Augustus

The meal opened with the gustatio, tasting, during which appetizers were served—various pulses, cabbage in vinegar, pickled fruit and vegetables, strongly spiced mashes of shrubs and weeds such as nettle, sorrel, and elder, and snails, clams, and small fish. A fashionable delicacy was stuffed and roast dormice. A wine-and-honey mixture accompanied the gustatio.

The main course consisted of a variety of meat dishes; favorites included wild boar, turbot, chicken, and sows’ udders. Fifty ways of dressing pork were known. There were no side dishes, but bread rolls were available. A sauce called garum or liquamen was added to almost everything. Garum was made from slowly decomposed mackerel intestines; its closest (if distant) modern equivalents are Thai or Vietnamese fish sauce and Worcestershire sauce. Finally, dessert consisted of fruit, nuts, and cakes soaked in honey.

Wines were served with the food, but the serious drinking began only when the meal was over. Sometimes people drank at will, but the commissatio, a kind of ceremonial drinking match in which cups were drained at a single draught, was a more organized method of inebriation. A master of ceremonies, the rex bibendi (literally, “king of what is to be drunk”), would be appointed on the throw of a dice. The rex bibendi was in charge of mixing the wine and setting the number of toasts which everyone had to drink.

Conversation flowed, and Augustus was an excellent and welcoming host with a talent for drawing out shy guests. He often enlivened his cenae with performances by musicians and actors or circus artistes and storytellers. Sometimes he would auction tickets for prizes of unequal value or paintings with their faces turned to the wall. Guests were required to take pot luck and bid blindly.

Most Romans went to bed early, but the princeps’ day was not yet done. After dinner was over, probably about sunset (some less reputable cenae went on deep into the night), he withdrew to a couch in his study. There he worked until he had attended to all the remaining business of the day, or most of it—reading dispatches, dictating correspondence to secretaries, and giving instructions.

Augustus was usually in bed by eleven and slept seven hours at the outside. A light sleeper, he woke up three or four times in the night. He often found it hard to drop off again and sent for readers or storytellers. He loathed lying awake in the dark without anyone sitting with him.

At last, the ruler of the known world drifted into sleep.

Photo Insert

THE ROMAN FORUM AS IT WAS TOWARD THE END OF AUGUSTUS’ LIFE

A. Tabularium, or archive.

B. Temple of Concord.

C. Temple of Saturn, where the Treasury was based.

D. Basilica Julia, a shopping and conference center.

E. The Rostra, or speakers’ platform.

F. Temple of Castor and Pollux.

G. Temple of the Deified Julius Caesar, built on the site of his cremation.

H. Temple of Vesta, where the Vestal Virgins tended an eternal flame. Here leading Romans could deposit their wills.

I. The Regia, headquarters of the Pontifex Maximus.

J. Basilica Aemilia, a shopping and conference center.

K. Curia Julia, the new Senate House commissioned by Julius Caesar.

L. Forum of Julius Caesar, completed in the dictator’s lifetime.

M. Temple of Venus Genetrix (Venus, the Mother or Ancestress of the Julian clan; here Caesar placed a gold statue of Cleopatra).

N. Forum of Augustus, which the princeps dedicated together with the

O. Temple of Mars Ultor (Mars the Avenger) in 2 B.C.

The Palatine Hill today, where ruins mingle with trees, as seen from the Roman Forum. This was where the rich and the fashionable lived in the first century B.C. Augustus and Livia both had houses there and offices for their staff. Under the empire, the hill became a government quarter and the official residence of the emperors (from Palatine comes the word palace).

Julius Caesar’s intelligence and quickness of mind are well conveyed in this green basanite bust with inlaid marble eyes, carved about fifty years after his assassination in 44 B.C.

A fine bust of Mark Antony in green basalt. Found at Canopus, a suburb of ancient Alexandria, it offers not the bluff, hard-drinking soldier, but a reflective and high-minded ruler—the kind of man that Cleopatra would perhaps have preferred him to be rather than the one he actually was.

Sextus Pompeius, Pompey the Great’s younger son, posed a serious threat to Octavian. His melancholy expression and his beard and mustache, which Romans only grew to mark some tragic event or personal misfortune, suggest that this portrait in bronze was completed after Sextus’ defeat at Naulochus in 36 B.C. and subsequent death.

A Roman warship with soldiers on board. This marble relief dates from the 30s B.C., and the crocodile by the prow suggests a reference to the sea campaign against Cleopatra that culminated in Actium.