From Farm to Triclinum
The Villa Regina at Boscoreale, its museum, and the Triclinia of the Bay of Naples.
The value of “Farm to Table” eating—where one knows where the produce that arrives on your table comes from and that this produce is grown sustainably, organically, and hopefully in a regenerative environment—is central to the way I think about food. One of the driving inspirations behind this project has been to explore how this value has been made manifest over centuries in one region—Campania.
This post seeks to take this phrase literally and look at both the ancient farm and agriculture in the area around Pompeii and look at what constituted “the table” in this world. The natural growth of plants is a process that remains relatively unchanged and hence provides a deep cultural continuity. How we eat—sitting at a table was not always the case.
This past week we spent a day driving around the area surrounding the Pompeii archaeological sites visiting the “suburban villas” around the city. The experience reminded me of driving around a dense version of Los Angeles and all of a sudden coming upon an excavation. We visited Stabiae, Boscoreale and Oplontis. Much of what I will cover here is about our visit to the Villa Regina at Boscoreale. There are other villas in the area and, in fact, the Metropolitan Museum of Art has an entire room from the Villa of P. Fannius Synistor from Boscoreale which is why I even knew of this small settlement.
However it is Villa Regina that is the exceptional find at Boscoreale. It is in fact one of the exceptional finds on the Bay of Naples in totality for what we are able to learn from it about agricultural production at the time of the eruption of Vesuvius. From the text plaque above the site:
“Discovered in 1977, the villa at Villa Regina was completely exposed thanks to systematic excavations that were completed in 1984. A characteristic example of a small-scale production unit, intended for wine production, the villa also had an upper floor. It’s original layout dates back to the 1st century BC but it was renovated and enlarged in at least two subsequent periods (in the Augustan and Julio Claudia’s periods).
The building is centered on a wine cellar with 18 underground terracotta containers (dolia), used to store the must obtained in the Catonian torcularium, from the grapes of the vineyard that surround the villa; the layout of which is reconstructed. The only stately room in the complex is the triclinium (11) decorated with paintings from the beginning of the 4th style; adjacent to it is a bar with a threshing floor, paved in cocciopesto. Beyond the vestibule, opposite room 1, is the storage room (2) also used in AD 79 as a temporary kitchen. . .”
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The adjacent “Antiquarium” is an extraordinary museum which documents agricultural production in the area. It is the perfect complement to the Archaeological Museum in Naples which treats the finds as “art” first and expressions of culture second. Here the richness of the culture shines through. Here it is possible to not only understand what was cultivated but what was hunted, gathered, fished, etc.
I was speaking with a classicist here the other night and she said that the ancient Romans looked at their food as coming from three realms: the land, the sea, and the sky. To this day restaurants in the area divide their menus in two—that which comes from the land and that which comes from the sea.
From the Boscoreale website:
“The Antiquarium, set up in 1991 and located in a building close to the site of Villa Regina, illustrates, with the help of educational tools, the particularly favorable life and environment, during the Roman epoch, for human settlement in and use of the Vesuvius countryside. The exhibition showcases the numerous finds of every kind found during the excavations carried out between the late-19th century and the first decade of the 20th century [This may be incorrectly translated on the website and really mean late 20th and early 21st century]. These finds were often discovered in an exceptional state of preservation under the blanket of ash and Vesuvius lava in some houses located in Pompeii and in the farmhouses and elegant villas that existed in this area allowing us to obtain highly precise data on the living standards, economic conditions, and the customs and traditions of the inhabitants of this territory during the Roman era.”
The following photographs seek to capture the breadth of this amazing museum. I am sure that there are things I have left out that should be included:
You are asked to go through the Antiquarium before going through the Villa which I think is very helpful because you appreciate the Villa as part of this agricultural world even more.
The Villa is part of the agricultural production but it was also a home and features a significant Triclinium—the Ancient Roman equivalent of a dining room. It is a “Tri-clinium” as it traditionally had three couches organized in a “u” with an open side to allow for serving to a central table.
It is important to remember that when we speak about eating in a triclinium, we are speaking about the upper classes. Much of the urban poor lived without kitchens and made use of vendors on the street—a situation that persisted throughout the history of Naples as a city. It is for this reason that Naples has such a deep tradition of street food.
On our trip to Pompeii back in mid-September, we saw several impressive Triclinia—perhaps the most helpful in understanding the function of the room is at the House of Loreius Tiburtinus. Here, two of the couch frames have been restored using the original bronze fittings. One can easily imagine the third couch on the right and get a sense for the size of these couches which could accommodate more than one person. An interesting thing about Roman houses is that often they have an outdoor, summer, triclinium. Some of these have built-in couches such as the one at the House of Loreius Tiburtinus.
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Shelby Brown in a blog post on the Iris Blog of the Getty Center discusses the practice of Reclining and Dining (and Drinking) in Ancient Rome, A look at the practice with a diagram of status-seating in the Roman triclinium - April 10, 2012:
“The ancient Greeks had a recumbent approach to their (male-only) dinner parties . . . The practice of reclining and dining continued into Ancient Rome, but with a few additions - for one, respectable women were invited to join the party, and for another, drinking was not a separate, post-dinner event, but became part of the dining experience. . .
The Greeks used single couches onto which companions were often squeezed for after-dinner drinking parties. The practice seems to have been adopted from the east, where it was a form of dining for elites. In Rome, couches for single (generally male) diners existed, but by the late Republican and early Imperial period the practice at dinner parties was for guests to recline on three large beds placed in a U shape. . .
Ancient sources of course take it for granted that the reader knew all about dining protocol, and therefore authors didn’t bother to explain the rules for dining with crystal clarity. Scholars sometimes debate the locations of the best seats. (The Romans themselves called the reclining spots “sedes,” seats.) We know that the middle bed (“lecture medius) offered a very good location, and there is evidence that this middle bed was an especially honorable one . . . Queen Dido positioned herself “on a golden couch, in the middle,” when she feasted with Aeneas and Cupid, disguised as Aeneas’s son (Virgil, “Aeneid” 1.1297-700).”
What follows is a gallery of some Triclinia in Pompeii and environs. The rooms are often the most beautifully decorated ones in the house. The most spectacular is the famous Triclinium at the Villa of the Mysteries.
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The Roman custom of eating while reclining seems to have some basis in the science of digestion. We are very accustomed to being told to sit up straight while eating—and this concept of eating entire meals in reclined position seems odd, but as Ingrid Spilde writes on the website Science Norway the reclined position may aid in digestion. She writes in her article of July 12, 2012:
“Perhaps it was more than fashion that inspired the ancient Romans to eat in a horizontal position, researchers Trygve Hausken and Jørgensen Valeur suggest in the latest issue of the Norwegian Medical Association’s journal Tidsskriftet for Den norske legeforening.
The weight of a meal itself influences the uncomfortable feeling of being stuffed to the brim.
‘We think pressure on the antrum - the lower portion of the stomach - has a lot to do with discomfort after a meal,’ says Valeur, a senior resident at Oslo’s Lovisenberg Diakonale Hospital . . .
‘Normally the upper part of the stomach will expand while you eat, adjusting to the amount of food. But if you are stressed, the walls of your stomach stiffen, which increases the pressure on the lower part,’ he says.
The feeling of discomfort comes when the atrium is distended. . . Pressure on the antrum changes when we lie down. But not just any lie-down will do.
According to the researchers, if you recline on your right side, the lower part of the stomach expands so you feel stuffed, but if you lie on your left side, the load on the antrum is reduced.
‘It’s fair to assume that a person can actually alleviate the discomfort after a meal by lying on the proper side,’ says . . .
He thinks other factors could also be involved in making pressure on the lower part of the stomach cause problems. . .
Valeur thinks that if a larger pressure on your the antrum lets more of the stomach contents pass by the pyloric sphincter, this could contribute to discomfort after a meal. Then it is not unfeasible that resting on your left side can help . . .”
There is much that we can learn from the past—not by slavishly copying its ways—Roman culture functioned through the use of the institution of slavery—but by trying to learn why they did and incorporating what makes sense into our lives. There are lessons in how we grow and eat our food.