. Iced dishes and also sherbets were made with it. Moreover when in the heat of summer the water of the theme’s swimming pools became too hot it was always with snow that they were cooled off. Of course the most common use of snow was to put it in the drinks and during the heat of the summer’s months there was no triclinium or elegant dinner that didn’t do it, and it was with iced wine that all the banquets ended.
When the well fed and a little drunk guests left their host it was nearly dark. Usually the dinner lasted till sunset, but then, between thanks and salutations, time passed, thus, when the people returned home, night had come and they needed torches and lanterns. Moreover, when one was not a rich patrician accompanied by strong and athletic slaves, the common man had to pray all the Olympus’ gods to save him from bad encounters. As a matter of fact the roads were full of bandits and wild drunkards, and if the person succeeded to safely reach his bed he felt really lucky.
However it was just at home that the fight began. Here to wait for her loved one there always was a wife or a lover. What was sure that, feeling that she had been abandoned and neglected, it was a very embittered woman the one who met him.
Full of poetry are the splendid verses of Propertius that, describing his coming back home after a banquet, finds his loved one bathed in the moonlight and still asleep. But then the sweet creature wakes up and. breaks the enchantment. She is furious but she also is so beautiful that, instead of diminishing her beauty, her rage makes her more desirable.
This scene however tells us that also if all the great ladies and the Roman empresses participated to their husbands’ social life and with them laid on the tricliniar couches, not all the others women could follow their example. Also in the imperial times common men preferred, just as Propertius did, to let at home their loved ones and to limit the disturbing feminine presence to the meetings with well behaved people and relatives, very calm dinners where people didn’t drink too much and there never was the necessity to fight to protect one’s wife honour. Can we really think that they were wrong?
Anyway this was an ancient dinner with all its luxury, the kind of banquet that the Romans had imported from Greece, Egypt and the Middle Orient and with it in Rome entered all the usages and customs that they had adopted. Then this was the kind of banquet that was used by everyone up to the most far away limits of the Empire. Of course - as people told from the beginning - it was also true that the extension of this central influence destroyed the variety of the different ancient convivial life, but who could object? With Romans the dinner, this fundamental moment of the ancient social life, had acquired a special very interesting and important place in the people life and it kept it up to the end of the Empire. Maybe it was still in vigour at the arrival of the dark Middle Age and the disappearance of the tricliniar couches, when, as liberti and poor people once did, men of all conditions sat down uncomfortably around long tables and fasting and penitence began.
It was the end of Rome the brilliant and hedonistic world and it was also a pity.

Bibliography

Scientific popularization
- E. SALZA PRINA RICOTTI, Dossier: Cibi e banchetti nell'antica Roma in Archeo, nº 46, December 1988, pp. 52-97
- E. SALZA PRINA RICOTTI, Cibi, cucine e triclini in L'alimentazione nel mondo antico. I Romani: etá imperiale, Rome 1987. pp. 70-140
- E. SALZA PRINA RICOTTI, Come si mangiava a Roma: gli interminabili conviti dei ricchi e le umili minestre di farro del popolo in Archeo, 17, July 1986, pp. 36-38

Books
- E. SALZA PRINA RICOTTI, L’arte del convito nell’antica Roma Ed. L’Erma di Bretschneider, Roma - Iª edition 1983, I impression 1985;IIª edition 1993
- E. SALZA PRINA RICOTTI, Le radici della cucina italiana: la tavola dei romani e 52 ricette per conoscerla, Cooptip Modena 1993
- E. SALZA PRINA RICOTTI,Ricette della cucina romana di Pompei e come eseguirle, Pub. L’Erma di Bretschneider, Rome, 1993, Reprinted 1996, New emission 2000, Many reprints.
- E. SALZA PRINA RICOTTI,- Dining as a Roman Emperor, L’Erma di Bretschneider, Rome, Iª Edizione Emission 1995. IIª Emission 1999, Many reprints.

Academic papers
- E. SALZA PRINA RICOTTI – Il ferculum dello Zodiaco in RPAA., Vol. LV-LVI, (1982-1983-1984) , pp. 245-264.
- E. SALZA PRINA RICOTTI – Cibi, cucina e banchetti in Vita quotidiana nell’Italia Antica: vita in famiglia. Verona, 1993. Arnaldo Mondadori publisher, pp 111-144.
- E. SALZA PRINA RICOTTI Kodai Roma no Kyoden, (Translation of L’arte del convito nell’antica Roma), Publishing House Heybonsha, Tokyo 1991, Reprinted in June 1992)
- E. SALZA PRINA RICOTTI – La cultura gastronomica nei secoli: valori e sviluppi in Atti del Convegno “Le cucine della memoria: per un contributo alla cultura dell’alimentazione. Sviluppo tecnologico e tradizioni alimentari all’alba del XX secolo, Udine, 1999