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Learn the Six Classical Parts of Discourse Used by Cicero

Cicero speaking in the Roman Senate
Cicero (106–43 BCE), Rome’s greatest orator and one of the principal architects of classical rhetoric.

By Dr Neel Burton — Psychiatrist, philosopher, and wine writer; Fellow of Green Templeton College, University of Oxford; author of over twenty books.

Every good speech and essay has a structure. Yet few students are ever taught one.

For more than two thousand years, great speakers have relied on a simple six-part structure—a framework that stretches from Cicero to Churchill and remains just as useful today. Many Oxford students have told me that no one had ever taught them these six parts of discourse, despite years of essay writing. Yet, until surprisingly recently, they formed part of every educated person’s rhetorical training. Today, few people have even heard of them.

The six parts of discourse are, of course, just as useful for structuring essays as they are for composing speeches.

Table of the Six Parts of Discourse

Introduction (Exordium)

The exordium introduces your subject and purpose. It may also establish your authority for speaking or writing.

Above all, it should capture your audience’s attention. You might begin with a striking fact, an intriguing question, or a sense of urgency—but whatever your approach, make your audience want to hear more.

Keep it brief and clear. Never bore, confuse, or test your audience, and certainly not in the opening lines.

Winston Churchill’s first speech as Prime Minister begins:

I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat.

In just twelve words, he captures attention, establishes the gravity of the moment, and prepares his audience for what is to come.

Narration (Narratio)

The narratio provides the background your audience needs to understand the issue.

How did the problem arise? Why does it matter? What has already been tried? What does the evidence suggest? Have similar situations arisen before?

Important: Although the narration appears objective, it is also your first opportunity to frame the debate. The facts you include—and the order in which you present them—shape everything that follows.

Consider the difference between saying, “Taxes have risen by 2%” and “Investment in schools and hospitals has increased by 2%”. The facts may be identical, but the way you present them shapes how your audience understands them.

Division (Divisio)

The divisio is the turning point in your speech.

In effect, the division says:

This is the issue. This is why it matters. And this is how I intend to address it.

Like the introduction, the division should be brief. If it becomes too elaborate, it begins to feel contrived.

The rhetorical handbook Ad Herennium (c. 80 BCE) illustrates division with this dilemma from Greek mythology:

Orestes killed his mother, Clytemnestra; on that everyone agrees. But was he justified in doing so? That is the real point in dispute.

Proof (Confirmatio)

The proof is the heart of your speech. Here you present your arguments and support them with examples and evidence.

Aristotle distinguished between technical proofs, such as logical arguments (logos), and non-technical proofs, such as laws, contracts, witnesses, and authoritative testimony.

In the Rhetoric, he observes that ‘witnesses’ need not be living people. Homer, Hesiod, Solon, proverbs, and received wisdom can all serve as ‘ancient witnesses’. Today, we do much the same whenever we quote recognised experts or respected authorities.

Ancient witnesses can be appealed to indirectly, as when Barack Obama echoed Martin Luther King, who in turn echoed Abraham Lincoln, who echoed the King James Bible in the opening line of the Gettysburg Address of 1863:

Four score and seven years ago [i.e. 87 years ago] our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Refutation (Confutatio)

A persuasive speech anticipates objections.

The confutatio acknowledges opposing arguments before answering them. Ideally, it does so fairly and convincingly, though in practice speakers often exaggerate or caricature an opponent’s position.

Modern political campaigns often do exactly this. Terms such as ‘death tax’ or ‘dementia tax’ deliberately reframe an opponent’s proposal before it can be considered on its merits.

One particularly effective technique is concession (concessio). By conceding a limited point, you appear reasonable and fair while strengthening your larger argument:

Yes, that’s true. But the real question is…

Far from weakening your case, a well-judged concession often makes it more persuasive.

If your proof is weak, you might instead begin with a forceful refutation in the hope that no one notices the lack of argument. It is a trick as old as rhetoric itself—and one that is still surprisingly common.

Conclusion (Peroratio)

The peroratio brings your speech or essay to a memorable close.

It usually summarises your main arguments before ending with an emotional appeal or call to action.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s famous Day of Infamy speech, delivered the day after the attack on Pearl Harbor, ends with precisely such a peroration:

Hostilities exist. There is no blinking at the fact that our people, our territory, and our interests are in grave danger.

With confidence in our armed forces, with the unbounding determination of our people, we will gain the inevitable triumph—so help us God.

I ask that the Congress declare that since the unprovoked and dastardly attack by Japan on Sunday, December 7th, 1941, a state of war has existed between the United States and the Japanese empire.

When to Break the Rules

Many great speeches follow this six-part structure, whether consciously or intuitively. But the framework should never become a formula.

Once you’ve mastered its principles, they can also be broken.

Cicero himself ignored his own advice in the opening of the First Catilinarian, launching immediately into a passionate attack:

When, O Catiline, do you mean to cease abusing our patience? How long is that madness of yours still to mock us? When is there to be an end to that unbridled audacity of yours, swaggering about as it does now?

Nor must every speech contain every part. Aristotle regarded only two as essential: statement (narratio) and argument (confirmatio). Everything else is optional.

The six parts of discourse are not rules but tools. They provide a framework within which clarity and originality can flourish.

The aim is not to sound methodical but natural. Techniques such as using simple language, expressing uncertainty (dubitatio), or correcting yourself aloud (epergesis) can all help create the impression of sincerity and spontaneity.

Craft is something that you learn; art, that you unlearn.

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The Method of Loci, or ‘Mind Palace’—and the Gruesome Story Behind It

Roman orator memorises a speech outside the Senate House
The Mind Palace is simple—and fun too.

By Dr Neel Burton — Psychiatrist, philosopher, and wine writer; Fellow of Green Templeton College, University of Oxford; author of over twenty books.

Essay substantially revised on 11 August 2026.

Before autocues, slides, and even paper, an orator had to be able to stand before an audience and deliver an elaborate speech from memory. The Romans accorded such importance to memorisation that memoria became one of the five canons of rhetoric, alongside invention, arrangement, style, and delivery.

Fortunately, they had a simple and effective technique for remembering almost anything in sequence. More than two thousand years later, the same technique is still used by actors, public speakers, memory champions—and anyone who would rather connect with an audience than read out a script.

Simonides of Ceos and the Banqueting Hall

Although mnemonic devices far predate the written word, both Cicero and Quintilian name Simonides of Ceos (c. 556-468 BCE) as the first teacher of an art of memory.

Simonides is perhaps best known for composing the epitaph for the three hundred Spartans who died at Thermopylae:

Go tell the Spartans, passerby
That here, by Spartan law, we lie.

According to Plutarch, Simonides once dismissed the northern Thessalians as ‘too ignorant’ to be moved by poetry. But after the assassination of the tyrant Hipparchus in Athens, he had to swallow his words and work for the Thessalian aristocrat Scopas.

One day, at a banquet, Simonides sang a lyric poem in honour of Scopas. But the poem contained so many references to the gods Castor and Pollux (the Dioskouroi, or Gemini) that Scopas told Simonides that he would only pay him half the agreed fee, adding, “You can go and claim the other half from Castor and Pollux.”

A little later, Simonides was called out of the banqueting hall to meet two young men who had just arrived and were asking for him. When he went out, he saw no one, but as he turned around the banqueting hall collapsed, killing Scopas and everyone within it.

Their bodies were so mangled as to be unrecognisable. But because Simonides remembered everyone’s position around the table, he was able to identify their remains. This gruesome experience led him to develop a system of mnemonics based on images and places called the method of loci.

The Method of Loci, or Mind Palace

The method of loci, also called the memory palace or ‘mind palace’ (as popularised by Sherlock Holmes), involves placing a mnemonic image for each item to be remembered at a defined point along an imaginary route.

First, choose a very familiar environment, for example, your house or garden or favourite walk. This is your backdrop: it is fixed, and you can reuse it for talk after talk.

Within this setting, there will be a number of distinct locations, or loci, such as your front door, the doormat, the entrance hall, the stairway, your study to the left and the snug to the right… You do not have to have a mansion with many rooms, like Jesus’ father. Instead, you can think of the snug as, say, three separate loci: the fireplace, the sofa, and the alcove. But you must always make the same journey through your memory palace and come to the loci in the same sequence.

Then, in each locus, place a mnemonic image that represents the thing to be remembered at that point in your talk, for example, a goose, to trigger your story about visiting a goose farm in Extremadura. The more striking the image, the easier it will be to remember. If your next point is about inflation, don’t picture a graph or a number: picture an enormous loaf of bread swelling until it bursts through your kitchen ceiling.

Once you’ve furnished your memory palace, just keep on running through it until you’ve memorised your talk.

The method works because it turns an abstract sequence into a journey through familiar space. Instead of trying to remember one thought after another, you simply walk through your house, garden, or favourite street and ‘see’ each thought waiting for you in its appointed place.

Because the images represent ideas rather than sentences, the method encourages you to speak rather than recite. You remember the structure and substance of your speech while remaining free to tailor your words to the moment.

Try it out on something small, and see how well it works.

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Did Stoicism Make Marcus Aurelius a Better Emperor?

Marcus Aurelius writing the Meditations
Marcus Aurelius wrote the Meditations as a private journal, never intending it to be published.

By Dr Neel Burton — Psychiatrist, philosopher, and wine writer; Fellow of Green Templeton College, University of Oxford; author of over twenty books.

Essay substantially revised on 28 July 2026.

In Plato’s Republic (c. 375 BCE), Socrates says that his vision of the ideal state could not exist ‘until philosophers are kings, or the kings and princes of this world have the spirit and power of philosophy…’

Here he was at last, more than five hundred years later, rarer even than the Æthiopian phœnix: the fabled philosopher-king—and not just any vassal or kinglet, but the Emperor of Rome.

His private journal, the Meditations, has become one of the world’s most widely read works of philosophy, inspiring everyone from statesmen and soldiers to psychologists and countless ordinary readers seeking wisdom in difficult times. J. S. Mill, in On Liberty (1859), hailed it as ‘the highest ethical product of the ancient mind’.

So, how did it work out?

How Marcus Became Emperor

Marcus was born in 121 CE as Marcus Annius Verus, into a prominent senatorial family with intimate imperial ties. He began from an early age to evince signs of virtue, so that the emperor Hadrian noticed him and even punned on his name, Verus (‘True’), calling him Verissimus (‘The Truest’).

In 136, Hadrian, having no male heir, adopted Lucius Ceionius Commodus, who now became Lucius Aelius Caesar. But Lucius died in 138, and Hadrian had to choose again.

This time, Hadrian adopted Titus Aurelius Antoninus, the husband of Marcus’ aunt Faustina the Elder, on condition that Antoninus in turn adopt Marcus and the son of the late Lucius, also Lucius.

The intricacy of these machinations suggests that Hadrian intended Antoninus as a simple placeholder for Marcus, and the much younger Lucius as a spare.

Whatever the case, by the age of 17, Marcus had already been marked out as a future emperor.

Childhood and Education

Whereas most would have been overjoyed, Marcus was not.

In 132, under the influence of Diognetus, the eleven-year-old Marcus had taken up the dress and habits of a philosopher—to the extent that his mother had had to talk him out of sleeping on the floor. In the Meditations, the grown-up Marcus thanks Diognetus, a Stoic and painter, for introducing him to ‘the Greek lifestyle—the camp-bed and the cloak.’

His other tutors came to include the lawyer and orator Marcus Cornelius Fronto, the rhetorician Herodes Atticus, and Plutarch’s grandson, Sextus of Chaeronea.

As an orator, Fronto was second only to Cicero, and had something of the Cicero about him when he purchased the fabled Gardens of Maecenas. Much of the extensive and years-long correspondence between Marcus and Fronto is still with us.

Herodes Atticus, one of the richest men in the empire, funded several public works including, in Athens, the Panathenaic Stadium and the odeon known as the Herodeon, both of which, remarkably, are still in use.

But although Marcus had for tutors the greatest men of his age, it is the dog-eared copy of Epictetus that he received from the Stoic Junius Rusticus that made the greatest impression upon him. Still today, it is difficult to read the Meditations without hearing the echo of Epictetus—the former slave who inspired an emperor. 

Marriage and Children

In 136, Marcus had been betrothed to the daughter of Lucius Aelius Caesar.

But after the death of Hadrian, the engagement was annulled, and Antoninus, the new emperor, betrothed him to his daughter Faustina (even though Marcus and Faustina were legally brother and sister).

Marcus married Faustina seven years later, in 145, while serving out his second term as consul.

After the birth of their first child, a daughter, in 147, Antoninus gave Marcus the imperium and the tribunicia potestas(tribunician power), thereby elevating him, in effect, to the rank of junior emperor.

Faustina the Younger would bear Marcus at least thirteen more children, including two sets of twins, over the next 23 years—but only four daughters and one unfortunate son, Commodus, outlived their parents. In the Meditations, Marcus likens his children to leaves, and echoes Homer in the Iliad: ‘Men come and go as leaves year by year upon the trees. Those of autumn the wind sheds upon the ground, but when the spring returns the forest buds forth with fresh vines.’

Relationship with His Co-Emperor

As Antoninus began to age and ail, Marcus took over more of his responsibilities—so that he was already well worn in upon his accession to the imperial throne in 161.

He could easily have ruled alone, but instead insisted upon making his adoptive brother Lucius co-emperor.

In truth, Marcus would rather have remained a philosopher, or private citizen, but considered it his Stoic duty to take up the purple. In the Meditations, he compares philosophy and the court to a mother and stepmother: ‘you would pay your respects to your stepmother, yes… but it’s your real mother you’d go home to. The court… and philosophy. Keep returning to it, to rest in its embrace. It’s all that makes the court—and you—endurable.’

In practice, Lucius—now Lucius Verus—deferred to Marcus, who was ten years older and, by experience and temperament, better suited to the role.

The burden Marcus inherited could scarcely have been greater. Rome stretched from Britain to Mesopotamia, embracing perhaps a quarter of the world’s population. Every frontier demanded vigilance, every province justice, every crisis a solution. Marcus found himself ruling the greatest empire on earth just as it entered one of the most turbulent periods in its history.

The Antonine Plague

Towards the end of 161, the Tiber broke its banks and flooded much of Rome, bringing about a famine.

At around the same time, the Parthians invaded the client state of Armenia and began destabilizing the East.

Lucius nominally led the Roman response from Antioch, assisted by able generals such as the Assyrian Roman, Gaius Avidius Cassius.

As the war wore on, Lucius made a trip to Ephesus to wed Marcus’ daughter Lucilla.

The Romans prevailed, but the returning armies brought back a plague, possibly of smallpox. The so-called Antonine Plague raged throughout the empire for many years and quite literally decimated (killed one in every ten) the population.

The Marcomannic Wars

In 167 or 168, Marcus and Lucius set out on a punitive expedition across the Rhine and Danube, while a horde of German tribes invaded Italy from behind their backs.

In 169, Lucius suddenly died, perhaps of a stroke, or from the plague.

Marcus battled on for three more years to secure the north-eastern border, while other parts of the empire suffered smaller scale rebellions or invasions. It is at around this time that he kept the notebook which we now know as The Meditations.

He never intended these notes for publication. They were not a philosophical treatise but a private conversation with himself: reminders to remain patient, humble, just, and rational amid war, illness, political intrigue, and personal grief. Their very privacy adds to their enduring appeal. We encounter Marcus not as a distant emperor addressing his subjects, but as a fellow human being struggling, day after day, to become a better person.

Threat to His Throne

By 175, Avidius Cassius had taken control of the East, including Egypt, the granary of Rome.

In that year, he heard rumours of Marcus’ death and proclaimed himself emperor.

Marcus set off for the East, rejecting offers of assistance from some of the friendlier German tribes. But three months after his proclamation, Cassius was murdered by one of his own centurions.

His head was sent to Marcus, but the philosopher-king refused to behold it, and pardoned Cassius’ co-conspirators in the Senate.

Eastern Tour

Marcus then felt obliged to shore up the East, visiting Antioch, Alexandria, and Athens, where he was initiated into the Eleusinian Mysteries.

In Athens, he endowed the first ever public chairs, one for each of the four major schools of philosophy, the Platonic, Peripatetic (Aristotelian), Stoic, and Epicurean.

His beloved Faustina, who had come with him, died in Cappadocia, and he honoured her service by having her deified.

Death and Succession

In 177, Marcus proclaimed his 16-year-old son Commodus co-emperor, breaking with the Nerva-Antonine dynasty’s remarkably successful practice of succession by the best man available—a tradition which, in truth, owed more to necessity than to enlightened principle.

This, with the benefit of hindsight, or even without, was a grave error, but what else could Marcus have done short of planting the seed of a civil war, or ordering the assassination of his own son?

In 180, Marcus, who had been sickly all his life, possibly with a stomach ulcer, passed away at his military headquarters in Sirmium, Pannonia, thereby bringing to an end the long period of relative peace and prosperity now known as the Pax Romana (27 BCE—180 CE).

In 192, Commodus was strangled in the bath by his wrestling partner Narcissus, acting in concert with other palace insiders, and with the retrospective approval of the Senate.

The demise of Commodus brought the Nerva-Antonine dynasty to a close, to be followed by the chaotic Year of the Five Emperors.

Assessment

Marcus did not merely write about Stoicism but sought to govern an empire according to its principles. Faced with flood, famine, plague, invasion, rebellion, bereavement, and chronic ill health, he repeatedly chose duty over inclination, clemency over retribution, and self-command over self-glorification. If any ruler came close to Plato’s ideal of the philosopher-king, it was Marcus Aurelius.

I’ll leave the last word on Marcus to the historian Cassius Dio, who lived through his entire reign:

[Marcus Aurelius] did not meet with the good fortune that he deserved, for he was not strong in body and was involved in a multitude of troubles throughout practically his entire reign. But for my part, I admire him all the more for this very reason, that amid unusual and extraordinary difficulties he both survived himself and preserved the empire. Just one thing prevented him from being completely happy, namely, that after rearing and educating his son in the best possible way he was vastly disappointed in him. This matter must be our next topic; for our history now descends from a kingdom of gold to one of iron and rust, as affairs did for the Romans of that day.

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What the Romans Ate, Drank, and Did Between Courses

A Roman banquet in the House of the Chaste Lovers, Pompeii.
A Roman banquet in the House of the Chaste Lovers, Pompeii.

By Dr Neel Burton — Psychiatrist, philosopher, and wine writer; Fellow of Green Templeton College, University of Oxford; author of over twenty books.

Essay substantially revised on 8 September 2026.

The Roman dinner party was far more than a meal. It was an arena for pleasure and performance, but also for the delicate negotiation of friendship, reputation, and rank. Where a guest reclined, what he was served, and even what he took home in his napkin all said something about his place in the world.

At the grandest dinners, the food could be fantastically elaborate. But beneath the peacocks, dormice, and sows’ wombs lay a cuisine of considerable subtlety, built upon fresh produce and the careful balancing of sweet, sour, bitter, and savoury flavours.

Apicius: The Man Who Ate a Fortune

Our most important source on Roman gastronomy is the cookbook of Apicius, compiled in or around the late fourth century CE, and containing recipes for such delicacies as larks’ tongues, sterile sows’ wombs, and milk-fed snails.

The Apicius in question is not to be confused with Marcus Gavius Apicius, the gourmet extraordinaire of the first century CE, who fed dried figs to his pigs and then finished them on wine to produce the porcine equivalent of foie gras.

According to Pliny, Apicius was ‘born to enjoy every extravagant luxury that could be contrived’ (ad omne luxus ingenium natus). It is said that, after spending 100 million sestertii on his kitchen, he discovered that he had only ten million left and committed suicide rather than face the prospect of poverty.

From Breakfast to Dinner

By the late Republic, Roman meals consisted of breakfast, or ientaculum, at dawn; a small lunch, or prandium, around noon; and a large dinner, or cena, in the evening.

A simple family dinner normally took place in the atrium and might have consisted of vegetables and salads accompanied by eggs, cheese, and beans, and rounded off with fruits and nuts.

By the end of the Republic, the cena had come to consist of three distinct courses. In the presence of guests, it could segue into a late-night drinking party, or comissatio—the Roman equivalent of the Greek symposium.

Inside the Triclinium

On more formal occasions, the feasting took place in a dining room called a triclinium (Greek, triklinion, ‘three couches’), with couches arranged on three sides of a central table. The fourth, open side usually faced the entrance and afforded space for slaves to serve the diners.

Each couch admitted up to three people, who reclined on their left elbow with their heads pointing towards the table. The posture would have been uncomfortable had the couches not been covered with cushions and inclined towards the table.

The various positions were not equal. The host seated his guests according to social status and closeness or intimacy, turning the dining room into a diagram of his relationships.

Unlike in Greece, women could be present. During the Republic, they generally sat on chairs, but by the imperial period they too could recline on a couch.

Grander houses often featured a second, summer triclinium in or overlooking the garden. The grandest had three or four—or even more—allowing the host to choose a setting according to the season, occasion, or company.

How to Behave at a Roman Dinner

Upon arrival, guests removed their sandals and washed their hands. The host did not provide napkins: each guest had to bring his own.

Napkins served to wipe the hands and mouth, but also to take home leftover titbits and, in some cases, a gift or souvenir from the host.

Food was conveyed from plate to mouth with three fingers or with one of two spoons: the larger ligula for soups and pottages, and the smaller, prong-like cochlear for eggs and shellfish.

Between the three principal courses, diners rinsed their fingers in perfumed water while slaves washed the table and swept away the bones and shells that had been tossed onto the floor.

After the main course, the host made an offering of meat, cake, wine, or some combination of the three to the household gods, or Lares.

The unswept floor: a Roman mosaic depicting the remains of a banquet.
The unswept floor: a Roman mosaic from the Levant depicting the remains of a banquet, now at the Château de Boudry.

Conversation, Poetry, and Dancing Girls

Conversation made up the bulk of the evening’s entertainment. It might be supplemented by a recital of literature or poetry, or by performances from acrobats, conjurers, musicians, singers, or dancers—although the diners themselves never got up to dance.

At the end of the evening, guests called for their sandals. Hence the expression soleas poscere, ‘to ask for one’s sandals’, meaning to prepare to leave.

If the dinner had gone well, they might depart with leftovers, a present, or some other souvenir bundled into the napkin they had so prudently brought with them.

The Roman dinner party is a popular and recurrent theme in Roman literature. In one of his letters, Pliny the Younger chides his friend Septicius Clarus for failing to turn up to dinner:

All ready were a lettuce each, three snails, two eggs, porridge, with mulsum and snow … olives, beetroot, gourds, bulbs, and a thousand other things no less appreciated. You would have heard comic actors or a poetry reader or a lyrist, or, such is my generosity, all three. But you chose to go to someone else’s for oysters, sows’ wombs, sea urchins, and dancing girls from Cadiz.

Two thousand years later, the grievance remains entirely recognisable.

The Feast of Trimalchio

The best—if most lurid—description of a Roman dinner party is Trimalchio’s Feast (Cena Trimalchionis) in the Satyricon, a salacious novel attributed to Petronius, a courtier at the time of Nero.

Trimalchio’s Feast is arguably the most celebrated section of the Satyricon, even though—or perhaps because—it has done untold harm to the reputation of the Roman dinner party.

Trimalchio, a freedman who has acquired enormous wealth, entertains his guests with ostentatious and grotesque extravagance. He brings out Falernian wine claiming to be from the celebrated Opimian vintage, already almost two centuries old.

One course contains a multitude of disparate ingredients, each representing a sign of the zodiac: a lobster for Capricorn, the udder of a young sow for Virgo, testicles and kidneys—which come in pairs—for Gemini, and so on.

The evening culminates with Trimalchio ordering his entire household to enact his funeral. Even at dinner, the point of being rich is to make other people rehearse your death.

What Did the Romans Eat?

The Romans ate such a wide variety of foods that it is easier to list what was absent from the ordinary Roman kitchen.

The principal absentees included refined sugar, tomatoes, potatoes, maize, tea, coffee, chocolate, peanuts, and chilli peppers. Rice and butter were known, but neither occupied anything like the place they do in many modern cuisines.

The eastern conquests of Alexander the Great had brought to the Mediterranean such delicacies as citrus fruits, peaches, pistachio nuts, and even the prized peacock. As they grew increasingly rich and cosmopolitan, the Romans left behind their ancestral diet of emmer-wheat gruel and adopted and adapted the sophisticated cuisine of the Greeks.

In time, Roman cuisine became even more exciting and exotic than Greek cuisine—not entirely dissimilar, in fact, to modern Indian cuisine, with a single dish enhanced by as many as 15 different herbs and spices.

The Romans had something of a sweet tooth. Many dishes balanced the sweetness of honey or concentrated grape juice (defrutum) with the acidity, sourness, or bitterness of vinegar, fish sauce, and a vast array of fresh and dried herbs and expensive spices.

From the first century CE, these spices included pepper from southern India and cloves from the Spice Islands: small luxuries carrying within them the astonishing extent of Roman trade.

Garum, Dormice, and Red Mullet

Fish sauce, known as garum or liquamen, was not dissimilar to Thai nam pla. It was made from whole small fish such as anchovies, sardines, mackerel, sprats, and herrings, which were macerated in salt and left to liquefy over several weeks.

This liquefaction resulted not from bacterial putrefaction, which the salt prevented, but from proteolysis by enzymes contained in the fishes’ viscera.

Meat was relatively expensive. Cattle were valued principally as draught animals, and pork, poultry, game such as hare and rabbit, and fish were generally preferred to beef.

Red mullet was particularly sought after. Upon dying, it passed through a succession of colours and shades with which to entertain the guests before being carried off to the kitchen.

Dormice were typically stuffed with minced pork, pepper, pine kernels, and garum. At Trimalchio’s Feast, they appear in ‘a row of dormice, glazed in honey and rolled in poppy seeds’.

But despite such extravagances, many Romans took great pride in the freshness and simplicity of their produce—all the more if it had been sourced from their country farm.

How Ordinary Romans Ate

Most Romans could not afford peacocks, mullet, and dormice. Their diet consisted largely of wheat bread, supplemented with fruit, vegetables, pulses, and whatever else they could find or afford.

In imperial times, many inhabitants of Rome lived in cramped apartment blocks without access to a kitchen or open fire. Rather than cook at home, they bought food from street stalls and shops, or ate in taverns and restaurants.

In his Letters to Lucilius, Seneca complains about the constant noise from the street below his apartment: ‘the cakeseller with his varied cries, the sausageman, the confectioner, and all the vendors of food hawking their wares, each with his own distinctive intonation’.

The poorest inhabitants could not always afford even street food and came to rely upon the free grain ration issued in the city.

Following the annexation of Egypt, vast grain ships ploughed the route from Alexandria to Ostia to supply Rome with the enormous quantities of wheat needed to feed its population. After being shipwrecked on Malta, St Paul reached Italy on just such an Alexandrian grain ship.

The Empire at Table

The Roman dinner table reflected the empire that sustained it. Pepper arrived from India, cloves from the Spice Islands, grain from Egypt, wine from every corner of the Mediterranean, and guests were arranged upon their couches according to the invisible but exacting geometry of Roman rank.

At the top of society, dinner could become an exhibition of wealth so elaborate that the food almost ceased to be food. At the bottom, people queued for their grain ration or listened hungrily to the cries of the sausageman in the street.

Between these extremes lay the real achievement of Roman cuisine: fresh produce, complex seasoning, conviviality, and the understanding that dinner is never merely about eating. It is also about status and friendship, theatre and conversation—and deciding, at the proper moment, to call for one’s sandals.

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