Food, recipes and empire in Mid-Republican Rome

Abstract

Posts on Facebook and Instagram hit us with images of extravagant dishes and recipes of all sorts, all the time. Some include familiar foods, others feature exotic ingredients. As in the past so too today, food is not just about nourishment, it is about identity, about who we are, what we believe and how we relate to others. In the ancient world things were not much different; the Greeks and the Romans had a very lively culinary culture, and just like today the choice of food sent strong political and cultural messages. This afternoon I will focus on the food culture of the Romans in the mid second century BCE, that is, when the Romans stopped relating to the Greeks as one of the many peoples that lived in Italy and began to encroach upon their world as conquerors.