Most Roman meals were quick and informal. Breakfast or ientaculum (from the Latin for hungry) would have been just enough to sate hunger until lunch, which in itself would have been light. Dinner was the main meal of the day. It was a social event; a chance to relax with family or if guests were invited, to entertain and impress.
Before Dinner
Dinner usually occurred late in the afternoon, at around the equivalent of 5pm, after the business of the day was concluded and the baths had been visited. Clothing for an informal dinner with family or close friends would have been relaxed. A special tunic known as a synthesis would have been worn. The toga was only appropriate for very formal occasions.
No prospective guest would leave the house without their personal napkin, an item not provided by the host. Used for wiping hands and mouths, the napkin also doubled as a kind of doggy bag as guests were often encouraged to take any left over tit bits home.
Locations for Dining
The location for dinner very much related to social class. Traditionally, the atrium was the place the family would dine, in front of the household gods who would be offered their portion of the meal. However, it became usual for those who had the space and money to have a separate dining room, the triclinium. If possible, the aim was to have two, one for winter and one for summer. The summer triclinium often overlooked the garden and honoured guests would have been positioned so that they had the best of the view.
Guests would be situated on couches with a central table or tables. Only men would recline when eating; it was more usual for women to sit on the edge of the couch. The classic arrangement would involve three couches, large enough to accommodate three reclining guests, each at a 45 degree angle to the tables.
Positioning on the couches would indicate the importance of the guests. On the left hand couch at the top end would be the host. He was situated so that his head was next to the guest of honour who was positioned on the back couch, overlooking the view. The next two important guests sharing the couch with their host. Lesser guests filled the other spaces.
Food would be placed on the tables central to all the guests who helped themselves. Forks were generally only used for serving; eating occurred with spoons or the fingers. In early times, dining services in wealthy households were simple, made of pottery rather than gold or silver as ostentation was frowned upon and indeed legislated against. However, with the passage of time it became acceptable, if the host could afford it, to serve food on one or two well placed dished of precious metal. But pottery remained the norm, mainly because it was possible to acquire excellent glazed sets, such as the famous Samnium wear.
Courses and Food Served
A dinner with the family would probably be simple and consist of various vegetable courses or salads accompanied by eggs, cheese and beans. A meat course may have been included, finished with fruit and nuts for dessert.
If guests were invited or if the host’s social standing permitted it, a dinner would be more lavish. However, contrary to the image portrayed by some sources, lavish orgies were the exception rather than the rule. It was regarded as vulgar to display too much ostentation a dinner parties, as Petronius’s satire’ Dinner with Trimalchio’ highlights. Even those who could afford it would not serve meat for every course. Breaks between courses to purge through vomiting would likewise have been rare.
Dinner would begin with the first course or gustatio which was usually a salad consisting of lettuce or leeks, accompanied by eggs or if available, fish. Several other small courses would follow, such as olives and cheese. A meat course, if applicable would follow. At its most simple, this could consist of sausages or plain fowl or poultry, to delicacies such as dormice, sows udders or whole roast pigs.
Dessert could be simple fruit or one of the sweet sticky pastries favoured by the Romans, sticky with honey and filled with dried fruit.
Wine
The Romans rarely drank their wines unmixed in order to prolong sobriety and often served them diluted with water or flavoured with spices and honey. At an elaborate dinner, several types of wine would be served. However, only a bad host would reserve the best wine for honoured guests whilst serving the others lesser vintages.
A common wine served with dinner was a mulsum, a chilled white wine sweetened with honey.
Entertainment
No matter how simple the dinner, entertainment would always be an integral part. This could be as simple as conversation (although never about business) or poetry readings. Music was often performed, with small plays and even gladiatorial bouts being recorded as rounding off some elite evenings.
Sources
Roman Cookery by Mark Grant (Serif:London)
Ancient Rome on Five Denarii a Day by Philip Matyszak (Thames & Hudson)
Cato and Varro on Agriculture. trans. W D Hooper & H B Ash (Loeb Classical Library)
The Satyricon by Petronius. trans.J. P Sullivan (Penguin Books)
Martial’s epigrams (Loeb Classical Library)
