Status was everything in Roman society and dinner parties and banquets gave a wealthy
man an opportunity to display his collection of silver and glassware and to boast of the
skills of his cook.
• A good cook ‘cost the price of a
horse ... though he was still only
worth a third as much as an
expensive fish’.
• An influential slave within the
household was the vocator, who
sent out the invitations and
arranged the seating.
• Women, joined their husbands at
dinner parties. Couches, as we
have seen, held three people each,
but the seating was not ad hoc – it
followed a strict etiquette. If any
guest was unhappy with his
placement, the master could
always blame the vocator.
• The diners, wearing fine white
togas, reclined facing a low table,
supporting their left elbow on a
cushion.
• As the Romans did not use forks – although knives and spoons were used occasionally – a
slave known as the scissor cut up the food before the male food servers (ministri) placed
it on the table.
• Guests held a plate in their left hand and ate with their right. Young, handsome male wine
waiters, one to each guest, kept the wine flowing during the meal, according to etiquette.
• Evidence from the black painted walls of the winter dining room of the House of the
Moralist suggests there may have been a code of behaviour expected by some of the more
refined hosts at these banquets.
Don’t cast lustful glances, or make eyes at another man’s wife. Don’t be coarse in
conversation. Restrain yourself from getting angry or using offensive language. If you
can’t, go back to your own house.
Apart from conversation, these dinner parties were enlivened by a variety of
entertainment provided sometimes by the guests themselves – called upon for a poetry
recitation or song – and by household and professional entertainers: readers, dancers,
acrobats, jugglers, actors and poets.
• After-dinner drinking was often heavy and dinner parties could last well into the evening,
so that the return home in the pitch dark could be full of dangers. Those who did not want
to run the risk of having an accident or an unpleasant encounter with other revellers and
drunks who had stayed late at the taverns ‘would be accompanied by a servant with a
torch.