Cicero at the table

The real Roman meal is the cena, taken late in the afternoon, reclining on couches around a low table. It opens with the gustatio (appetizers: eggs, olives, seasoned vegetables, accompanied by mulsum), continues with the mensa prima (main courses, meats and fish in sauce), and closes with the mensa secunda (fruit, honey, pastries). Earlier in the day, the common people and frugal old Romans like Cicero prided themselves on often making do with puls, the cereal porridge. Bread (panis) only became the staple during the late Republic.

Fermented fish sauce is the absolute signature of the Roman table: a few drops salt, deepen, and 'umamify' almost everything, from daily porridge to banquet game. It is the ancient equivalent of soy sauce. It is often paired with defrutum (grape must reduced to syrup) and a pinch of pepper, a luxury spice that Cicero's elite could afford.