Gastronomy/Food Images in Antiquity

This is a course on Food in Antiquity, main learning material is a database of images of food from Antiquity that can be connected to original Latin and Ancient Greek texts. A great tool for all interested in Classics, and everybody is welcome to participate. There are tons of Roman mosaics all over Europe, Asia and Africa depicting food and many of them remain obscure. There are also frescoes, pottery designs, and many other things that languish in the corners of various museums without proper attention. However, if we combine our efforts and bring them to light trying to match them with extant texts we will enrich our understanding of both texts and images alike and create a fabulous learning resource for Classics and Food History alike. Upload relevant pictures you might have taken during the trips, giving credit to the places of origin and try to match them with quotations from our sources.

Wikimedia gives us amazing tools for such a project, we can use links to Wikipedia, Wikisource, Wictionary, Wikispecies and even Wikivoyage sister sites to expand the commentary on every image and related quote, a luxury previous students of Classics never had. So, dextro pede, let's start.


Foods edit

Bread and cereals edit
Fish and seafood edit

Murena/muraena moray eel, especially Muraena helena

Fowl and eggs edit
Fruit edit
  • dates [[[Wikipedia:Date palm#Dates|Date palm#Dates]]]

/Dates and figs fresco, Herculaneum

  • figs [[[Wikipedia:Common fig|Common fig]]]

/Dates and figs fresco, Herculaneum

  • pomegranates [[[Wikipedia:Pomegranate|Pomegranate]]]

/Pomegranate mosaic, Tarragona

Meat, milk and cheese edit
  • deer
Oil and olives edit
Spices and condiments edit
Vegetables and pulses edit
Wine and other liquids edit

glass goblet with (possibly) wine or honey on /Dates and figs fresco, Herculaneum

Images edit

Frescoes edit

Italy edit

Herculaneum edit
House of the Deer edit

/Dates and figs

Spain edit

Tarragona

/Hunting deer, Tarragona

Mosaics edit

Italy edit

/Fish mosaic, Aquileia


England edit

France edit

Germany edit

Greece edit

Spain edit

Tarragona

/Pomegranate mosaic, Tarragona

Cyprus edit

Israel edit

Turkey edit

Syria edit

Algeria edit

Egypt edit

Morocco edit

Tunis edit

Unknown edit

Texts edit

Greek edit

Latin edit

Apicius edit

Martial edit

Martial, Epigrams, book 13 - Xenia

Ovid edit

Ovid, Fasti