The poor's and the rich's dinners: Food as a marker of social categories in Martial's epigrams

Abstract

Martial's epigrams are a very valuable literary source for understanding the food and dining customs in Rome in the 1st century AD. The compositions referring to dinners show not only the preparations that were served, but also food as a material and symbolic element of status and demarcation of the different social groups. In particular, the dinners offered by the patrons to their clients are studied. In these epigrams, the contrast between the luxurious dishes and products enjoyed by the patrons and the poor quality food given to the clients allows Martial to make a sharp criticism of the social inequalities prevailing in his time. Moreover, this contrast is also a compositional and discursive device characteristic of his poetics. In conclusion, in Martial, the motif of food, the ways of consuming and eating associated with it, are a means of attacking the vices and moral degradation of the customs of his time, and in the contrast between one food and another, the poet finds the metaphorical expression of the ethical values he longs for: honesty, equality and friendship.