[from January 3, 2014] Giraffe Was on Menu in Pompeii Restaurants

Discovery News ^ | January 3, 2014 | Rossella Lorenzi

[SunkenCiv]

Giraffe was on the menu in Pompeii's standard restaurants, says a new research into a non-elite section of the ancient Roman city buried by Mount Vesuvius' eruption in 79 A.D.

The study, which will be presented on Jan. 4 at the Archaeological Institute of America and American Philological Association Joint Annual Meeting in Chicago, draws on a multi-year excavation in a forgotten area inside one of the busiest gates of Pompeii, the Porta Stabia.

Steven Ellis, a University of Cincinnati associate professor of classics, said his team has spent more than a decade researching the life of the middle and lower classes in Pompeii, including the foods they ate.

The excavated area covered 10 separate building plots, comprising homes and a total of 20 shop fronts, most of which served food and drink.

The researchers dug out drains as well as 10 latrines and cesspits, and analyzed residues such as excrement and food waste from kitchens.

It emerged that the poor ate rather well in Pompeii, living on a diet of inexpensive and widely available grains, fruits, nuts, olives, lentils, local fish and chicken eggs. But they also ate more expensive meat, shellfish, sea urchin and salted fish from Spain -- not to mention delicacies such as giraffe meat.

"The traditional vision of some mass of hapless lemmings -- scrounging for whatever they can pinch from the side of a street, or huddled around a bowl of gruel -- needs to be replaced by a higher fare and standard of living, at least for the urbanites in Pompeii," Ellis said in a statement.

Waste from neighboring drains turned up variety of foods which included exotic and imported spices, some from as far away as Indonesia, revealing a socioeconomic distinction between neighbors.

[SunkenCiv]

Image: A street restaurant in Pompeii. Credit Rossella Lorenzi

[ButThreeLeftsDo]

With neck bone meat for 300 diners.

[SunkenCiv]

The sub buns must have been awe-inspiring.

[SunkenCiv]

[bramps]

I want to see the oven.

[SunkenCiv]

Gladiator [2000] scene -- Proximo Gets a Slight Return on His Investment

[aquila48]

Just got back from a visit there - it’s quite amazing how well people lived back then - they had indoor plumbing, central heating, beautiful homes with artwork and wonderful atria. And it wasn’t just one or two, but many. It just had the feel of an affluent place.

[Beowulf9]

When I read Claudius they had a feast for Caligula and brought some frozen strange animal from the ice and had it for dinner. Sounded very much like they were eating a mammoth.

In Pompeii everything was on the menu;) Frankly, I’m surprised there was no hue and cry it was God who destroyed the city with Vesuvius.

[Vendome]

I would try it.

I love the neck of a turkey but, I could nosh on that thing a few weeks...

[SunkenCiv]

:’)

[central_va]

Pompeii had a population of 11,000. I only saw a dozen or so of those huge villa town homes. That is not many affluent homes for a population that size. Most people lived in second story two room flats, granted those flats had water.

[BradyLS]

Giraffe’s good eatin’!

It’s that leafy diet of theirs!

[SunkenCiv]

foods which included exotic and imported spices, some from as far away as Indonesia

Those About To Die
Chapter XII
by Daniel P. Mannix

There were also man-sized apes called tityrus with round faces, reddish color and whiskers. Pictures of them appear on vases and they were apparently orangutans, imported from Indonesia. As far as I know, the Romans never exhibited gorillas although these biggest of all apes were known to the Phoenicians, who gave them their present name which means "hairy savage."

[SunkenCiv]

Could make a *lot* of jerky from a giraffe.

[SunkenCiv]

There’s an FR topic about that, of course. ;’)

[SunkenCiv]

;’)

[wildbill]

That was a tall order.

[SunkenCiv]

Sounds great! It was a major place to live -- at its peak the Roman Empire had something a little north of 50 million people in it, and many more were trying to live in it. At the same time India was booming, as was Han China. Life was as good or better then than it is in a lot of places today.

• The Fall and Rise and Fall of Pompeii
• romanempire

[SunkenCiv]

Paper buckets would be impractical.

[MinorityRepublican]

The Romans were ahead of the rest of the world by nearly 2,000 years.

People in New York City circa 1850 didn't live as well as Romans did around 1 A.D.