No multi-course service like the wealthy Romans: here, the table of a freed slave turned schoolmaster. A cereal base (barley maza or porridge), accompanied by whatever the season provides — olives, goat cheese, figs, pulses — and a drink cut with water. Eat little, talk much. The order does not matter: it is the soul, not the stomach, that one seeks to nourish.

Barley, the grain of the poor and the wise, and a drizzle of olive oil: that is the signature of this table. No costly garum or Eastern spices, but simplicity elevated to a virtue — eat what suffices, refuse what enslaves.