Chapter 4
PLACES TO EAT

Just like today, there was an excited hustle and bustle around the stalls of street vendors.

This is a funny description from an exasperated Seneca:

“Beshrew me if I think anything more requisite than silence for a man who secludes himself in order to study! Imagine what a variety of noises reverberates about my ears! I have lodgings right over a bathing establishment. So, picture to yourself the assortment of sounds, which are strong enough to make me hate my very powers of hearing! When your strenuous gentleman, for example, is exercising himself by flourishing leaden weights; when he is working hard, or else pretends to be working hard, I can hear him grunt; and whenever he releases his imprisoned breath, I can hear him panting in wheezy and high-pitched tones. Or perhaps I notice some lazy fellow, content with a cheap rubdown, and hear the crack of the pummelling hand on his shoulder, varying in sound according as the hand is laid on flat or hollow. Then, perhaps, a professional comes along, shouting out the score; that is the finishing touch. Add to this the arresting of an occasional roister or pickpocket, the racket of the man who always likes to hear his own voice in the bathroom, or the enthusiast who plunges into the swimming-tank with unconscionable noise and splashing. Besides all those whose voices, if nothing else, are good, imagine the hair-plucker with his penetrating, shrill voice, for purposes of advertisement, continually giving it vent and never holding his tongue except when he is plucking the armpits and making his victim yell instead. Then the cake seller with his varied cries, the sausage-man, the confectioner, and all the vendors of food hawking their wares, each with his own distinctive intonation…” .

      These vendors sold everything from biscuits, sweets, dried and fresh fruit, to drinks. You could buy something with just a few coins to stop your stomach from growling and then continue your day with various jobs or political activities. Those who sold hot food were called lixae and one painting in particular, in Pompeii, at Julia Felix’s estate, portrays a young man receiving a portion of food. These stalls consisted of tables that had drapes or curtains which provided shade from the sun (does this remind you of something?), called tentoria. They could also have wooden structures, tabernacula. These peddlers literally invaded the streets, occupying squares, streets, and arcades. They had storerooms, called cellae, which were very small caverns, on the ground floor of buildings, no larger than a few square metres, where they could store their goods for the night. Just like nowadays, in order to run this type of activity you would require a license issued by construction magistrates, called permissu aedilium. An interesting description of the frenetic activity of the hawkers in the Flavian period is given to us once again by Martial:

“The audacious shopkeepers had appropriated to themselves the whole city, and a man’s own threshold was not his own. You, Germanicus, bade the narrow streets grow wide; and what but just before was a pathway became a highway. No column is now girt at the bottom with chained wine-flagons; nor is the Praetor compelled to walk in the midst of the mud. Nor, again, is the barber’s razor drawn blindly in the middle of a crowd, nor does the smutty cookshop project over every street. The barber, the vintner, the cook, the butcher, keep their own places. The city is now Rome; recently it was a great shop” .

Once again, I cannot help myself from asking you if this reminds you of something…