Customer Reviews

Dining Posture in Ancient Rome: Bodies, Values, and Status

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Matthew Roller's study of dining posture in Rome seemed to be initially a correction of "handbook" views on Rome practices. Instead of simply looking at the literature of a few elite men who complain about their period and praise the past, he looked at a wide range of evidence. He expands upon the literature to include 48 different authors. He also looks at visual evidence from dining rooms, funerary monuments, and also the layout of houses themselves. The book is split into three primary parts, each looking at the free or freedperson in Rome: men, women, and children. Slaves show up throughout these chapters at appropriate times to demonstrate that the entire dining experience may have partly been theater to portray social status. While some of the assumptions about slaves in particular are not rigorously supported, over all this is a minor part of the book so I think it is an excellent piece of scholarly research and writing.

Really enjoyable, fascinating, in depth treatment of dining customs represents the structure and habits of Roman society beautifully. It's fun, and relevant, to think about how manners have and haven't changed.