Between harvest in Malabar and consumption in Rome, the pepper had come a distance, as the crow flies, of well over 5,000 miles; considerably more once the twists of the long and winding journey are taken into account, down around the great dogleg of Arabia, shipped and reshipped from buffalo to barge and ship to caravan. This was, by some distance, the longest trade route of the ancient world. Yet in Rome itself only the faintest of traces remain of the heroic efforts that went into getting the pepper from harvest to consumption. In the time of the emperor Trajan (AD 98–117) spices, collectively known as the pipera, or peppers, were sold in a market built into the flank of the Quirinal Hill, of which several walls and arches are still standing. Until the end of the Middle Ages the memory of the spices once sold here endured in the name of the ancient road still visible from the Via di iv Novembre, like many other ancient names corrupted via the medium of medieval Latin but easily recognisable as the Via Biberatica. Further along the Forum are the remains of the horrea piperataria, the spice stores constructed by the emperor Domitian in AD 92. By Domitian’s day the inflow of Eastern spices had become so great that a new store was needed over an older and by now inadequate portico dating from the reign of Nero (AD 54–68). Here Rome’s pepper and other spices were kept in a convenient central location, right in the heart of the ancient city. Two thousand years on and the assiduous visitor can still see the remains of Domitian’s pepper warehouse, now no more than a few crumbling, shin-high walls and unimpressive piles of rubble, disappearing beneath the sprawling ruin of the Basilica of Constantine. They are, frankly, not much to look at, yet if there were such a thing, they would merit a mark on the culinary map of Europe. For the ruins of the horrea represent a beginning of sorts, as the oldest visible reminder of the serious advent of Eastern spices in European cuisine, the beach-head from which spices went on to conquer the palates of the Western world.
In the centuries that followed the construction of the spice stores, Rome’s energies waxed and waned, the empire contracted, was overrun by barbarians and finally collapsed. The volume of traffic and consumption that fuelled the trans-oceanic spice trade would not be seen again for over a thousand years. Yet both the taste and the traffic endured. When Rome faltered the Arabs took over, and the Indian Ocean became a Muslim lake, home to the seaborne civilisation that gave rise to the tales of Sinbad and his voyages to the magical realms of spice, giant birds and monsters, genii and gold. Spices were acquiring the romantic, glamorous freight they have carried down to the present day. And although the flow of spices into Europe slowed to a trickle and at times all but disappeared, it was never quite halted. The pepper left behind in Germany by a Roman soldier is the first faint spoor of an ancient tradition, perhaps the oldest continuous link between Asia and Europe and one that has survived, battered but intact, ever since.
Of Spiced Parrot and Stuffed Dormice
Long-life spiced honey wine, given to people on a journey: put ground pepper with skimmed honey in a small container for spiced wine, and when it is the time for drinking, mix some of the honey with the wine. It is suggested to add a little wine to the honey mixture, so the honey flows more freely.
Apicius (first century AD). De Re Coquinaria
The vast wealth and reach Rome acquired in the first century BC transformed the classical idea of spices, and the uses to which they were put. Though even in Roman times cuisine was only one of the many uses of spice – and not always the most important – one result of the direct trade with India was that costs plummeted, with the result that spices entered the diet more frequently. A revolution in the way spices were used and viewed was underway.
The first world empire, Rome also boasted the first global cuisine. By the time of Pliny the Elder (AD 23–79), Rome’s cosmopolitan tastes had reached such a pitch that he talks of the flavours of Egypt, Crete, Cyrene and India appearing in Roman kitchens. There were dissenters: Plutarch (AD 46–c. 119) writes that even in his day there were some who had not acquired the taste, but they were, apparently, a minority. Pepper in particular was widely used, with contemporary literary sources taking familiarity with the spice for granted. A schoolboy’s textbook featured a talking pig by the name of M. Grunnius (‘Grunter’) Corocotta, who obligingly asks to be well cooked with pepper, nuts and honey. Archaeology reinforces the impression of a widespread taste. Silver pepperpots (piperatoria) dating from the early imperial period onward have been found practically all over the Roman world, at Pompeii, to the south in Corfinium and Murmuro in Sicily, at Nicolaevo in Bulgaria, at Cahors, Arles-Trinquetaille and Saint-Maur-de-Glanfeuil in France.
Neither the silverware nor its contents were for everyone, as numerous literary references make clear. In the Golden Ass of Apuleius, the scabrous tale of the hero Lucius’ transformation and adventures from human to ass and back again, pepper is referred to as a ‘choice delicacy’, fit for a banquet. While still in asinine form, Lucius amazes his owners by eschewing hay and tucking into the sort of food an ass would be least likely to eat, namely meats seasoned with laser (another costly seasoning), fish cooked in some exotic sauce and fattened birds in pepper. The epigrammatist Marcus Valerius Martialis, generally known simply as Martial (c.AD 38–103), writes of pepper in a quintessentially aristocratic pairing of wild boar, generous Falernian – the most prized and expensive vintage of the Romans – and ‘mysterious garum’, a highly esteemed fish sauce. Martial balks at the expense, complaining that his cook has used up a ‘huge mound of pepper’. ‘I have a more modest hunger,’ complains the penniless poet.
For the more solvent, pepper’s air of exclusivity made the spice an ideal gift. It was customary to distribute pepper at the great midwinter festival of the Saturnalia – a ritual not unlike Christmas gift-giving, whereby favours could be curried, debts acknowledged and generosity displayed.* Martial writes of an influential Sabine lawyer’s largesse: three half-pounds of incense and pepper along with hampers from all over the Mediterranean filled with Libyan figs and Tuscan sausages. One Saturnalia Martial himself received some pepper, although this was a lesser gift than he had hoped for. A stingy patron’s generosity has dried up:
You used to send me a pound of silver; now it’s down to half a pound, But of pepper. Sextus: my pepper doesn’t cost me quite so much.
And yet the pepper was no trifle: if the spice was widespread this did not make it commonplace. In a satire addressed to an indolent student, Persius (AD 34–62) writes of pepper belonging in a ‘wealthy larder’, along with hams, gifts from fat Umbrians and tokens of gratitude from clients – in other words, not the sort of thing a poor scholar ought to be feeding himself, such as lentil soup and porridge. Martial implies that what was out of a labourer’s reach fell within the budget of the cook-employing classes:
So that bland beets, a workman’s lunch, actually taste of something, How often the cook turns to wine and pepper!
Elsewhere, he advised pepper served with figpecker, a small bird esteemed by the Roman gourmet:
When by chance a shining, waxy, broad-loined figpecker comes your way,
If you have any taste, add pepper.
Martial reserved a special bile for stinginess, a failing for which he lambasts a certain Lupus, whose gift of a ‘farm’ amounted to less than a window-box ‘that an ant could eat in a single day’:
In which you might find no vegetable
Other than Cosmus’s leaf and uncooked pepper,
Where you couldn’t