ia, when her ample
body had not yet succumbed to that fatty degeneration of the interior
so fatal to ever so many individuals, families, cities and nations.

We repeat, our Apicius covers Rome's healthy epoch; hence the
importance of the book. The voluptuous concoctions, the fabulous
dishes, the proverbial excesses that have made decent people shudder
with disgust throughout the ages are not known to Apicius. If they
ever existed at all in their traditional ugliness they made their
appearance after Apicius' time. We recall, Petronius, describing some
of these "stunts" is a contemporary of Nero (whom he satirizes as
"Trimalchio"). So is Seneca, noble soul, another victim of Caesarean
insanity; he, too, describes Imperial excesses. These extremely few
foolish creations are really at the bottom of the cause for this
misunderstanding of true Roman life. Such stupidity has allowed the
joy of life which, as Epikuros and Platina believe, may be indulged in
with perfect virtue and honesty to become a byword among all good
people who are not gastronomers either by birth, by choice or by
training.

With due justice to the Roman people may we be permitted to say that
proverbial excesses were exceedingly rare occurrences. The follies and
the vices of a Nero, a boy Heliogabalus, a Pollio, a Vitellius and a
few other notorious wasters are spread sporadically over a period of
at least eight hundred years. Between these cases of gastronomic
insanity lie wellnigh a thousand years of everyday grind and drudgery
of the Roman people. The bulk was miserably fed as compared with
modern standards of living. Only a few patricians could afford "high
living." Since a prosperous bourgeoisie (usually the economic and
gastronomic background of any nation) was practically unknown in Rome,
where the so-called middle classes were in reality poor, shiftless and
floating freedmen, it is evident that the bulk of the population
because of the empire's unsettled economic conditions, its extensive
system of slavery (precluding all successful practice of trades by
freemen), the continuous military operations, the haphazard financial
system, was forced to live niggardly. The contrast between the middle
classes and the upper classes seemed very cruel. This condition may
account for the many outcries against the "extravagances" of the few
privileged ones who could afford decent food and for the exaggerated
stories about their table found in the literature of