The ancient history blog by N. S. Gill at About.com is in my RSS reader, so I see the posts there. For some time I have noticed that the posts have begun to be very useful indeed, and, better yet, well-referenced! That is such an improvement on the posts that I saw in former times. It may be, if you have got into the habit of skipping the posts there, that you might wish to revisit the site.
Today’s post is What did the Romans eat? If you can avoid the adverts embedded on all sides, it actually is a splendid piece of work. It consists of a series of references to ancient food writers, with a summary of what they have to say, and even links to online versions of the text. It positively shoves the reader at the data. And this, of course, is what every classical blogger should seek to do; to breed in his readers the habit of asking to see the raw data for any statement made.
The article is very short, of course — they all are. The secondary reference at the end will be sound, I have no doubt.
Some of the authors referenced are not online. Galen, inevitably, is not. Apicius is online in Latin, but no link is given to an English version, although I find that the excellent Bill Thayer has tracked one down and placed it online here. There is no facility to add comments to the post at About.com, or I would have linked it there too.
I don’t know that many of us would write an article on Roman food. Well done, N.S.Gill, for doing so.
Excellent find! I was looking for such 1st century information.
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I have Apicius at home, incl. a translation and a rough approximation with regard to modern units of measurement. Even tried a meal once. Not bad. 🙂