[SunkenCiv]

marfis75 via flickr | http://bit.ly/1z8rHVh

[Red_Devil 232]

Yum! A pig Roasted on a spit over coals!

[null and void]

Italian food with no beans, no tomatoes, no squash, no chocolate, no vanilla, no corn, no peppers. Yeah. Just like today...

[Don Corleone]

Make sure to stick around afterward for the orgy.

[Flag_This]

"think mutton versus lamp chops"

mmmmmm....lamp chops.

[DemforBush]

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.

[Riley]

Ancient Romans ate meals most Americans would recognize

Little Caesar's?

PIZZA PIZZA!

[COBOL2Java]

Yeah, but did they have Muffulettas?

[Albion Wilde]

Several delicious varieties of Italian pork products:

Prosciutto (pro SHOOT oh; or, in the Sicilian dialect often heard in America, "pr ZHOOT")

Sopressata (soh pres SAH toe, or in Sicilian, "SZOOP eh sahdt")

Capicola (cah pee CO la; or, "gobba GOOL")

[Albion Wilde]

They had pork chops and a form of bacon. They even served sausages and prosciutto; in other words, a meal not unlike what you'd find in Rome today -- or in South Philadelphia...

Ping!

[SamAdams76]

They would probably also have clay vessels of olive oil and wine.

It is said that they had music back then but that has been lost to posterity due to the fact that we had not invented musical notation yet.

[bgill]

Because only the upper class had kitchens at home, other Romans bought food from street vendors, something like the lunch wagons of today.

Perhaps not a full fledged gourmet kitchen with a dozen cooks but even the poorest of the poor could start a fire and cook their meals. If they were buying from vendors, then that's a big reason they were poor.

Only the wealthy were able to broil or barbecue.

Finding that hard to believe, too. A stick over an open fire and there's your bbq. Bury that pig in a hole and you've got yourself another type of bbq. Last I heard a hole in the ground and a stick don't cost a thing.

[Larry Lucido]

Ever been to Lorenzo’s? Had a run-in with the Vitellio Boys there. They were named after the eighth emperor.

[Rides_A_Red_Horse]

Didn’t the wealthy often eat, vomit and eat some more?

[minnesota_bound]

Did their food have MSG or high fructose corn syrup?
Then they did not dine like we gods of Olympus.

[Kid Shelleen]

**** Philly Metro Ping ****

Serious Sandwiches: Tony Luke's Roast Pork Italian, Philadelphia

[GeronL]

I bet the peasants rarely ate meat because they were poor!

[trisham]

For 56 BC it sounds pretty amazing to me.