The Romans had three meals a day. The first meal was in the morning, the ientaculum, or breakfast, which was simple, consisting of bread flavored with salt or dipped in wine, olives, grapes, eggs, and cheese. The second meal was at midday, the cena, or dinner, which with the country people was the principal meal. In the city this midday meal was a lunch, the prandium, while the cena, dinner, was taken later in the day, toward evening, and often became quite an elaborate affair. There was sometimes a fourth meal, comissatio, served late at night, which really was but little more than a drinking-bout.
The meals were usually served in the triclinium, or dining-room. In this was a square dining-table, having on three sides one-armed couches, the remaining side being left open for serving. Each of these couches had room for three persons, who reclined upon the left arm, with the feet outward. About the end of the republic, round tables came into use, with semicircular couches. Some of these tables were quite valuable, being made of rare imported woods. The guests used napkins, which they might have brought themselves or were provided by the host. In later times table-cloths came into use. The principal ornament on the table was the salinum, or salt-cellar, as salt was used not only for seasoning, but also for sacrifices, and the salinum also held the sacrificial cakes. The chief implements for eating were two kinds of spoons, the ligula, shaped very much like the table spoon of the present, and the cochlear, which had a small circular bowl, flat or slightly hollowed, with a pointed handle. Knives and forks seem to have come into use during the later times of the empire.
The chief dish of the poorer classes was porridge, made of a farinaceous substance and which served them as bread. They had such vegetables as the cabbage, turnip, radish, leek, garlic, onion, cucumber, and pumpkin. Meat was rarely eaten, perhaps only on festival occasions. The market afforded all kinds of foods. Among the animals were the rabbit, pheasant, guinea-fowl, common poultry, peacock, kid, pig, and boar; there were various kinds of fish and oysters and snails; beside the plants mentioned above were rue, lettuce, cress, mallow, and sorrell. It would seem that they had quite a number of different kinds of grain; among the fruits were the apple, pear, plum, cherry, quince, peach, pomegranate, fig, olive, and grape; there were lemons and oranges and nuts of various kinds.
Wine was the only drink of an intoxicating nature that the Romans had. It was customary to mix the wine with water, and to drink the wine without putting water into it was considered a sign of intemperance. For a number of years the water-supply was such as could be obtained from the Tiber, wells, and natural springs, and it was not till the time of the republic that the water was brought from outside of Rome, for which means aqueducts were built and which continued to be built until there was an abundant supply of water.
Child and Parent.
The relation which existed between the father and the child was known as the patria potestas. This power of the father was very great in early times. He could sell his children, disinherit them, select a wife for a son or a husband for a daughter, and he even had the power to put them to death. This power ceased only at death or if the father lost his rights of Roman citizenship. The father himself could emancipate his son. Also this power over the son ceased should he become a flamen, or priest, and it ceased over the daughter if she married or took the vestal vows.
Names.
The boys received the nomen, family name, on the ninth day after birth and girls on the eighth day. On such day the ceremony of purification took place, which was by sprinkling with a branch of olive or laurel dipped in water, the burning of incense, and the offering of sacrifice. The boy was given his prænomen when he put on the toga virilis at sixteen or seventeen and the girl when she was married. The wife at marriage took the nomen of her husband's family, but this was not often a change from her own family as usually marriages were between members of the same gens. In later times, when marriage did not mean so much, and divorces became frequent, the wife did not take her husband's nomen but she was known by the nomen of her father's gens.
Care and Treatment of Children.
"Identical with modern times were the anxious care of mothers, relatives, and nurses, the words of endearment (such as birdie, little dove, little crow, little mother, little lady), and the lisping childish language and the lullabies ('sleep, my child, or suck'), rattles and other means of soothing (such as beating the stone that had hit the child), and the many superstitions, at all ages: such as binding on teeth of horses and boars to alleviate the teething, and old wives' simples and amulets against the evil eye. As a preservative against the strigæ, or vampires, garlic was wrapt up in the swaddling-clothes and hawthorn planted in the windows. A mother, who was passing a temple of Venus, would mumble a prayer for her daughter's beauty and make a vow. The figure of the girls was made artificially perfect. They wore tight stays from early childhood, so as to raise the hips into relief, and nurses' carelessness often produced rounded backs or unequal shoulders."[192]