Cookery and Dining in Imperial Rome

the prosperity of the nation. During Rome's frugal era, up to 200 B.C. the primitive cooks were just slaves and household chattels; but the development of their trade into an art, stimulated by foreign precepts, imported principally from Greece, Sicily and Asia Minor, opened up to the practitioners not only the door to freedom from servitude but it offered even positions of wealth with social and political standing, often arousing the envy, satire, criticism of bona-fide politicians, journalists, moralists, satirists and of the ever-present hordes of parasites and hangers-on. Some cooks became confidants, even friends and advisors of men in high places, emperors, (cf. life of Vitellius) and through their subtle influence upon the mighty they may have contributed in no mean measure to the fate of the nation. But such invisible string-pullers have not been confined to those days alone. (Take Rasputin! Take the valet to William I, reputed to have had more "say" than the mighty Bismarck, who, as it developed, got "the air" while the valet died in his berth.) Such being the case, what potential power reposed in a greasy cookery manuscript! And, if so, why bare such wonderful secrets to Tom, Dick and Harry? Weights and measures are given by Apicius in some instances. But just such figures can be used artfully to conceal a trap. Any mediocre cook, gaining possession of a choice collection of detailed and itemized recipes would have been placed in an enviable position. Experimenting for some time (at his master's expense) he would soon reach that perfection when he could demand a handsome compensation for his ministrations. Throughout antique times, throughout the middle ages down to the present day (when patent laws no longer protect a secret) strict secrecy was maintained around many useful and lucrative formulæ, not only by cooks, but also by physicians, alchemists and the various scientists, artisans and craftsmen. Only the favorite apprentice would be made heir to or shareholder in this important stock in trade after his worthiness had been proven to his master's satisfaction, usually by the payment of a goodly sum of money--apprentice's