Concern About Overdoing It at Roman Meals: In the U.S. today, the government issues dietary guidelines, with an ever-increasing number of fruits to be added to the meal plan. During the Roman Republic, the government's concern wasn't so much an ever-expanding waistline or other health issues. There were Sumtuariae Leges ('sumptuary laws') designed to limit extravagance, including the amount spent on a given meal, which directly impacted how much wealthy Romans could eat at their meals. By the Imperial period such laws were no longer in force. Regardless of sumptuary laws, the poor would eat mostly cereal grain as porridge or bread at all meals.
How We Know About Roman Meals: Food, like the weather, seems to be a universal topic of conversation, endlessly fascinating and a constant part of our lives. In addition to art and archaeology, we have information on Roman food from a variety of written sources, including a cookbook (Apicius), letters, and satire, e.g., the well-known banquet of Trimalchio from the Satyricon. Some of this might lead one to believe the Romans lived to eat or followed the motto eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow you may die, but most Romans couldn't eat like that ever, and even most rich Romans would have eaten more modestly.
Roman Breakfast and Lunch Meals: For those who could afford it, breakfast (jentaculum), eaten very early, would consist of salted bread, milk or wine, and perhaps dried fruit, eggs or cheese. It was not always eaten. Lunch (cibus meridianus or prandium), a quick meal, eaten around noon could include salted bread or be more elaborate with fruit, salad, eggs, meat or fish, vegetable, and cheese.
Roman Dinner Meal : Dinner (cena), the main meal of the day, would be accompanied by wine, usually well-watered. Horace ate a meal of onions, porridge, and pancake. An ordinary upper class dinner would include meat, vegetable, egg, and fruit. Comissatio was a final wine course at dinner's end.
Courses - From Eggs to Apple at the Dinner Meal: Just as today the salad course may appear in different parts of the meal, so in ancient Rome the lettuce and the egg courses could be served first as the appetizer (gustatio or promulsis or antecoena) or later. Not all eggs were hens' eggs -- they could be smaller or sometimes larger, but they were a standard part of the Roman dinner. The list of possible items for the gustatio is long. It includes exotic items like sea urchins, raw oysters, and mussels. Apples when in season were a popular dessert (bellaria) item. Other dessert items were figs, dates, nuts, pears, grapes, cakes, cheese, and honey.
Names of the Meals: The names of meals change over time and in various locations. In the U.S. dinner, lunch, and supper have meant different meals to different groups. The supper meal in the evening was known as vesperna in early Rome. The main meal of the day was known as the cena in the country and in early times in the city. Cena was eaten around midday and was followed by the lighter supper meal. Over time in the city, the heavy meal was pushed later and later, and so the vesperna was omitted. Instead a light lunch or prandium was introduced between jentaculum and cena. The cena was eaten around sunset.
Source: Adkins and Adkins.
Source: Adkins and Adkins.
Roman Diners: It is believed that during the Republic most women and the poor ate sitting on chairs, while upper class males reclined on their sides on couches along three sides of a cloth-covered table (mensa). The 3-sided arrangement is called the triclinium. Banquets might last for hours, eating and watching or listening to entertainers, so being able to stretch out without shoes, and relax must have enhanced the experience. Since there were no forks, diners would not have had to worry about coordinating eating utensils in each hand.
Sources: "Some Roman Dinner Tables," by E. Marion Smith. The Classical Journal, Vol. 50, No. 6. (Mar., 1955), pp. 255-260.
"Roman Dinners and Diners," by Winnie D. Lowrance. The Classical Journal, Vol. 35, No. 2. (Nov., 1939), pp. 86-91.
Adkins, Lesley and Roy A. Adkins, Handbook to Life in Ancient Rome. Oxford Univerity Press. 1994.
