A person’s eating and drinking preferences were staple elements of ancient biography. The omnipresence of wine in classical society made it a key social indicator. It helped to define Graeco-Roman culture, gender roles, status, and private and public mores. What one ate and drank were opportune topics for the orator, particularly one intent on emphasizing the incontinentia (unrestrained behavior) and luxuria (luxurious living) of an opponent. Further, there was the idea of ‘‘wine in, truth out,’’ as Mrs. Nickleby has it. Plato (Laws 649) saw plying his potential Guardians with drink as an inexpensive and relatively harmless means of revealing character, which fitted in with the biographer’s idea that a man’s psyche can be revealed in his minor, unpremeditated actions (Plut. Alex. 1.2). Against this background, at first sight, Julius Caesar’s apparent unconcern about what he ate and drank seems unexceptional. Plutarch ( Caes. 17) talks of his ‘‘simple diet’’ and, although the connection is never explicitly made in the sources, it may be significant that in ancient medicine one of the main treatments for epilepsy was dieting. When Suetonius (lul. 53) describes his ‘‘indifference’’ towards food, and Plutarch talks of him being ‘‘easily satisfied,’’ what they had in mind was the story preserved by a contemporary of Caesar, C. Oppius, and cited by both biographers, which recorded an occasion when Caesar was served with asparagus topped with myrrh (a medicinal compound!) rather than fresh olive oil, which he ate without comment to avoid embarrassing his host. ‘‘That he drank wine most sparingly not even his enemies denied,’’ claimed Suetonius (lul. 53) most significantly, since being a drunkard was a standard charge in the political rhetoric of the period - all of Cicero’s leading enemies and opponents are charged with drunkenness at one time or another. But this seems to be the one thing that Caesar could not be accused of. So in his attack on Cato the Younger after his suicide, Caesar must have felt he was on personal strong ground in repeating the stories about Cato’s drunkenness in public from breakfast-time onwards that had been circulating since at least Cato’s praetorship in 54 BC (Pliny Ep. 3.12; Plut. CatMin. 6, 44). Cato’s supporters, however, defended him by pointing out that even in his cups Cato remained an all-round good fellow, and by reviving a quip of Cato himself that ‘‘Caesar was the only man to overthrow the Republic sober’’ (Suet. lul. 53). We might also note that the Emperor Domitian, admittedly after a large lunch, was given to restricting his dinner to a Matian apple and a glass of water (Suet. Dom. 21). It is the mark of a tyrant to ignore social norms and conventions.
World History
