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The philosopher Seneca the Younger (died 65 C.E.) gives us the sounds of the busy street just outside his apartment window: "pancakesellers and a sausage-vendor and a confectioner and all the proprietors of cookshops selling their wares, each in his distinctive accent" (Letters to Lucilius, 56).

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It was said that Roman women once sat demurely at the feet of their husbands' dining couches, but by imperial times the women also reclined. It was said, too, that in the old days women did not drink wine, and that the kiss a Roman husband gave his wife when returning home was a way of assuring himself that this rule had been kept.

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Thesis: The Roman empire had some interesting and crazy foods to offer, but most of the time, people had to eat differently or not at all.

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Similar gifts were given to dependents not lucky enough to be invited to a real dinner. Martial (c. 100 C.E.) wrote a collection of short poems intended to accompany such gifts. They are the most obvious sign that hospitality helped to articulate the patron/client relations that permeated Roman society.

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The main courses were accompanied by bread and wine. Diners ate with their hands, with the occasional help of a knife.

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City dwellers in imperial Rome, many of whom lived in apartment blocks, had little opportunity to cook: cooking required an open fire, often an unacceptable risk.

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Barley, although widely considered a respectable, even desirable, staple food in ancient Greece and Italy, was viewed by Roman soldiers as punishment rations.

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Roman bakers baked leavened bread, both white and wholemeal. Small-scale baking required a dome-shaped baking-crock (testum and clibanus). Archeologists often find fragments of these. A commercial bakery, complete with fossilized loaves, has been excavated at Pompeii.

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Rome's status as an overgrown city-state was signaled in one of the special privileges enjoyed by inhabitants of the city: the free bread ration. Interruptions in the wheat supply led to riots.

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Poetry and literary prose give a different perspective on food from that of the technical texts.

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This work focuses on the two great cash crops of Italy—wine and olive oil—and also includes recipes for cakes and flavored and medicinal wines suitable for farmhouse production.

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Only foods that were dried, pickled, or salted, and only special wines.

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Ancient texts form one of the source materials for reconstructing Roman food behavior. These texts include scientific and technical writings (such as the earliest surviving recipe book, Apicius, probably compiled in the fourth century C.E.) as well as lively depictions of food, wine, and banquets in classical Latin prose and poetry.