Cookery and Dining in Imperial Rome

ancient guests' opinion of Mine Host scribbled on the wall, the kitchens with their implements, the boudoirs of milady's with the cosmetics and perfumes in the compacts. There are the advertisements on the walls, the foods praised with all the _eclat_ of modern advertising, the election notices, the love missives, the bank deposits, the theatre tickets, law records, bills of sale. Phantom-like yet real there are the good citizens of a good town, parading, hustling, loafing--sturdy patricians, wretched plebeians, stern centurios, boastful soldiers, scheming politicians, crafty law-clerks, timid scribes, chattering barbers, bullying gladiators, haughty actors, dusty travelers, making for Albinus', the famous host at the _Via della Abbondanza_ or, would he give preference to Sarinus, the son of Publius, who advertised so cleverly? Or, perhaps, could he afford to stop at the "Fortunata" Hotel, centrally located? There are, too, the boorish hayseeds from out of town trying to sell their produce, unaccustomed to the fashionable Latin-Greek speech of the city folks, gaping with their mouths wide open, greedily at the steaks of sacrificial meat displayed behind enlarging glasses in the cheap cook shop windows. There they giggle and chuckle, those wily landlords with their blasé habitués and their underlings, the greasy cooks, the roguish "good mixers" at the bar and the winsome if resolute _copæ_--waitresses--all ready to go, to do business. So slippery are the cooks that Plautus calls one _Congrio_--sea eel--so black that another deserves the title _Anthrax_--coal. There they are, one and all, the characters necessary to make up what we call civilization, chattering agitatedly in a lingo of Latin-Greek-Oscan--as if life were a continuous market day. It takes no particular scholarship, only a little imagination and human sympathy to see and to hear the ghosts of Pompeii. There is no pose about this town, no _mise-en-scène_, no stage-setting. No heroic gesture. No theatricals, in short, no lies. There is to be found no shred of that vainglorious cloak which humans will deftly drape about their shoulders whenever they happen to be aware of the camera. There is no "registering" of any kind here. Pompeii's natural and pleasant