This is from 'Handbook to Life in Ancient Rome' by Leslie Adkins and Roy A. Adkins, © 1994, Oxford Univerisity Press 1998, ISBN 0-19-512332-8:<br>
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"The Romans often sat upright to eat their meals, but the wealthy reclined on couches, particularly at dinner parties, and often dined outdoors in their private gardens when the weather was fine. A variety of cooking vessels was used, largley in course pottery and bronze. For the poorer classes, tableware probably consisted of coarse pottery, but there was aslo available a range of vessels in fine pottery, glass, bronze, silver, gold and pewter. Food was eaten with the fingers, cut up by knives with iron blades and handles of bone, antler, wood or bronze. Bronze, silver and bone spoons are also known, for eating liquids and eggs, and their pointed handles were used for extricating shellfish or snails from their shells."<br>
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In Jerome Carcopino's 'Daily Life in Ancient Rome' first published in 1941 he goes into some detail in describing what a dinner party of the wealthy might be like. I will quote only a small portion of it. A couple of things here were already mentioned by anaten in a less graphic manner.<br>
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"An usher announced the guests and showed them to their couch and place Several waiters brought in the dishes and the bowls and placed them on the tables. Since the time of Domitian it had been the fashion to cover the table with a cloth; before this it had been the custom merely to wipe the marble or wooden table top after each course. The guests were proveded with knives and toothpicks and spoons of various shapes: the ladle or trulla; the ligual, holding rather more than a centilitre; and a little pointed spoon or cocleare with which eggs and shell-fish were eaten. The Romans knew no more of forks than the Arabs of today or the Europeans at the baginning of modern times. They ate with their fingers, and this entailed frequent hand washings--before the meal began, and after each course. Slaves went round the couches with ewers and poured fresh perfumed water over the diners' hands, wiping them with the towel they carried over their arm. Each guest was provided with a napkin for his personal use, which he spread in front of him so as not to stain the covering of the couch. A man had no hesitation in bringing his own napkin with him, for good manners permitted him to carry it away filled with titbits which he had not had time to consume."<br>
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A couple of pages on:<br>
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"As among the Arabs still, belching was considered a politeness, justified by philosophers who thought the highest wisdom was to follow the dictates of nature. Pushing this doctrine even further, Claudius had considered an edict authorizing other emissions of wind from which even Arabs refrain, and the doctors of Martial's day recommended that people take advantage of the liberties championed by a well-meaning but ridiculous emperor. Music of this kind was not wanting at Trimalchio's table. After explaining his own state of health--'I have such rumblings inside of me you would think there was a bull there'--he adjured his guests not to risk injury to their health by self-restraint: 'As far as I am concerned anyone may relieve himself in the dining-room. Even Trimalchio had the good taste to quit his couch and leave the triclinium when pressed by more urgent need. But not all Roman parvenus were so scrupulous. Martial tells of more than one who simply clicked his fingers for a slave to bring him 'a necessary vase' into which he 'remeasured with accuracy the wine he had drunk from it', while the slave 'guides his boozy master's drunken person'. Finally it was not infrequent during the cena to see priceless marble mosaics of the floor defiled with spitting. The best way, in fact, to make sure of being able to eat throughout the incredible carousal was to make use of the small room next door: 'vomunt ut edant, edunt ut vomant'."<br>
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Ewww!!!<br>
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Carcopino's book is really very interesting. He has made extensive use of ancient sources with pages of footnotes at the end. But I would like to quote the last paragraph in this chapter and in fact the book, which will give a pretty clear picture of his perspective and maybe help the reader decide how seriously you want to take all this:<br>
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"The pictures of Petronius, the Epigrams of Martial, the Satires of Juvenal only too clearly impress upon us all the sordid and depraved side of Roman life. But now, alongside this, we see a certain nobility in the everyday conduct of the best people in Rome that commands our admiration: in the daily life of the humble citizen and the plebeian, in the modesty of Trajan's court, in the frugality of the meals to which Pliny the Younger and the poets invited their friends, in the good-humoured cenae where the faithful of Antinous and Diana crowded fraternally round their tables; and above all in the serene 'agapes' where the Christians lifted up thier hearts in the joy of knowing the divine presence in their midst."<br>
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I'm afraid that last bit makes me cringe.<br>
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I imagine that the everyday meals of most Romans were less disgusting affairs. I think it's fair to conclude that fingers were used and forks were not. As for belching at the dinner table, it seems entirely probable to me. After all, there are a lot of MEN today who find it quite acceptable despite dirty looks from their wives and mothers!<br>
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Wendy<br>
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