The Ancients - How to Party Like a Roman

Episode Date: December 16, 2021

Contrary to popular belief, parties in Ancient Rome were not all depraved wine-fuelled orgies. In fact, Roman get-togethers were relatively tame by the standards of today. They often consisted of noble families sharing elaborate food dishes and entertaining one another with theatrical hysterics. Parties among less wealthy citizens were simpler, yes, but no less raucous. Bashes of all kinds—whether to celebrate great military victories or mark important festivals such as Saturnalia—were beacons of status and huge networking opportunities, which explains why they became such a core feature of everyday Roman life. So, not all crazy sex parties after all! In this episode, Tristan is joined by Dr Ian Goh, Professor of Ancient History at Swansea University, to find out how to party like it’s 1 BC.If you’re enjoying this podcast and looking for more fascinating Ancient content, then subscribe to our Ancient History Thursday newsletter here.

Hi, I'm Tristan Hughes, and if you would like the Ancient ad-free, get early access and bonus episodes, sign up to History Hit. With a History Hit subscription, you can also watch hundreds of hours of original documentaries, including my recent documentary all about Petra and the Nabataeans, and enjoy a new release every week. Sign up now by visiting historyhit.com slash subscribe. It's the Ancients on History Hit. I'm Tristan Hughes, your host. And in today's podcast, well, it is the festive season. And although I know late 2021, it's unusual.

Of course, we've got the COVID pandemic and perhaps there aren't as many Christmas parties as usual. But today we're still going to be talking about how to party like a Roman, because it was this time of year. Of course, you have the great festival that was Saturnalia. However, in today's episode, we're going to be focusing in much more on the Roman dinner party, the convivium, the iconic image we have of elite Romans reclining on couches, drinking wine and eating luxurious types of food and so on. So we're going to be looking at these different types of food, we're going to be looking at different types of drink, we're going to be talking about entertainment, we're going to be talking about the purpose of these dinner parties and of, we're going to be talking about entertainment, we're going to be talking about the purpose of these dinner parties, and of course we're going to be salting the fact from the fiction about a certain room which has been called the Vomitorium. Now joining me to talk through all

of this, I was delighted to get on the podcast Dr Ian Goh from Swansea University. Ian is a legend when it comes to Roman cultural history. He knows his stuff and he also knows his stuff about Latin literature, especially verse, prose and satire. Now, Ian, wonderful to have him on the show. And without further ado, here he is to talk all about how to party like a Roman. Ian, thank you so much for taking the time to come on the podcast today. No worries. Well, we are talking about a topic and a half. Parties in ancient Rome, how to party like a Roman. Because Ian, in fact or fiction, we do have this image that has come down to us of Romans, especially the elite, being party animals, shall we say. Indeed, yeah. And we have some famous representations of derring-do and raucous behavior,

which are often played up in the sources that we have. This is, of course, something that people gravitate towards. Look at those Romans, look at how they behaved. And we often fixate on some of the oddities of what happened with the Romans when it comes to eating. And just to put a finer point on it as well, it's something we can claim to share with the Romans, an interest in food. Absolutely. And you mentioned the sources. What types of sources do we have available when looking at dining, when looking at parties and food and all of that in ancient Rome? when looking at parties and food and all of that in ancient Rome? So we have a number of famous literary representations, both in prose and in verse, of famous parties,

which we might call convivia. Convivial occasions is where we get that word from. For instance, we have a famous representation of dinner party hosted by a person named Trimalchio called the Cana Trimalchionis, the dinner at Trimalchio's place, in the novel called the Satirica by Petronius, who many people believe was the so-called arbiter of elegance in the court of the Emperor Nero. So that's one kind of representation of parties that's come down to us. We have numerous other literary representations of these parties, which are the occasion for chit-chat. So there's another one by Athenaeus called the Banquet of the Sophists, essentially,

and so on. We also have material representations. One interesting point is that many of them for numerous centuries, they do not represent cooked food. They represent the produce in the raw, but it's only relatively late in, say, the third century CE or later that we get identifiable representations of food being served at a banquet. So that's one aspect of it. Another and a final aspect is in moralizing literature, where you get, for instance, encyclopedic works, such as the Natural History of the Elder Pliny or the De Agricultura of the Elder Cato. These contain lots of recipes and lore about how to make different

recipes. So in a sense, leading up to the most famous cookbook of antiquity, Apicius's cookbook, or at least the recipes that are collected under the name Apicius from, say, the 4th century CE. I call these moralizing literature because to a certain extent, these are texts which are saying, look at these luxurious foodstuffs. They are in some ways not Roman, and they are too extravagant for what Romans actually should be eating. The salt of the earth, true Romans like things like turnips and vegetables and should not be focusing on breeding and eating peacock, for instance. Let's delve into, I think this is probably one of the most things that comes to mind perhaps first and foremost when you think of an ancient Roman party,

which are these private dinner parties, which we get representations of, we seem to see everywhere in TV representations and so on. You mentioned the term convivia earlier. Ian, what was the convivium? The convivium is essentially stolen from Greece. It is a Roman version, like everything else that the Romans did, pretty much. It's a Roman version of a symposium or a drinking party. And for a lot of the texts that we treat or we think about as Roman, this would involve lying down on couches in a dining room arranged so that they gravitated towards the host of the dinner party, who was often called Summus in E emo. So there's an elected master of ceremonies, I suppose, who often went by the name of King Rex. A very difficult term in Roman culture, because for so

much of their history, they were a republic. And even when you have an emperor, Princeps, he is not a king. So there is a king of the banquet, but that's seen as a kind of jocular kind of host expression. And in some ways, the dinner party is and is not a microcosm of the state. I should point out that this does not hold true, this arrangement of the dining room, the triclinium in a house, is not necessarily what happens throughout the Roman Empire. So by the time of late antiquity, by the fourth century and later, we get actually these dibadia kind of banquets around the table with seating four or five people. So that's a change in dining culture and dining practice. That's what a private dinner party would look like.

You asked also who would be hosting these. For instance, Trimalchio of that Petronian representation is a freedman, so an ex-slave, but one who is insanely wealthy. And he is also a minor magistrate, a sewir, in his local municipality. So he's got some status, but he's got a lot of wealth, and he really, really wants to flaunt it. So that's the kind of person who might be hosting a party like this. Conversely, however, there is a kind of odd divide between private and public parties. The most famous party we know of is actually held by priests in an inaugural college in 70 BC.

And we have a record of the dishes that were offered at this banquet. And it's extraordinary what fare is being put on. banquet. And it's extraordinary what fare is being put on. Famously, one of the dishes is stuffed fowl, a bit like foie gras, but where you eat the whole bird. And what is noteworthy is that this contravenes sanctuary legislation, which had regulated and essentially banned such practices and such luxurious dishes. So again, there is a kind of tension between what is permissible in private, but on an occasion which you might expect to be public for, as I say, a priestly college. So there you see that these private parties do have a certain public sense of spectacle to them. And Ian, this sense of spectacle, this, you know, you have all of these rich items, shall we say, and you've got the draclinium as well.

And I remember going to Bignor Roman Villa recently and seeing the beautiful mosaics in that banqueting hall, as it were, in the Roman Villa. Does this really emphasize how perhaps a primary purpose of this private dinner party in the Roman period was it very much to show off your wealth, to impress your guests? Absolutely. So there's a sense that this is where hobnobbing and business still take place. And it's certainly a place to be seen, to see and be seen, and to partake of predominantly homosocial relations that are just another part of how they govern. By the same token, there is a certain philosophical strand which says that it is very easy to overdo it. This also goes to that point about how in the material culture there are few representations of this. On the one hand, you've got this kind of spectacle and you're showing off how much you can provide.

We should not underplay that. For instance, the person who introduced peacock as a dish into Roman cuisine was a well-known orator, fabulously wealthy, named Hortensius, who was a sparring partner and a colleague of Cicero's. who was a sparring partner and a colleague of Cicero's. So that's one way you can see that this is integrated into the highest levels of society. But as I say, it's possible to overdo it. And so prominent philosophies like Epicureanism and Stoicism caution against over extravagant displays of wealth. And the Epicureans, for instance, make a big play of being content with a little, with none of the finery that you associate with this extravagant luxury. And for instance, Cicero says in his treatise, Et on moral ends, De Finibus, about how a good meal really consists of good conversation. It's the people you're with who make the dinner, not the wonderful delicacies.

A further point there is that in the politics of food, there's always this question of identity that keeps coming back. So for instance, the Epicureans saw themselves as living Greekness because their founder, Epicurus, was famously Greek, or was from Athens. And so there is a lot of thinking with a particular dish, which is Sal's udders, which is a bit like pork belly, unctuous, or pig's trotters, perhaps is a better comparandum. This dish is seen as a very Roman, luxurious dish. And so there's a famous epigram, seen as a very Roman luxurious dish. And so there's a famous epigram, a short poem by an Epicurean named Philodemus, who tells his patron Piso, another antagonist of Cicero's, who tells his patron, you can come to dinner at mine, but you can't expect any sales others. Like, I know

you elite Romans like eating that kind of thing. I can't offer that to you. So again, bound up here is also a politics to do with that kind of status question, which tempers that drive you would expect to ever more luxury. That's really interesting. I mean, this question just sprung to mind, but let's say the early years or so of this Roman dinner party, you know, the contacts with Greece and this Roman style symposium. Let's say at that time in the Republic, the foods that are available, like these very highly sought after luxurious foods, are only those that they can find on, let's say, the edges of the Roman Republic at that time or perhaps a bit further. or perhaps a bit further, compared to, let's say, a couple of hundred years later, when they've got trade links, perhaps all the way to India and that like, does the range of luxurious foods available to the upper classes for these dinner parties, does it, shall we say, expand as the Roman period goes on? It certainly does. And this goes on with repeated attempts to standardize and to regulate with the sumptuary legislation I was talking about,

all the way to and beyond the Diocletian price edict, which regulates, among other things, sells others. And so on the one hand, yes, this pattern of ever increasing luxury is very tempting to believe in, increasing luxury is very tempting to believe in because it chimes very well with the idea of an expanding empire and which brings back spices, for instance, from the East and trades with ever more people. On the flip side, though, we have to remember two things. Firstly, that the Romans are always obsessed with who is the first person to do a thing. And so that applies to, for instance, what I was saying about Hortensius being the first person to breed peacocks. And sure, we see a certain set kind of arms race with people breeding fish in saltwater and freshwater fish ponds. Hortensius is famous for organizing a woodland dinner where he has someone dressing up

and reciting poetry like Orpheus. And then a lot of this is linked to the hunt. So again, it ties in with elite practices, both elite kinds of farming and elite hunting. But the second point is that this plays directly into very powerful narratives of decline. In every generation, you have moralizers saying, oh, it was better in the past when people just ate acorns or turnips. To come back to turnips, famous Romans, old Romans, like Romulus, for instance, Romulus is supposed to have become a god to have been deified and to have been eating turnips in Olympus.

An incorruptible general have been eating turnips in Olympus, an incorruptible general was discovered eating turnips and then refused to help the Samnites, the enemies of Rome. So eating turnips, was what good old Romans did. And so there was a narrative of decline as Romans get seduced by ever more luxurious foodstuffs. And that means that the times they are changing, they're much worse than they used to be. And so those two things do give us pause when faced with this very convincing or very alluring idea of cosmopolitan luxury in food. Just moving on before we really start talking about food and drink at these dinner parties, Just moving on before we really start talking about food and drink at these dinner parties,

I would like to ask about one other thing that we constantly associate with these convivia. And that is, of course, the reclining guests on the couches, on the beds, and they're not really being chairs, as it were. Do we know why there is such an emphasis on the guests always reclining on these different sorts of seats? I think the issue of dining posture has been much studied, and we don't know whether it is kind of about not being upright and therefore, you know, you're susceptible to pleasures. Also, there is a question of the ways it allows the elicitation of conversation, there is a question of the ways it allows the elicitation of conversation, and maybe it's just a holdover from the way it came into Roman culture. But there is debate as to all of these points, and that goes quite nicely together with the question of whether or not women were present, and indeed whether courtesans, hetairai, were part of the entertainment,

so to speak. We should also remember that the spectacular nature of these events means that it's easy to overplay this idea of people declining and the Greek idea, for instance, of them playing kottabos, like flinging wine into a central cup. There was really a slippage between being in an auditorium, seated in an auditorium, and being at one of these dinner parties. So I think we should not be insisting so much on the idea of them always lying down. If we move, therefore, on to drink, first of all, before food, I mean, what sorts of drink would be available at the table of a Roman party? It would certainly be wine. As a general rule, wine in the ancient world is mixed with things.

So we have lots of references, for instance, to honeyed wine and even great vintages are diluted. So certainly wine is a drink of choice, not things like beer, which are seen as the preserve of northern barbarians, and not as a general rule, water by itself. Although we have references to ice and snow brought down at great cost from the mountains. Do we know, for instance, with the types of wine, would there be preference for, let's say, a wine from northern Italy compared to a wine from, let's say, western France or one from Cyprus? Was there any values that could be assigned to the various wines, let's say? There are famous vintages, yes. And there are famous regions. So, Philharmonian wine,

for instance, which is from the border between modern day Lazio and Campania. So between Rome and Naples, essentially, is famous. Chian wine from Chios is famous. Very often in poetry, which has to do with the symposium or convivium, such as Horace's Odes, there are references to when a jar was laid up in whatever consul's year. So yes, there is definitely a knowledge of famous wine producing regions, but we also have to bear in mind that transport, while extraordinary for the age, is not quite what it is today. So I think most of the wine drunk was red,

and especially because of the difficulties in chilling them. So definitely vintages are known and often argued over. Hello, if you're enjoying this podcast, then I know you're going to be fascinated by the new episodes of the history hit warfare podcast. From the polionic battles and Cold War confrontations to the Normandy land battles and cold war confrontations to the normandy landings and 9-11 we reveal new perspectives on how war has shaped and changed

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that meat is a relative luxury, which is associated first and foremost with sacrifice. is a relative luxury, which is associated first and foremost with sacrifice. The idea of meat is a tricky one in some ways, because not only is it bound up with identity, but as I was saying about the sow's udders earlier, much of the meat that comes to table as a delicacy is not bread, is hunted. And so breeding things, you could expect those things to their value. So we meet with problems with this. I was saying earlier that the representations of the cooked food are few and far between. And for instance, on these udders, we don't see very many depictions of them until you look at Butcher's gravestones, when finally you get these representations, but not in representations of the banquet. So firstly, we've got to remember this link with sacrifice. And we've got to consider this question of whether things are bread. And, you know, for instance, to pick up this example,

again, of the peacock. The peacock is not great eating meat. It's again more for display because it makes such an impression. Or another favorite meat of the Romans, dormice, are found around the farm. You find them and you catch it and you set traps for them, but you're not really breeding them. A third thing is to do with seafood. And seafood is a very difficult one because it is absolutely a luxury. And the province of Connoisseurs, who can presumably tell you, according to these authors, can tell you where the best scallops come from or the best oysters and so on, and can identify where they have come from by taste, if they're great gourmands. So seafood is another part of this. But what might be confusing for people who know anything about Roman cooking is that there is a ubiquitous fish

sauce called garum. To even make it more complicated, there are different kinds of garum, some of which are used as seasoning. So this complicates the picture of meat for anyone trying to get to grips with Roman food. With garum, this idea that everyone's sampling some of this fish sauce, putting it on almost everything is really hard to square with this idea that, say, a turbot is hard to come by. So that's something we scholars argue about and have to think very carefully about. Keeping on seafood and these dinner parties a while longer, Ian, because my mind instantly went to, let's say, you know, a piece of literature like Opium's Heliutica or something like that. And when you put yourself in the mind of an ancient Roman or living at that time, an elite

Roman, and not knowing what's lurking beneath the waves, as it were, especially, you know, when you think of all these sea beasts, these sea monsters, etc. Was there something very prestigious at dinner party if you managed to acquire one of these very rare, highly sought after sea fish that, let's say, might come from an area of Oceanus or the sea, which they might have thought was inhabited by more horrific creatures, as it were? There is a certain element of that. which they might have thought was inhabited by more horrific creatures, as it were. There is a certain element of that. The lot of the fishermen in antiquity is a very bad one, and they are famous for their poverty. We have numerous poems by Theocritus and others on this idea.

Certainly the weirdness of things that come from the sea. In literary criticism, it's said sometimes that fish are unmusical. But I'm thinking primarily of Juvenal's poem Satire 4, which depicts in burlesque fashion a council of the emperor Domitian's inner circle who have to decide what to do with an enormous turbot, which has been captured on the other side of Italy and then carried post haste to the emperor on the premise that everything that is in the ocean belongs to the emperor. And of course, it's a race against time because you don't want the fish to go off as you transport it. So certainly fish is prestigious because difficult to obtain. And yes, there's a certain kind of remarkable nature for fish that appears at market, which chimes very well with the idea that the sea is of strange creatures. To return to Hortensius and his mates, including Lucullus, one of the Luculli brothers, they farmed mullet, for instance.

And it was said by Varro of Hortensius that he treated his mullets as if they were pets. He was so fond of them that he wouldn't eat them, but he would feed them by hand. So with seafood, there is a certain awe-inspiring idea here. I should also say that seafood, when it features in a banquet, often plays a part in the spectacle of a banquet because the Romans on these occasions are very keen on dishes that are not what they see. There are famous dishes of fish smothered in sauce, and there's representations of pregnant eel that looks like it's giving birth, and so on and so forth. And you're in the sauce, you're representing the sea from which the fish came.

You mentioned there Roman satire. Is there quite a link between Roman satire and within Roman satire, them talking about Roman parties and Roman food? There is a very strong link. And part of it has to do with the nature of the genre of not just satirizing the good and great and poking fun at these events or at the very least engaging with them, but it's baked into the genre itself because one of the etymologies offered for this genre of literature is in the overflowing plate of first fruits offered to the gods or in an overstuffed sausage. This idea of consumption is germane to the genre. At the same time, these events are clearly a flashpoint for moralising, for talking about the offering of luxury, for thinking through questions of identity, which comes back to the idea that all food, as we've been discussing really, is political and always has that political edge. I'd like to ask about vegetables and fruits. I mean, we've talked all about meat and we've talked about alcohol,

you know, classics of the party, but vegetables and fruits, do they also make appearances at Roman dinner parties? A Roman meal would consist of an appetizer course, a gustatio, then the main course, a prima mensae, and then the following course, a secundae mensae, and then the following course, the secundae mensae, which is a bit like dessert, and apples are famous as an ending, which gives rise to the phrase from eggs to apples. We're talking about luxurious affairs, ones with multiple main courses and multiple dessert courses in all likelihood. Much more humble meals could be one pot of fares or even just some cheese

and fruit and nuts. We do have to remember, of course, that this is before South America gave us tomatoes, potatoes, and other kinds of vegetables, which were not available to ancient Romans, say, even if a lot of the spices that we might recognize are readily available. Romans did like bitter vegetables, one famous one being rue. And there is a lot of talk about a vegetable called sylphium, which was supposedly either an aphrodisiac or an abortifacient and was very expensive. There was a lot of talk about vegetables that we would recognise, such as asparagus and the famous aphrodisiacs, lettuce and rocket. We could talk all about food for hours, but actually, Ian, let's go on to, let's say something associated with food, part of a villa, part of a dinner party that has come down to us today as the vomitorium.

What is the vomitorium? And then myth bust away. What's the fact? What's the fiction behind all of this? Okay, so vomitoria are not actually part of dilapati complex. The word womo means to emit. And so they one's bones and things, and presumably vomit, on a floor. And we know this because we've got numerous famous representations in mosaic form, these mosaic floors with representations of bones and discarded bits, leftovers from a party. Now, we don't have representations of vomit, but that is part of what you could expect at a dinner party, for instance. You would have discards on the floor and slaves, presumably, to sweep it up, or servants. Additionally, we also know about famous Romans who were doing emetic diets. For instance, Caesar was on an emetic diet. We know about this from a letter of Cicero's where he had to host Caesar and his entire entourage. And he says it was a very bad

business. Caesar and Cicero were both elite, educated Romans. And so they get on famously, but Cicero complains to his best mate Atticus that he had expected a lot worse and that he tells Atticus about how Caesar had gone and done his vomit cleanse and so he didn't eat very much in the end. Nero also was on a vomit diet to preserve his vocal cords because apparently what's going to help him with his acting career. Another aspect of this, though, is to do with famous poisonings. The Emperor Claudius, who everyone should know, apparently was poisoned by his wife Agrippina with a dish of mushrooms in the tradition. His doctor came and tried to make

him vomit. And there's talk about how actually the doctor was paid on the sly to insert more poison while making Claudius vomit. So we've moved a little bit away from the vomitorium. Yet there is no dedicated room for that. But as you can imagine, the idea of emitting food goes hand in hand with the consumption of food and is a very hot topic in the study of Roman dining culture. a very hot topic in the study of Roman dining culture. You did mention there the servants and the slaves, and it'd be wrong not to talk about these figures at a Roman party. What do we know about servants and slaves at Roman dinner parties, Ian? We know quite a lot from the representations we have, and there is a strong trend in the literature in judging the host by how they treat their slaves.

Again, to come back to Trimalchio, it is particularly prominent because Trimalchio is an ex-slave himself. In that satire of Juvenal that I was talking about, the one with the big fish, with the turbot, the start of that focuses on another freedman who had gotten his start in life by being a slave fishmonger. And there is, as I say, philosophical debate in the literature, in the sources, as to what happens to the servants and the slaves. The cooks tend to be slaves. And a lot of this literature kind of explores the milieu of these parties and the people who are officiating at them, often to show dissonances and to show up, for instance, the hosts of such parties like this Trimalchio figure. Is Trimalchio a very good example of themes of the Roman dinner party from Roman authors?

And what themes do they want to try and get out of this figure Trimalchio? Trimalchio's dinner party is an exaggerated affair. So it would be wrong to take that or any of these other representations at pure face value because they have literary purpose behind them. It's well known that Trimalchio's party, which has seven speakers, is looking back at the seven speeches in Plato's Symposium. And it is also looking at a poem by Horace, Satire 2.8, which involves another host, Nassidianus, whose dinner party comes a cropper when tapestry falls on the food. So these are literary representations. We have to bear that in mind. But we can also say, for instance, that this can be quite illuminating. So one aspect of Trimalchio's dinner, which is

noteworthy, is that it is obsessed, as Trimalchio is, with death and with the idea of Trimalchio's supposedly imminent demise. And at the end of it, where it all is going horribly wrong, the narrator, who is a guest at the dinner, is trying his best to get out. And Trimalchio has had a reading of his will. There is a person, Habenas, who is a stonemason, who has entered late. And so Trimalchio quizzes him on his epitaph and so on. And this might seem trivial, but not only is it insisted upon in the representation, but it reminds us that another place where we get feasts is funerals, funerary feasts, and offerings to the dead. So in a sense, these representations, while they are comic and exaggerated and literary,

and are serving that purpose, they also do have some grounding in truth. It features in Trimalchio, and it must feature in all these other dinner parties as well from the Roman period. And this is this one thing that we normally always associate with parties, especially this time of year, Christmas parties and all of that, which is entertainment, Ian. Now, today we have ping pong tables, we have karaoke, we have DJs and the like, but what sorts of entertainment could there be at Roman parties? and the like, but what sorts of entertainment could there be at Roman parties? All sorts. There is going to be entertainment put on by the servants. The cook will come out and,

for instance, there is theatre in Trimalchio pretending to give the cook a beating because he hasn't disembowelled this pig. Then the guests persuade Trimalchio to show mercy, and then the chef cuts open the pig and it turns out that the entrails are just sausages. This kind of dinner theatre is part of our representations. But if you are at a more humble meal, then the entertainment is in the conversation. And in the frank speaking and the friendship bonding that's happening at the dinner. So it's all theatre, dinner theatre, very much part and parcel of the event. The dishes themselves, remember, are entertainment. They are meant to look like not what they are. Again, part of the spectacle is kind of appearing to deceive. The theme of deception, which runs through famous dinner party representations,

was surely part of what the room is delighted in. But again, this manifests itself in different ways. Could there ever be games of any sort, whether it's maybe even gladiatorial games or normal kind of games, as it were? Certainly.

This would be part and parcel of an event. Gladiator, I hesitate because gladiators are regulated in different ways. And this is not an arena spectacle. But there are ways in which these events reflect spectacles. Again, in the Cana Trimalchio, they shoot saffron. He shoots saffron at the guests, which is what they would do in an arena spectacle. The problem here is that a jet of saffron to the face is not very pleasant. So, so, you know, there is irony even in that. And I'm guessing this is only because I have no shame,

and I admit I did it the last Christmas party. There's no ancient version of karaoke, is there? There is no version of any of guests getting up and singing one of their favourite songs at a dinner party or anything like that, is there, Ian? There is certainly a tradition of speech making. dinner party or anything like that, is that Ian? There is certainly a tradition of speech making, so, you know, and telling stories. So while it may not be drunken singing, it may well have been, but the sources which we're trying to convey a more dignified impression, perhaps there is more emphasis on the speaking. But certainly singing is part and parcel of a good party. And certainly we can assume happened. Now quickly, before we go on to public parties and festivals and then start wrapping up, I've got to ask about some imperial parties. Because Ian, we do hear of some very decadent, luxurious parties hosted by some certain Roman emperors, don't we? Yes, we do. We can assume things like that took place

with the caveat that very often this is seen through the lens of the moralising literature, which is chastising such behaviour. And some emperors are more famous for this than others, usually bad emperors. This is bound up then with our judgments on the reign of a certain emperor. As I said early on, a king of the banquet is a kind of emperor in miniature. So that again is a link

to draw between the kind of banquet space and the wider regulation of the empire. And are there any particular examples of banquets of parties from any particular Roman emperor that you'd like to highlight that is particularly interesting to you? I'm very fond of one that is not one of the more famous ones. Famous ones include Domitian's Banquet in Black, where no one knew who was going to be informed on them and whether they would survive the banquet. But my favourite is one held by Otho, which Tacitus talks about in Histories I. This is in the year 69, the year of four emperors. Otho is holding a party and rumor gets out that there is going to be a revolt.

And some members of the Praetorian Guard kind of bust open the doors and come rushing in. And Otho has to get on a chair and to quiet the crowd and get them to all go home quietly. That's my favourite. I stress the reason I like it is because he has to calm everyone down and send them home, which is one of the most difficult things you can ever do at a party. Oh, absolutely. To be the party pooper. Oh, be the party pooper, especially if you're also the host too.

I mean, you know, that's two slaps in the face in one. All right, let's move on from that, away from the emperors, away from, let's say, the elitists of such, to public parties in ancient Rome. Is it fair to say that some Roman parties, they were big public events? Yes, with the proviso that, for instance, Caesar, Julius Caesar, is famous for having still hosted these large public parties. And very often these would be associated with festivals. So, yes, there is a certain public element, but these are governed by not just rules, I guess, but also have been put on by certain important people. And so how often do these sorts of parties occur in? Well, relatively often because they're linked with the festivals and the Festival Caledonia's

chock full. And they could be associated with games that were held in funeral games in honour of important people or in the celebration of a triumph, for instance, there's a certain party atmosphere that goes along with the more rigid religious connotations. Earlier, I talked about this famous party held by the Priestly College. Again, the boundary between the public and the private is a little fungible. That said, the most famous party that we know of, or we might be thinking of, is the Saturnalia, which has a certain public element to it, despite coming from the celebration which was focused on the Temple of Saturn. So it comes from a festival for the god Saturn. But yes, we could kind of see this as a widely celebrated

public kind of festival. And for these sorts of festivals, who could go to it, as it were? Was it one for everyone on the streets? Or was there more X can go, but Y can't go? Well, the Saturnalia certainly is one widely celebrated. And I think the reason why this might be relevant to our purposes is because the Saturnalia is famously a topsy-turvy time when slaves can talk back to their masters. And everyone is wearing this cap, this pilius, so you can't really see who is who. There is a day where gifts are given. So this is widely celebrated both in public and in private. gifts are given. So this is widely celebrated both in public and in private. And because there is this role reversal associated with the festival, that means that it becomes less elite and more vernacular. Ian, for these people who you mentioned that you normally have these elite figures who are

shall we say sponsoring or hosting these public parties, whether it's someone like Julius Caesar in the Republican period or an emperor in the imperial period, does it emphasize that sometimes this public dining, these public parties, was there a social purpose or a social function for them via the emperor, as it were? We could say that because you might be thinking of Juvenal's famous line about bread and circuses. And that means that certainly these sponsors would be popular for their efforts. But again, we shouldn't overestimate this, the provision of party food, as opposed to the provision of food itself.

We need to remember that we're not talking about garden parties or street parties, but juvenile is really talking about brain supply. And it's more basic than that. And Ian, as we wrap up now, we've been talking about all these various aspects of Roman food, dining parties. Why, in your opinion, do you think, first of all, why is it so fascinating to look at, to study? But also, why do you think again and again today in the modern world, whether it's through TV, whether it's through films, whether it's through popular articles and the like, why do you think we keep coming back? We always love looking at ancient Rome through this idea of the luxurious decadent banquets, the luxurious decadent party, and so on. Firstly, people like a party. And that's a way in which we can see commonalities between our time and Roman times. On food, more generally, this is part of the valorization of the Italian diet

and the Mediterranean diet, if you want to talk about that, but also remains, say, from Pompeii or mosaics at the floor with the discards I was talking about, one of which is in the Vatican museums. These are very tangible markers that we can observe. The famous bread that was preserved from Pompeii, that's something we can understand. And similarly with taverns, and not just with dining, with looking at taverns and not just with dining, with looking at taverns and where people might have gone to get a quick bite or to do their drinking, that again is something we can comprehend because of that shared culture.

So in a sense, those two points are much the same. The third point though is that because this feeds so directly into the moralising idea, when we in a naivety think about what might have made Rome great, this very difficult question of Roman civilization, what did the Romans ever do for us? This is so intimately tied with not just politics or questions of identity, but also with ideas of rise and fall. And so when we think about parties and decadence and becoming soft because you're drunk all the time, or because you're busy

wondering where you're going to get your peacock from, that is so resonant an idea and is so intimately tied with the tenor of our sources, which are themselves chastising such behaviour. That's what makes it such a good story. Brilliant. Ian, thank you so much for taking the time to come on the podcast today. Not at all. Thank you so much for having me.