Multisensory Living in Ancient Rome by Hannah Platts;

Author:Hannah Platts; [Platts, Hannah]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781350114326
Publisher: Bloomsbury UK
Published: 2019-09-26T00:00:00+00:00

I am called ‘the Crumb.’ You see what I am, a small dining hall. From me (see!) you look out on the dome of the Caesars. Pound the couches, call for wine, take roses, soak in nard. The god himself bids you remember death.

‘Mica vocor: quid sim cernis, cenatio parva: ex me Caesareum prospicis ecce tholum. frange toros, pete vina, rosas cape, tinguere nardo: ipse iubet mortis te meminisse deus.’84

Whilst Martial is not recounting a particular dining event in this epigram, the possible experiences to be had in Domitian’s ‘Crumb’ are again multisensory. There are three references to vision in this epigram: ‘cernis’, ‘prospicis’ and ‘ecce’, which clearly suggest the role of sight in the emperor’s dining room.85 Yet sight is not the only sense explored: there are also three words that suggest the importance of noise in this room, either in the form of speech or sound from hitting an object: ‘vocor’, ‘frange’ and ‘pete’. In addition, words reflecting olfaction, ‘rosas’ (roses) and ‘nardo’ (a perfumed oil), and taste, ‘vina’ (wine) similarly draw on other aspects of the bodily experience of dining.

Further descriptions that give insight into corporeal experience of unspecified dinner parties and lunches can be found in vignettes from the Colloquia of the Hermeneumata Pseudodositheana. Not only are the scenes which portray banquets filled with descriptions of the sensations to be had, but those which explain preparation processes of the dinner or lunch party are particularly pertinent when thinking about how Romans sought to manipulate multisensory experience in dining areas, especially during the convivium and other such events.

A passage in the Colloquium Celtis, which uses a scene of preparing for a dinner party as a tool for language teaching, is worth quoting in depth.

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