DINING IN POMPEII AND HERCULANEUM By Liv William

DINING IN POMPEII AND HERCULANEUM By Liv William and Liliana Baum

DINING Dining in ancient Pompeii and Herculaneum was an important social aspect of their everyday lives, people ate in groups with their family or friends. Many sources suggest that dinner was the most significant meal of the day. It often began at 4: 00 pm and continued into the later hours of the evening. Food was often prepared in the home, some ingredients were purchased but some houses even grew their own produce meaning they had little reliance on the hinterlands and were quite self efficient. The amount of courses within a meal was primarily dependant on wealth and class, wealthier families tended to have up to 3 course meals whilst lower socio economic families had smaller meals consisting of just one course.

DINING Wealthier families would dine on expensive, exotic meals such as giraffe, however lower class families still did tend to have quite healthy and extensive diets as the ports nearby provided an abundance of fresh seafood. This can be seen in the remains of food scraps found in the drains of Pompeii. Food scraps found in drains have also revealed that the commoners of Pompeii ate lentils, olives, nuts, and fish as well as the occasional piece of salted meat. This evidence overrules the old assumptions that the poor of Pompeii and Herculaneum ate poor, limited diets.

DINING It was also custom within ancient society in Pompeii and Herculaneum that they would eat in groups segregated by gender. The men ate first and then afterwards the women ate, this paralleled other aspects of their social lives where men often performed activities prior to women. The dining room was called the ‘triclinium’ due to the fact that it often had 3 (tri) couchtype structures to lounge upon. As well as the three lounges the dining room also often had elaborate decorations, accommodating for the guests that frequently attended banquets in this room. Slaves served food to those families whom were rich enough to own them, the slaves often served meals in a buffet manner, normally with three different size plates, the larger plate resembled a platter and held large meals such as fish or meat. The medium sized plates served smaller meals such as lentil dishes and lastly the smaller dishes served small horderves such as olives.

HOUSE OF THE MORALIST – POMPEII In the House of the Moralist, located in Pompeii, there is an inscription in the dining room above the doors which reads; “Remove lascivious expressions and flirtatious fawning eyes from another man’s wife; may there be decency in your expression. … put off to another time your troublesome quarrels if you can, or leave and take them with you to your own house. ” From this inscription we can infer that social dining was an important aspect and banquets were held regularly if they went to the effort of inscribing this in their house. It could be derived that etiquette was also an important aspect of dining in ancient Pompeii and Herculaneum, dining was formal and eloquent.

GRANDE TABERNA – HERCULANEUM The Grande Taberna was one of Herculaneum’s Thermopolia, which was an ancient fast food outlet. The ceramic bowls seen in the image below demonstrate where the food would have been placed. As Herculaneum was more of a tourist destination than Pompeii, it is a possibility that the food would have been more extravagant and expensive to appeal to the tourist which assembly had a fair amount of money.