
The Lavish Roman Banquet: A Calculated Display Of Debauchery And Power - never-the-bride
https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2019/05/20/712772285/the-lavish-roman-banquet-a-calculated-display-of-debauchery-and-power
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peterlk
> while servants stream in bearing platters heaped with heavily sauced and
> delicately spiced foods from all over the world

One of my favorite "audiobooks" (in quotes because it's actually a lecture
series) is Food: A cultural culinary history [0]. From what I recall, there
was nothing delicate about the spicing of food. The amount of spice that you
could put on something signaled your wealth (spices are expensive), so heaping
spices on was the thing to do at these banquets. The idea of "delicately
spiced" foods came much later from French cuisine.

[0] [https://www.thegreatcourses.com/courses/food-a-cultural-
culi...](https://www.thegreatcourses.com/courses/food-a-cultural-culinary-
history.html)

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euroclydon
For anyone interested, may I recommend the History or Rome podcast. At over
150 episodes, each running roughly 25 minutes, the listener is taken from the
city's founding by Romulus to the end of the empire at the hands of the
Germans.

[https://thehistoryofrome.typepad.com](https://thehistoryofrome.typepad.com)

~~~
greesil
As a listener to this podcast, I have to say that your characterization of end
of the empire "at the hands of the Germans" is a just bit of an
oversimplification.

~~~
Balgair
Yeah, THoR really drives home the point that 'Rome' was many things at many
times. The thesis one can take away from Rome is that there never was any
thesis, Rome was just really insanely lucky.

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mudil
Here's a quote about Mark Antony from "Caesar, Life of a Colossus" by Adrian
Goldsworthy. Good book.

"Antony returned to Italy after Pharsalus and was effectively the supreme
authority there from January 47 BC until Caesar's return in the autumn. He was
a gifted subordinate, but his behaviour became less and less restrained during
these months when he was largely left to his own devices. He feasted often,
both lavishly and very publicly. His drinking was on a staggering scale —
later in life he wrote a book on the subject, which seems to have contained
many boasts about his prowess — and he is supposed to have conducted much
public business while only partly sober or at the very least suffering from a
hangover. On at least one occasion he had to interrupt a meeting in the Forum
in order to vomit in sight of all. At times he processed around the country in
a great caravan, riding himself in a Gallic — presumably British — chariot,
followed by carriages containing a famous actress who was currently his
mistress, while another carried his mother. The whole column was incongruously
preceded by his lictors. Apart from dressing up as Hercules, some sources even
claim that he experimented with a chariot pulled by a team of lions. Apart
from this mistress, he had a number of scandalously public affairs with
senators' wives. Mark Antony revelled in power, and his conduct was scarcely
likely to convince moderate opinion that Caesar's victory would bring anything
other than tyranny in the long run."

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duxup
I've seen only clips but HBOs Rome series had an actor who played Mark Anthony
(James Purefoy)...kinda like that.

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stcredzero
The Celtic feasts that the Roman banquets displaced were just the same as
what's described in the title: A Calculated Display Of Debauchery And Power.
Putting on feasts have always been a way for the wealthy to display their
wealth and power, to curry favor with their underlings and to give others the
opportunity to do so with them. They are also a way for a community to bond
together over food, whether hierarchical or communal.

Even industry and consulting groups in the 21st century use the same nonverbal
and architectural language to express the same things in the same ways as was
done in ancient times.

~~~
sandworm101
We forget the practicality of eating. A feast was the one time most people
would ever feel full. For the romans, those in the city of Rome, it may have
been display. For many of the celts a feast was precious calories. By feeding,
the lord may well have been keeping his people alive. For soneone sick and
under-fed (everyone) a single big meal ever month or two would be the
difference life or death. They saw attendence at a feast as both honor and
survival. That is a forgotten dynamic.

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stcredzero
_For the Romans, those in the city of Rome, it may have been display. For many
of the Celts a feast was precious calories._

Going by the information in one of Terry Gilliam's documentaries on the
ancient world, for many of the Romans, it was somewhat the same as for many of
the Celts. Many city dwelling roman citizens didn't have extravagant diets,
and might well have been satisfied in macro-nutrients, but lacking in others.

 _By feeding, the lord may well have been keeping his people alive. They saw
attendance at a feast as both honor and survival._

By not feeding, the Celtic noble may well have been punishing those she or he
disliked. I think social hierarchies still find such physical means of
manifestation in 2019.

~~~
Amezarak
This is a preposterous claim. Neither Roman nor Celtic peasantry existed in a
state of perpetual famine. There was certainly the occasional period of
inflation and/or famine, but the norm was absolutely for pretty much everybody
to be well-fed. They were certainly not malnourished, either. Yes, they had
simple diets, but not _bad_ ones.

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barry-cotter
In 1914 the U.K. had been the second richest economy in the world for over a
hundred years. Nonetheless approaching a third of the male population eligible
for conscription were in poor enough health that they were deemed unusable in
war. The average American was a foot taller than the average Briton. The
members of the House of Lords were noticeably taller than the members of the
House of Commons, some of whom, presumably, had had long periods of poor
nutrition in their lives.

The norm was not perpetual famine but neither was the average peasant well fed
except in transitory times of abundance. Normally the nobility and urban
patriciate and cash rich populations like successful merchants would survive
famines just fine though food would get more expensive. For the mass of the
population lean years where the old, sick or young would die for lack of food
would be every five years if they were lucky and about every thirty years a
tenth to a third of the population would die in a famine.

The unusual thing about the Irish Potato Famine of the 1840s wasn’t that 1/4
of the population died; it was that that was the last time it happened.
Famines were so unremarkable before the 1800s, even in Western Europe, that we
often need to do archival detective work to figure out they happened. Do we
see more people buried in paupers’ graves at this time? Do tree ring data
suggest unusually harsh weather? Did grain prices rise? The literate classes
weren’t indifferent to the suffering of those on the Malthusian margin of
survival but large portions of the population dying of starvation every so
often was normal.

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Amezarak
The late 1800s and early 1900s were notoriously terrible in UK and the literal
shrinking and weakening of the population due to their diet is documented over
time - and it was actually due to increasing trade, industrialization, and
globalization. Beforehand things were much better. The expansion of available
foods made things much worse.

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2672390/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2672390/)

> The fall in nutritional standards between 1880 and 1900 was so marked that
> the generations were visibly and progressively shrinking. In 1883 the
> infantry were forced to lower the minimum height for recruits from 5ft 6
> inches to 5ft 3 inches. This was because most new recruits were now coming
> from an urban background instead of the traditional rural background (the
> 1881 census showed that over three-quarters of the population now lived in
> towns and cities). Factors such as a lack of sunlight in urban slums (which
> led to rickets due to Vitamin D deficiency) had already reduced the height
> of young male volunteers. Lack of sunlight, however, could not have been the
> sole critical factor in the next height reduction, a mere 18 years later. By
> this time, clean air legislation had markedly improved urban sunlight
> levels; but unfortunately, the supposed ‘improvements’ in dietary intake
> resulting from imported foods had had time to take effect on the 16–18 year
> old cohort. It might be expected that the infantry would be able to raise
> the minimum height requirement back to 5ft. 6 inches. Instead, they were
> forced to reduce it still further, to a mere 5ft. British officers, who were
> from the middle and upper classes and not yet exposed to more than the
> occasional treats of canned produce, were far better fed in terms of their
> intake of fresh foods and were now on average a full head taller than their
> malnourished and sickly men.

Times of famine were not extraordinarily _rare_. But I'd be very skeptical of
the numbers you're providing. Famines where a lot of people start dying become
revolutions and migrations. The Irish Potato Famine _was_ a very exceptional
famine in terms of numbers - but it wasn't that 25% of the population died,
it's that 25% of the population died or left - there were about even numbers
for both. The situation was also greatly worsened by the political situation,
which did have major consequent political effects. Large famines are easier to
track because of this.

I'm extremely skeptical of your numbers in general. Certainly people always
starved: urbanites and social outcasts were at higher risk. What marginal
increase are you declaring a famine? Even the 'severe' famine periodicity you
mention seems very hard to support among any population groups and historical
periods I know about. It's probably true in periods of extreme upset, but not
in normal times, and in most stable societies food surpluses were stockpiled
and preserved to hedge against such things.

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ggm
When rich people invite beyonce to perform at their daughters bat mitzvah, or
wedding, or fly everyone to dubai and give them a rose-coloured diamond, is
this really any different?

I mean (I guess) is there any substantive difference between conspicuous
consumption like this, and what the 0.01% do nowadays?

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kyleblarson
The Secret History by Donna Tartt is an amazing novel about a group of
classics students who try to reproduce such a banquet with interesting
results.

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ggm
Ancient Greek surely? with added xanax.

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lawlessone
i thought the vomiting was myth? mostly spread by Christianity

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Mediterraneo10
The vomiting was largely the result of folk etymology of the word
_vomitorium_. It had nothing to do with any particular religion, Christian or
otherwise.

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Jun8
Here's the wikipedia article
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vomitorium](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vomitorium)),
_vomitorium_ meant exit in amphitheaters.

Interestingly, this misconception is perpetuated in _Hunger Games_ , in volume
2 Katniss and Peeta attend a party, clearly modeled after the lavish roman
banquets mentioned here, at the Presidential Palace in the decadent Capital,
which includes a drink to induce vomiting so people can enjoy more food
([https://thehungergames.fandom.com/wiki/Food_and_Drink#cite_r...](https://thehungergames.fandom.com/wiki/Food_and_Drink#cite_ref-:15_21-0)).

