Cool article!
“You need to prepare for pig. Archaeologists studying the eating habits of ancient Etruscans and Romans have found that pork was the staple of Italian cuisine before and during the Roman Empire.”
Makes sense. Pigs have always been very efficient livestock in terms of feed and land. It was not uncommon in Medieval times to simply turn them loose in forests and what not. The pig will find his dinner. Plus, they taste really good spit-roasted, LOL.
“One legend is true, MacKinnon said: Vomitoriums. There might be so much food at Piso’s table, and everyone would want to indulge. To make room, they would excuse themselves from the table and purge.”
Slightly disagree here. Purging did happen at some of the super fancy meals of the very wealthy (regular citizens and slaves probably not so much), but the vomitorium structure itself wasn’t a designated upchuck station. It was a large hallway/passage in public arenas, designed to allow crowds to exit quickly. Kind of like a main gate at a football stadium or what not.
It was pretty disappointed to find out that vomitoriums were just hallways and not facilities for purging. All these colorful images of Roman barf-o-ramas dashed.