Cookery and Dining in Imperial Rome

thousand sweet figures of art; for it the frugal bee principally labors." The PANCHESTRARIUS, mentioned in Arnobius, is another confectioner. The LIBARIUS still another of the sweet craft. The CRUSTULARIUS and BOTULARIUS were a cookie baker and a sausage maker respectively The LACTARIUS is the milkman; the PLACENTARIUS he who makes the PLACENTA, a certain pancake, also a kind of cheese cake, often presented during the Saturnalia. The SCRIBLITARIUS belongs here, too: in our modern parlance we would perhaps call these two "ENTREMETIERS." The SCRIBLITA must have been a sort of hot cake, perhaps an omelet, a pancake, a dessert of some kind, served hot; maybe just a griddle cake, baked on a hot stone, a TORTILLA--what's the use of guessing! but SCRIBLITAE were good, for Plautus, in one of his plays, Poenulus, shouts, "Now, then, the SCRIBLITAE are piping hot! Come hither, fellows!" Not all of them did eat, however, all the time, for Posidippus derides a cook, saying, CUM SIS COQUUS, PROFECTUS EXTRA LIMEN ES, CUM NON PRIUS COENAVERIS, "What? Thou art a cook, and hast gone, without dinner, over the threshold?" From the FOCARIUS, the scullion, the FORNACARIUS, the fireman, or furnace tender, and the CULINARIUS, the general kitchen helper to the OBSONATOR, the steward, the FARTOR to the PRINCEPS COQUORUM, the "maître d'hôtel" of the establishment we see an organization very much similar to our own in any well-conducted kitchen The Roman cooks, formerly slaves in the frugal days of the nation, rose to great heights of civic importance with the spread of civilization and the advance of luxury in the empire. Cf. "The Rôle of the Mageiroi in the Life of the Ancient Greeks" by E. M. Rankin, Chic., 1907, and "Roman Cooks" by C. G. Harcum, Baltimore, 1914, two monographs on this subject Cookery, Apician, as well as modern c., discussed in the critical review of the Apicius book ---- examples of deceptive c. in Apicius, {Rx} 6, 7, 9, 17, 229, 230, 384, 429 ---- of flavoring and spicing, {Rx} 15, 277, 281, 369 ---- deserving special mention for ingenuity and excellence, {Rx}