THE HISTORY OF OLD ROME

III. From the Union of Italy to the Subjugation of Carthage and the Greek States

From: The History of Rome, by Theodor Mommsen
Translated with the sanction of the author by William Purdie Dickson

Chapter XIII - Faith and Manners

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Page 32

Now, on the other hand, a scientific cookery began to prevail. In the better houses a special cook was kept The division of labour became necessary, and the trade of baking bread and cakes branched off from that of cooking--the first bakers' shops in Rome appeared about 583. Poems on the art of good eating, with long lists of the most palatable fishes and other marine products, found their readers: and the theory was reduced to practice. Foreign delicacies--anchovies from Pontus, wine from Greece--began to be esteemed in Rome, and Cato's receipt for giving to the ordinary wine of the country the flavour of Coan by means of brine would hardly inflict any considerable injury on the Roman vintners.

The old decorous singing and reciting of the guests and their boys were supplanted by Asiatic -sambucistriae-. Hitherto the Romans had perhaps drunk pretty deeply at supper, but drinking- banquets in the strict sense were unknown; now formal revels came into vogue, on which occasions the wine was little or not at all diluted and was drunk out of large cups, and the drink-pledging, in which each was bound to follow his neighbour in regular succession, formed the leading feature--"drinking after the Greek style" (-Graeco more bibere-) or "playing the Greek" (-pergraecari-, -congraecare-) as the Romans called it.

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