Rome wouldn’t be Rome without living up to its image of gaudy excess now, would it? What could be more Roman that lounging around at some horrendous banquet, stuffing one’s face like a fucking pig and treating slaves like shit? Immediately one thinks of the famous Roman novel ‘Satyricon’ by Petronius. Very little of the work exists but one of the most famous passages covers a dinner given by an extravagantly rich freedman called Trimalchio. His lowly birth (as a slave from Asia) betrays his gaudy excess and uncouth ways but also shows how slaves could become fantastically influential (and forget their origins and behave towards their former peers as an absolute bastard). The scorn of the ‘nouveaux-riche’ is evident in the work, and it must also be understood that there is exaggeration for comic effect here (it was called the ‘Satyricon’, after all). Petronius is making the characters of the story, and their actions, grotesque not only for laughs, but to make a point about how ridiculous the whole situation is. But it can also give a suggestion of just how absolutely bonkers it might have been like to have been at a Roman feast.
The narrator, Encolpius, arrives at Trimalchio’s lavish villa for a feast with his companions:
“At length we took our places and Egyptian slaves poured iced water on our hands and other attendants for the feet came in and pared our toenails carefully. Even during this unpleasant duty, they sang the whole time”
Intrigued, Encolpius calls for a drink and a slave supplied it ‘at once, singing every bit as shrilly...that you would have thought it a theatrical performance rather than a dining room..”
Soon the appetizers are served, and everyone takes their places at the table, with Trimalchio still absent but his seat reserved “as is the custom”.
They are served a tray of relishes on which stands an ass (a donkey, of course - stop sniggering at the back) made of Corinthian bronze, with two panniers containing white and black olives. It’s flanked by two large sliver dishes that, brazenly, have the hallmark of the weight of silver broadly displayed on the side alongside the name of Trimalchio himself. On the dishes are two silver bridges laden with dormice ‘sprinkled with honey and poppyseed’. There are also smoked sausages served on a silver gridiron with damsons and pomegranates.
Soon, Trimalchio himself is borne into the dining room on a litter by his slaves ‘plumped up on tiny pillows’ to the extent that people snort with laughter at the ridiculous sight. He is wearing a scarlet mantle through which he “..has poked his shaven pate..and wrapped his neck, already well covered with clothes, in a napkin with a broad purple stripe and fringes all around.”
On the little finger of his left hand, he has a ‘gilded’ ring and on the next finger he has an iron ring “picked out with star-like designs to suggest gold” but is iron. Here, Trimalchio is trying to suggest he is of ‘equestrian’ rank as they wore such rings made of pure gold, but as a freedman he can never achieve such ranks.
Picking his teeth with a silver dagger, he announces that he is sorry for being late and asks his guests if they would allow him to finish the game of draughts that had delayed him. A slave brings in a draught board made of crystal and juniper wood with the pieces made of gold and silver coins. As he plays, he uses, literally ‘weaver’s talk’; coarse words that betray his lowly birth.
As he plays, the next course is served. A silver tray weaved like a basket containing a wooden hen nesting on her eggs. A band plays a loud fanfare, and the guests are invited to rummage for the eggs. Once everyone has an egg, they are given silver spoons “weighing at least half a pound each” to break the eggs which are actually made of pastry.
Encolpius is horrified to find what he thinks is a chick fetus inside and nearly throws it away only to be told that it is a baked ‘beccafico’ [a European Garden Warbler] served with pepper inside a yolk.
Suddenly Trimalchio finishes his game, orders more mead and in a flurry of trumpets and activity a slave drops a tray. Trimalchio orders the slave punished. In rush two ‘hairy Ethiopian slaves’ carrying wineskins “like those used to sprinkle the sand in the arena” [saffron was sprinkled in arenas to perfume the air] and they poured wine over the hands of the diners “for nobody offered so much as water”
Edible dormice and European Garden Warblers are still delicacies in parts of Europe to this day. Because some fucking people can’t just leave the fucking wildlife alone.
Sorry about the weaver’s talk at the end there.
(Petronius, Satyricon, xxxi. 3-xxxiv.4)