Curiosities of ancient Rome (Food)

Ancient Romans are appreciated by modern Britons for bringing several innovations to Britain: roads, pavements, baths and plumbing. As it turns out, one more thing may be owed – a beef burger.

Romans ate three meals during the day, in which women also participated. In the morning between eight and nine, the Romans ate breakfast so écantaculum, in the middle of the day between eleven and noon they ate the prandium (second breakfast, dinner) and finally the most important meal was dinner, between the third and the fourth hour.

Ancient Romans were famous for drinking wine in large quantities. The wine was available to everyone: a slave, a plebeian, a soldier, a woman. The wine also saw children (there was no age limit). The wine to the younger Romans was, however, served with water in the right proportion so that they would not get drunk. Was there anything else besides the red liquid?

The basic ingredient of an ancient Roman dinner was the bread of various types of flour: black bread (panis rusticus, plebeius), white bread (panis secundaris) and the most delicate luxury bread (panis candidus, uniform). There were also popular vegetables: lettuce, cabbage, leeks, chickpeas, broad beans (boiled, roasted), goat’s cheese and olives. Beef and various kinds of venison were valued (including deer meat and wild donkey), however fish dishes were the most favoured.

Penthiacum is one of the dishes eaten in antiquity, and which was mentioned by Petronius in the “Trimalchio’s feast”. The meal consisted of chopped meat. The name derives from the name of the mythical king Thebes, Pentheus, who according to Greek mythology was killed in fury by Maenad, also called Bacchae.

Roman legionaries’ meals were mainly based on wheat from which mush or mash was created – it was called pulse or flat bread (pane). Barley was considered a grain suitable only for animals and Greeks. Various legumes, onions, cabbage and other vegetables were added to the dishes. Meat, however, was eaten little, but that does not mean that the soldiers were vegetarian.