In any case it is more than a little naïve to read the text simply as a practical cookbook, since its nominal author was himself a figure of some notoriety. According to a version of events circulating in the first century AD, Apicius supposedly ate his way through a vast fortune before finding himself down to his last ten million sesterces: still a healthy bank balance, but not enough for this gourmand, who took poison rather than live on a limited budget. To the satirist Juvenal (c.AD 55–c. 127) his name was mud. Christians were still more prejudiced: to the Church father Tertullian (c.AD 155–C.220) Apicius’ greed was legendary, contributing an adjective of his own for his trademark seasonings; to Sidonius (c.430–c.490), ‘Apician’ was another word for ‘glutton’. The notoriously debauched and luxurious Emperor Elagabalus (ruled AD 218–222) is recorded as having had a high regard for his works, a detail the author of the Augustan History slipped in as mutually revealing, and damning. There was in short nothing neutral about Apicius; his name carried none of the comforting, homely associations of an Elizabeth David or a Delia Smith. In any case, the contents of the cookbook that bears his name were of practical interest only to a relatively narrow segment of Roman society. Most of the population of the empire lived at or not far above the level of subsistence, and on the grounds of cost alone Apicius’ more celebrated recipes—boiled, spiced flamingo, for instance – were out of their reach.
Which was, in all likelihood, precisely the point. For like the flamingo, spices were an expensive taste. Only pepper was reasonably available to a sizeable part of the population, and even pepper, as we have seen, carried an air of exclusivity. In his Natural History Pliny gives a list of spice prices that were probably fixed by the state. Black pepper was the cheapest at four denarii the pound, white pepper nearly double that at seven. A pound of ginger cost six denarii, the same quantity of cassia anything from five to fifty. By far the most expensive were various grades of cinnamon oil, in mixed form ranging from thirty-five to three hundred denarii the pound, in its pure form a whopping 1,000 to 1,500. At this time a citizen soldier earned a wage of 225 denarii per annum, and a little later a free day-labourer could earn about two denarii per diem. In the days of the early empire a pound of black pepper, the cheapest and most available spice, would buy forty pounds of wheat, representing in the order of a few days’ wages for a member of the ‘working class’. A pound of the finest cinnamon oil would cost a centurion up to six years’ work.
They at least would not have been pouring on the spice with a heavy hand. And even for those with the money, there is plenty of evidence that Romans knew when their food was over-spiced. The irony of the now traditional images of Roman food as an exercise in baroque excess is that they were in large part the product not of Rome’s enthusiasm for bingeing but its reticence, the credit for which is due to Christian polemicists, who were virtually obliged to portray Rome as a vast, gluttonous sink – culinary history, like any other form of history, is written by the winners. But in fact a great deal of Roman writing on food is couched in the sort of language we might associate more with Zen minimalism than with a Lucullan banquet. In his eleventh Satire Juvenal lays out the criteria of the morally blameless meal: modest, rustic and home-grown, it will not break the bank. The service is simple and unaffected, without any indecent floorshows. A bracing reading of epic poetry is entertainment enough. One of the letters of Pliny the Younger reproaches his friend Septicius Clarus, who repeatedly scorned invitations to simple meals of lettuce, snails and wheatcakes chez Pliny for the flashy delights of oysters, sows’ innards, sea-urchins and Spanish dancing girls (can we blame him?). In Pliny’s opinion the ideal meal should be ‘as elegant as it is frugal’.
In this respect Pliny was far from alone – particularly, it would seem, on the subject of seasonings and spices. The comedies of Plautus (c.254–184 BC) and Terence (c.105–c.159 BC) are sprinkled with references to seasonings (condimenta), one of their stock characters the boastful cook who can reel off all the exotic flavours at his disposal: Cilician saffron, Egyptian coriander, Ethiopian cumin and, most tempting of all, silphium of Cyrene. This North African aromatic, ultimately harvested to extinction, turned Roman gourmets weak at the knees.* There was even a musical comedy on the topic. And when the seasonings were overdone the Romans were capable of expressing themselves with a forcefulness that makes even the most hostile restaurant review seem a model of restraint. In Plautus’ Pseudolus, first produced in 191 BC, a pimp by the name of Ballio goes to hire a cook from the ‘Cooks’ Forum’ (or ‘crooks’ forum’, as the tight-fisted Ballio calls it). Through his preening chef, Plautus has fun at the expense of all the trendy cooks who employ all the latest spices and ‘celestial seasonings’, the names of which are pure fantasy: cepolendrum, maccidem, secaptidem, cicamalindrum, hapalocopide, cataractria. The names of some of these mock Greco-Latin pastiches are vaguely menacing: secaptidem, for instance, sounds like something that cuts or slashes through you (from secare, to cut or sever), and the unappetising cataractria evokes a waterfall, a portcullis, a sluice, or a type of seabird. For such mockery of novelty for novelty’s sake to get a laugh the culinary scene must have been reasonably diverse and sophisticated. (The inflated language of Plautus’ cook often comes to mind when I’m looking over the menu of a fashionable new restaurant.) Trying to justify his high fee, the cook declares of his rivals that ‘They don’t season with condiments, but with screech-owls, that devour the guests’ innards alive.’
Which is not the sort of language one would expect of a culture accustomed to drowning out its flavours with overpowering, palate-stripping seasonings. And in fact there is a perfectly reasonable explanation for Rome’s apparent addiction to spices, one that has more to do with the social than the strictly practical purpose of cookery. In Rome no more than in any other developed culture can one explain habits of cooking merely in terms of function, any more than other fashions such as dress or language can be accounted for in such narrowly utilitarian terms. Historically, people have eaten spices not simply because they taste good, but also, and sometimes more importantly, because they look good. ‘Tell me what you eat and I will tell you what you are,’ wrote Brillat-Savarin. For most of their history spices spoke unequivocally of taste, distinction and wealth.
For a wealthy Roman the dinner table (technically, the couch, the dining table being a medieval innovation) was one of the most effective stages on which he could display his sophistication and generosity. Public or semi-public events such as the banquet offered the perfect opportunity for flaunting them, where the cost and flamboyance of a dish were a proclamation of opulence and liberality. At his banquets the emperor Elagabalus mixed together jewels, apples and flowers, tossing as much food out of the window as was served to his guests. He ‘loved to hear the prices of the food served at his table exaggerated, claiming it was an appetiser for the banquet’. He fed foie gras to his dogs, served truffles in place of pepper, ground pearls on the fish and dished up gold-encrusted peas.
Elagabalus was an extreme and indeed a pathological case, yet his appetites exemplified an ingrained tendency of Roman society. Romans of a certain class generally took an uncomplicated attitude to the relationship between wealth and happiness, an ethos well summarised by Apuleius: ‘Truly blessed – doubly blessed! – are those that trample gems and jewellery underfoot.’ A single adjective, beatus, sufficed for both wealth and happiness. To those inclined to agree, display at the table was nothing less than a social imperative. Only the poor or miserly patron stinted in his hospitality, at the expense of influence and regard, whether in his own eyes or the client’s. Juvenal’s fifth satire is addressed to the contemptible client who accepts second-rate hospitality and a miserly meal of fish bloated on Tiber sewage, ‘like some public buffoon’. Even the host’s satirically sentient lobster disdains such ignoble guests.
For those keen to avoid such a fate, whether a host out to impress or a client on the receiving end, spices were a godsend. They were expensive and exotic, not far behind the gems Elagabalus tossed from his window. Elagabalus himself perfumed his swimming pool with spices. They were the ideal accoutrements of the flashy gourmands who, in Juvenal’s words,