By Cecelia Visscher
Introduction
In Ancient Rome, dining was not only an important social occasion, but the Roman’s only form of purely social interaction. As a result, the dining habits of the Ancient Roman’s were especially complex, involving both subtle and undisguised symbolical customs. In early Rome, even the wealthiest of families lived frugal lives. This, however, changed in the last two centuries of the late Republic when the conquest of Greece and wars in Asia minor gave Romans a taste of Eastern luxury. From this time on, the poor and the rich no longer fared alike. The poorest continued to live frugally, constrained by poverty. Some of the very rich, on the other hand, attempting to mimic the Greeks, but lacking their refinement, became gluttons instead of gourmets. They ransacked the world for articles of food, preferring the rare and the costly to the palatable and delicate. As the gap between rich and poor grew, so did the traditions and customs of dining practices. At this point, the separate dining room (or in latin, the triclinium), the reclining couch, and dinner dress were introduced into Roman dining culture. Due to this extensive background, the dining experience became an opportunity for the Roman people to display their wealth and luxury. Almost every facet of the Roman dining experience became not only engrained with the foreknowledge of ancestral and symbolic power, but was also used in the context of that symbolic power as status symbols to manipulate social position.