It would be difficult to form an idea of the prodigious luxury which Rome introduced into an aliment so common, and of such universal use as bread. Its name, its form, and flavour indicated the various ranks of society to which it belonged.[IV_59] There was the senator’s bread, that of the knights, of the citizens, of the people, and that of the peasants.[IV_60]
Let us go together under the vast galleries supported by those magnificent arcades.[IV_61] The ediles have preceded us; they are visiting the shops;[IV_62] it is the Forum Pistrinum, or bread-market. The year is good: a septier (five bushels) of wheat is only twenty-five shillings,[IV_63] and provisions of all kinds abound in Rome. Foreigners, also, are here, attracted by curiosity; for Vespasian is preparing to deposit with solemnity the spoils of Jerusalem in the temple of Peace.[IV_64]
In the middle of the inclosure you see the statue of Vesta, the goddess worshipped by bakers.[IV_65] In the front, and round the gallery, those open stalls are loaded with a number of round loaves of the same form and weight: they are all five inches in thickness; the top is divided by eight notches—that is to say, they are first divided across, and the four parts are again subdivided.[IV_66] These lines are made in the dough, so that they may be more easily broken.
The Roman gentry and shopkeepers give the preference to this sort of household bread, simply composed of flour, water, and salt.[IV_67]
You perceive, here and there, several baskets, full of heavy biscuits; they are called autopyron; it is a coarse, black food, composed of bran mixed with a little flour, and made expressly for the dogs and slaves.[IV_68]
Do you see that colossal-looking man, with enormous limbs, who is walking about with an air of stupidity, and whose small head is covered with scars? The dealers know his profession, and one of them offers him the athletæ’s bread; it is kneaded, without leaven, with soft, white curd cheese, and is a coarse, heavy food, which that class of people seem to partake of with great delight.[IV_69] That stout baker before us occupies two of the most spacious shops in the market, on the left of the statue; he is one of the richest members of the corporation, and is the principal purveyor for the camp and army. Those large sacks, placed before him with so much symmetry, contain the buccellatum biscuit, or dried bread for the troops.[IV_70]
His neighbour (called the Greek), was born at Athens; he is the fashionable purveyor to the princes, senators, and sybarites of Rome. No one understands so well as himself the art of mixing salt, oil, and milk with the best wheaten flour; an exquisite combination, which produces the celebrated bread of Cappadocia, served only on the tables of the wealthy.[IV_71] With the artoplites, a light bread, made with the best wheaten flour, and baked in a mould, it is the only kind of which refined persons can partake.[IV_72] If we were not afraid of tiring you, we could point out many other sorts of bread which abound in the Forum Pistrinum, for there is some for all tastes and classes, from the artopticii, baked in moulds,[IV_73] a most nutritious and digestive bread, down to the furfuraceus, a mass of indigestible bran that the wildest savages among the Scythians could not have swallowed with impunity.
We should have spoken to you of the astrologicus bread, the paste of which is similar to that we use in our days to make fritters, commonly called batter.
Also of the cacabaceus, which is indebted for its agreeable and spicy flavour to the water, which is previously boiled in a kind of bronzed stewpan; and the siligineus bread, made of the best flour. Its manipulation is difficult and tedious; no matter—the epicurean prefers it, when, by chance, he happens to be hungry.[IV_74]
Neither ought we to forget the panis madidus, a species of paste made of milk and flour, with which the fashionable ladies and effeminate dandies covered their faces before going to bed, to preserve the freshness and beauty of their complexion.[IV_75]