Banquets

Food consumption is both a functional and a symbolic act (Gowers 1993: 1-49, Grimm, this volume). Who has food, who does not, what one eats and under what circumstances can say much about wealth, social status, and even political power in any society, but especially in one where food is produced and distributed unequally, as it was in ancient Rome. In such conditions, those who control food resources wield power in a very real sense, and the social and political features inherent in the sharing of food are made all the more obvious. As a guest at Trimalchio’s dinner party sardonically puts it, ‘‘the little people struggle, while for the big mouths it’s always holiday feasting!’’ (Petron. Sat. 44). Whether shared among members of a family, invited guests, fellow club members, soldiers in a military mess, or the community at large, commensality was a reproducer of social and political relationships (Fisher 1988). In the Roman world, displays of conspicuous consumption at private dinner parties were mirrored by public banquets or food hand-outs presented as voluntary benefactions to the urban mob by elite benefactors. In thus displaying its generosity and advertising its concern for the common populace, the Roman elite was also reiterating its claim to social and political dominance over that populace through the medium of food. Analogous power dynamics were at play in the private dinner party. The Roman banquet, whether private or public, was the quintessential ‘‘power’’ meal (Garnsey 1999).

Recent analysis has identified ‘‘public’’ and ‘‘private’’ spheres in the elite Roman house, where the hall-study (atrium-tablinum) was the most public area and the bedroom (cubiculum) the most private (Laurence and Wallace-Hadrill 1997; Wallace-Hadrill 1994). The situation is not absolutely clear-cut, but in general the atrium was open to the street and therefore accessible to the public. While ‘‘public’’ business could be transacted in the cubiculum, access to it would normally be reserved for the tried and trusted, so that entrance required a specific invitation (Riggsby 1997). Intermediate areas in the house were the garden (peristyle) and dining-room ( triclinium), places that served a more overtly public function than the bedroom but nevertheless required an invitation to enter. The importance of the dining room as a symbol of status is suggested by its luxurious decoration and the effort invested in locating it in the house to afford pleasing views of gardens, statuary, and fountains (Bek 1983; Ellis 1997; Ling 1995). It seems that in this space the host attempted to show off his wealth and status most pointedly to his guests (Drerup 1959; Gazda 1991).

In ancient elite literature, the evening dinner party is indeed presented as a focal point of the day and an occasion of important social interaction (Murray 1990; Slater 1991; see Dunbabin 2003 for the iconographic evidence). The excesses of Trimal-chio’s cena, as related in the surviving portion of Petronius’ Satyricon, are as infamous as they are fictitious, but other sources reflect a hardly less extravagant reality: Apicius’ (undated) cookbook of ancient haute cuisine includes recipes for peacock, parrot, and flamingo (6.1-6). Three features of these private dinner parties deserve special notice. First, the participants were all invited by the host. Their very presence was therefore a sign of social (and political) favor. Martial and other satirists play on this fact when they portray unpopular losers scouring the city’s public baths or hanging about the public toilets in the hope of catching an invitation to a dinner party (Mart. 2.14, 11.77, 12.82). Second, social hierarchy was strictly maintained at table by the placement of the guests on the three-sided dining couches (the eponymous triclinia) and the quality of the food served. Despite an equalizing ethic at the dinner, hosts were known to serve their socially inferior guests low-class food that reflected and reinforced their inferiority (D’Arms 1990). Indeed, Cicero records how, when a friend entertained Caesar and his vast entourage in December 45 bce at Puteoli, separate dining rooms were assigned to different classes of guests (Cic. Att. 13.52). Another option was to restrict invitations to guests of a comparable social status and serve food and drink of an appropriate standard to everyone. This ensured that, among the guests at least, a standard of equality prevailed, even if the host had occasionally to endure sub-standard fare as a consequence (Pliny Ep. 2.6). Third, the quality of the meal itself, the content and tone of the tableside conversation, and the nature of any entertainments staged for the guests’ pleasure all reflected not only on the host’s status but on his sense of propriety. Quality hosts invited a mix of intelligent guests who held fascinating conversations on learned issues (see Plutarch’s nine books of‘‘Table Talk,’’ the Quaestiones Convivales, or the 15 extant books of Athenaeus’ ‘‘Doctors at Dinner,’’ or Deipnosophistae), or they put on poetry readings or displays of oratory for their guests’ edification; less refined hosts mauled their guests’ wives or staged gladiatorial bouts, executions, or other gross and inappropriate displays (C. P. Jones 1991). Trimalchio’s vapid tableside boastings and staged excesses are the paradigm for this sort oftastelessness and form the core ofPetronius’ satire of Roman dinner-party culture.

Exclusivity and hierarchy are even more apparent in the Roman public banquet. Whereas, in democratic Athens, public banquets following sacrifices were open to all citizens and allotments of portions were equal (Schmitt-Pantel 1990), in Rome only persons who enjoyed the ‘‘right to dine publicly’’ (ius epulandipublice) could partake (Dosi and Schnell 1984: 299-328). Naturally, these persons tended to be priests, magistrates, and other members of the elite. The commoner was only entitled to the leftovers, which were put on sale in the market (Scheid 1988). In addition, exclusive groups could dine together as a reinforcement oftheir communality, such as the Arval Brethren or members of funerary clubs or other collegia (see, e. g., ILS 7212 for the regulations of a funeral club at Lanuvium, of Hadrianic date). As the euergetistic ethos gained ground in Rome with the expansion of empire, the public banquet became somewhat more open, even if it was a cause for suspicion in the minds of some. A candidate for the consulship of 62 BCE held a banquet for the populace as part of his canvass - and that act became a basis for his being prosecuted (unsuccessfully) on a charge of ambitio (Cic. Mur. 72-7).

Inscriptions reveal the popularity of public feasting in the cities of the empire (Donahue 1996; Mrozek 1987). These largely prosaic texts show that food was distributed in various guises, often described vaguely as populo epulum dedit (‘‘he gave a banquet to the people’’) or cena (an evening meal), sometimes more specifically as panis et vinum (bread and wine) or crustulum et mulsum (pastries and honey-wine). Even less precise is sportula, a hand-out that could take the form of food portions or a monetary equivalent. Most illuminating are those inscriptions that differentiate the classes of recipient, thereby demonstrating that social distinctions were maintained (by location and/or by quality of food) as the benefaction played out (for examples, consult the tables of Donahue 1996 or Duncan-Jones 1982). From Ferentinum in Latium, for instance, comes a lengthy inscription recording the achievements of one A. Quinctilius Priscus, who had reached the highest municipal offices and then established a foundation,

So that on his birthday in perpetuity such townspeople, inhabitants and married women as are present be given a pound of pastries and a measure of honey-wine; and where the dining-couches {triclinia) are concerned, that honey-wine and pastries and a hand-out of ten sestertii be given to the decurions; likewise for the growing boys of decurional status; and that pastries and honey-wine and a hand-out of eight sestertii be given to the board of six Augustales and those who dine with them; and in my dining-room a further one sestertius per person be given... It is better if the town’s officials offer to the plebeian boys, without distinguishing free from slave, a distribution of nuts weighing thirty modii and a serving of drinks from six urns of wine, as befits growing youths. (CIL X 5853 = ILS 6271)

The inscription is intriguing for several reasons. First, only the decurions, their sons, and the Augustales (priests of the imperial cult drawn from local freedmen) are specified as reclining to eat in the aristocratic fashion (in triclinia), while the townspeople, inhabitants, and married women presumably sit or stand. Second, everyone gets honey-wine and pastries, but the decreasing sums of the accompanying sportulae may suggest that not everyone’s food and drink was of the same quality. Certainly, by the time we get to the plebeian boys, nuts and limited amounts of wine are the only foodstuffs on offer. Third, the benefactor himself takes part in the event, reclining in a triclinium, and those selected to dine with him enjoy the privilege of an extra sestertius added to their hand-out. His triclinium has the pride of place in the whole event. In this way, the inscription tells us much about how this public banquet was staged and shows above all that, whereas many people might participate, they did not do so equally. The public banquet, like the private dinner, offered ways for the Roman social order to be made manifest with the appropriate roles of favor granting and dependency made abundantly clear to all participants (Donahue 2004).