Jack Turner - Spice - The History of a Temptation

Self-evidently, the message of such exemplary incidents ran deeper than a straightforward declaration of personal preferences. To Romans such as Cicero, how and what you ate was an issue of the utmost ethical importance. Diet was a yardstick of, and in some sense shaped, moral worth. It was Trimalchio’s point inverted: you were what you ate. And what a shocking contrast present indulgence formed to the rugged heroes of the past! Historians and satirists never tired of comparing contemporary debauch with ancient virtue. Manius Curius Dentatus, conqueror of Pyrrhus, is reported to have cooked his own vegetables. The emperor Augustus, according to Suetonius, liked his dinner plain and unaffected; the Stoic Cato declared that he only ate meat so as to be strong enough to fight for the state. The past was tough, frugal and pristine; the present, luxurious and bloated.

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