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Daily Bread of Ancient Rome - Naum Jasny
Daily Bread of Ancient Rome - Naum Jasny
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The daily bread
of the ancient Greeksand Romans(I)
goes out of his way to state that there was no meat in the house
(verses 56-57). The farmer's garden contained a great variety
of vegetables but, except for the spices, it was all (even such
cheap vegetables as cabbage and beets) for sale on the market,
partly for the dinners and diners described by CARCOPINO (5).
There hardly is any doubt that (except for areas unadapted to
crop production, such as mountains usable only as sheep and goat
pastures, or oak forests used as hog pastures) the diet of the broad
masses of the population in antiquity was almost exclusively
vegetarian. The farms of the Spartans produced only grain, wine,
and oil (PLUTARCH, Lycurgus, VIII). Cheese was the only animal
product among those contributed by the Spartans to their mess
(PLUTARCH, Lycurgus, XII). The Spartans themselves had meat
for dinner at the mess, although sometimes there was only 3 ounces
of it for each of them (ATHENAEUS, I4ib). But their families,
not to speak of the mass of the underprivileged, had meat only
on rare occasions. Sheep-milk cheese in small quantities was
probably partaken of more frequently. Among vegetable foods,
that from grain dominated and was indeed largely the only one
consumed.
The intriguing topic of the diet as a whole has to be abandoned
at this place in order to leave space for the proper subject of this
paper. Before turning to the evidence, however, it may be useful
to present the description and analysis of contemporary peasant
bread from Yugoslavia by ADAM MAURIZIO. In this evidence there
is an implicit warning particularly significant for students in the
United States, where daily bread according to its ingredients is
better than the cake of many other countries. The several breads
analyzed by MAURIZIO (6) were made respectively from corn mixed
with barley, rye mixed with barley, Russian millet, Italian millet,
rye, corn, emmer, barley, and wheat. The poorly or entirely
uncleaned grain was ground-certainly in one passage-in querns
(hand mills) and not sifted or, in any case, not adequately sifted.
The breads were baked under a pot rather than in an oven. They
(5) The long list of edibles in the Edict of DIOCLETIAN, intended for the benefit
of lesser officials and soldiers, may indicate that variety of food in the 4th century
A. D. was not entirely restricted to the rich.
(6) Die Geschichte unserer Pflanzennahrung von den Urzeiten bis zur Gegenwart
(Bcrlin, 1927), pp. 386-89.
230 N. JASNY
THE CHOICEOFGRAINS
(7) " Roman Spain," An economic survey of ancient Rome (Baltimore, 1937),
vol. III, pp. 175-76.
(8) " Roman Egypt in the reign of Diocletian," An economic survey of ancient
Rome (Baltimore, 1936), vol. II, pp. 301-02 and others.
DAILY BREAD OF THE ANCIENT GREEKSAND ROMANS 231
that wheat was the only grain used for food in Egypt. The per
capita wheat allowance for Sicily is so large in V. M. SCRA-
MUZZA's (9) study that practically no room is left for the con-
sumption of barley. AUGUSTE JARDE'(io) computed for Attica the
requirements for barley as feed at a figure as high as the total
output of this grain, and thus was forced to the conclusion that,
except for imports, only the output of wheat was available for
human consumption (i i); this would clearly imply that the owners
of estates in which barley was the only grain grown purchased
imported wheat for their slaves.
If there is one topic on which no progress has been made in
the last two millennia, it is the persistence of PLINY'S idea that
the Greeks liked barley while the Romans preferred wheat, which
is repeated to the present day. But, even now, only a minority
of the earth's population can afford to use as food that kind of
grain which it prefers: wheat in the Occidental, and rice in the
Oriental world. The rest make use of that grain which can be
produced locally with the smallest amount of labor or on the
smallest area of land. In addition to wheat and rice, huge quan-
tities of rye, corn, grain-sorghum, millet, buckwheat, barley, and
oats are consumed for food in the world-for all practical purposes
because the people can not afford the grain preferred by them.
Moreover, the difference in the preferred grain between the
Occidental and Oriental world is likewise determined by natural
conditions. Rice is not only the preferred grain of the Orient,
but the one which permits the greatest output per acre of land-the
decisive limiting factor for the density of the population there.
This explains why the domination of rice is much more complete
in its sphere than that of wheat in its.
While the role of wheat in classical antiquity has been greatly
exaggerated, it certainly was large, but preference of the consumers
had little to do with this phenomenon. The reason was that in
the Mediterranean region, the only region analyzed here, wheat
encountered less competition from other grains than in almost
any other part of the world. Only barley and wheat are well
adapted to the climate and soil of the Mediterranean region.
Barley outyields wheat everywhere in the area, but the inferiority
of wheat in this respect declines as soil becomes better and moisture
more adequate. Improvements in cultural practices also favor the
more exacting wheat. Under conditions very favorable for wheat,
its inferiority in yield in relation to barley may be almost completely
compensated for by its superiority in caloric value.
In the beginning of the classical era Egypt possibly was the
only Mediterranean country where wheat dominated; even there
more barley was grown and eaten than is commonly assumed.
It is not known definitely what Italy grew in the beginning of
the classical era, but by the end of that era wheat was Italy's
principal food grain. The relatively good moisture conditions of
Italy and the relatively large proportion of good alluvial and
volcanic soils are the reasons. Considerable amounts of other
grains, namely barley and millet (and in the north also rye), were,
however, grown and consumed for food-along with wheat-in
that country.
Greece grew barley almost exclusively-probably until the end
of the classical era. Wheat was consumed in large quantities only
in the cities, chiefly Athens, which relied on imports for most
of their grain supplies. But much food made from barley was
consumed even in Athens as evidenced by ARISTOTLE, PLATO,
GALEN, and others. In Sparta barley was the standard, indeed
practically the sole grain-and by no means because of specific
moral considerations - as many believe. No other grain was pro-
duced in large quantities on the land of the Spartans; no other
grain was delivered to their mess. The Spartans, as everybody
else, preferred wheat, but with their dinner they ate only maza,
a barley product, and certainly a lot of it; they received wheat
bread only after dinner, and this only if a rich member donated
it. At home most of them and their families, not to speak of
the rest of the population, ate food made from barley.
Barley was the dominant crop in the Near East, except possibly
on the irrigated lands of Babylonia where this dominance may
have ceased before the classical era had started. The natural
conditions of Spain, Roman Africa, and Sicily make it certain
that a great deal of barley was grown there in classical antiquity,
DAILY BREAD OF THE ANCIENT GREEKSAND ROMANS 233
THE MILL
(I2) PIERRE MONTEr, Les scenes de la vie privee dans les tombeaux igyptiens
de l'ancien empire (Strassbourg and Paris, 1925), P. 234.
(I 3) B. LANSBURGER, " Zur Mehlbereitung im Altertum," Orientalische Literatur-
zeitung, 25, p. 338, 1922.
234 N. JASNY
(14) Essai sur l'histoire du ge'nie rural (Paris, I910), vol. III, pp. 544-56.
DAILY BREAD OF THE A.NCIENT GREEKSA-ND ROMANI.-S 235
(xS) History of corn milling (Liverpool and London, i898), vol. I, p. 84.
2 36 N J,ASNY
4...
V.4 -
(i6) This implement was described for the first time in detail by K. KIJRUNioin
in 19I7. But the credit for collecting the scattered information on this implement
and showing its wide use in Greece goes to DAVID ROBINSON (Excavations at
Olvnthus, Baltimore, 1938, vol. VIII, pp. 327-32; Baltimore, 1946, vol. XII,
pp. 217 ff.).
DAILY BREAD OF THE ANCIENT GREEKSAND ROMANS 237
superiority of the hopper-rubber over the saddle-stone was only
moderate and, so far as the development toward the rotating mill
is concerned, the hopper-rubber is more likely to have been a
blind alley than, as ROBINSONthinks, a stepping stone (I7).
The great inadequacy of the saddle-stone mill and its derivative,
(I7) ROBINSON'S wording (op. cit., VIII, p. 329) seems to imply that he was
surprised by the fact that " the surface dimensions of the lower stone were
conspicuously not larger than those of the upper stone." The lower stone could
not, however, be substantially wider than it actually was, because, with the slow
movement of the hopper-rubber, the ground product would not have left the
instrument otherwise than by falling from the lower stone to the table on which
this stone was placed. The hopper-rubber could have become a stepping stone
toward the rotation mill if, by enlarging the lower stone, the hopper-rubber
would ultimately have been made to rotate. This might possibly have occurred
only if, simultaneously with the expanding of the lower stone, both stones had
been given the inclination present in the " Roman " mill. There seems no
justification for ROBINSON's assumption that that was the actual process. The
very imperfect rotating hand mills (almost all of them too small to be used for
grain grinding) excavated by R. A. MACALISTER at Gezer (The Excavations of
Gezer, London, 1912, VOl. II, pp. 36-37) and dated iooo B. C. are much more
likely to have been the direct predecessor of the Roman mill and the quern than
the hopper-rubber.
238 x. JASNY
A_~z
(i8) While the time when the rotating mill was first available in a reasonably
workable form is not known, it is unlikely that this occurred much earlier than
the 2nd Century B. C. The rotating mill probably did not exist in Greece at
the time of PLATO and ARISTOTLE. 'When MICHELL (The Economics of Ancier
Greece, Cambridge, England, 1940, PP. 193-94) says that quems were used at
the tine of Hoim, it is a repetition of an error refuted long ago.
DAILY BREAD OF THE ANCIENT GREEKSAND ROMANS 239
two forms, the so-called " Roman" or donkey mill, i.e., a mill
rotated by a man (or men) or an animal movtingaround the mill
(FIGURE 4), and the quern, a hand mill, rotated by an unmoving
person or persons (FIGURE 5l). Athough in the literature the
emphasis is always placed on the ' Roman' mill, the quern was
probably the more important of the two types at that time.
_. : :- IE
(20) " Querns," Antiquity, II, pp. 733-51, 1937; and " More about querns,"
Antiquity,15, pp. 15-32, 1941.
See especially " More about querns," op. cit., p. 29 and plates II and III.
(2I)
Pompeii, its life and art (New York, I899), p. 382.
(22)
(23) On the speed of contemporary stone mills now used for flour production
only in backward countries, see B. W. DEDRICK, Practical Milling (Chicago, 1924),
pp. 26-27.
The highly competent BENNETT and ELTON (op. cit., I, pp. 179-80) explain
(24)
the form of the Roman mill by backwardness. But it may not have been as
simple as that in the judgment of the present writer.
DAILY BREAD OF THE ANCIENT GREEKSAND ROMANS 241
degree of fineness attainable in the " Roman " mill was indeed
probably smaller than in the saddle-mill, although in practice the
product of the " Roman " mill might usually have been somewhat
finer, because of the diminished cost of power per unit of ground
product.
So far as rotating mills are concerned, the gear was apparently
first applied to water mills, although the very first water mills
may have been made without one. The famous water mill
described by VITRUVIUS(25) (2nd half of the last century B.C.)
was in any case described as having been equipped with a gear.
Technology, however, was to such an extent in its infancy that
the availability of the gear was not taken advantage of for increasing
the speed of the mill. Indeed, VITRUVIUS' text implies that the
mill proper turned even more slowly than the main shaft, about
as slow as the " Roman" mill. The Agora mill, which was the
occasion for PARSON'Smeditations quoted at the beginning of this
article and which dated as late as the 5th century A.D., did not
differ in this respect from VITRUVIUS'mill (26). It made probably
less than 20 rotations per minute, while the optimum speed for
the size of the stones found at the site would have been over
200 r.p.m.
Grinding experiments with the " Roman" mill (the Vitruvius
or any other classical water mill was never reconstructed success-
fully) have apparently never been made. As to the quern, " it
employs two pairs of hands four hours to grind only a single
bushel of corn," reported Dr. JOHNSON from Scotland in the
18th century (27). An Indian woman is supposed to be able
to grind 4 pounds of grain per hour with a hand mill (28). Coarse
grinding was, or is, involved in both cases. CURWEN(29) arranged
experiments with querns that dated from the 2nd to the 4th century
of the Christian era, and fairly good and probably reasonably fine
flour was obtained by the repeated-grinding process. It took
(25)VITRUVIUs, De architectura, X, 5, 2.
(26)According to PARSONS (op. cit., pp. 88-89), the Agora mill was an exact
reproduction of the VITRUVIUS mill in all respects.
(27) London Magazine, 1774, 333, here quoted from BENNETT and ELTON, op.
cit., I, pp. i68-9.
(28) Report on the Marketing of W'heat in India (Delhi, 1937), p. 293.
(29) " More about querns," op. cit., 1941, p. 29.
j6
242 N. JASNY
(30) GUSTAVE DALMAN, Arbeit und Sitte in Palastina (Gutersloh, 1g33), vol. III,
P. 293.
(Pr) Dr. A. E. R. BOAK remarks on this score that the sieves found at Karanis,
Fayum, Egypt, in the University of Michigan excavations, and belonging to the
Roman period, had " fairly coarse holes."
(32) DALMAN, op. Cit., pp. 292-94.
(33) Mishnah, Menahoth, 6, 7.
DAILY BREAD OF THE ANCIENT GREEKSAND ROMANS 243
use of the adjective " fine," where it is not found in the original,
is clearly wrong (34). Coarse grinding is not a very serious evil,
however, in itself. Clean grain, coarsely ground, with all the hull
(if the grain is a hulled one) and at least part of the skin removed
by sifting, yields, when properly baked, a bread that has a good
taste and is palatable, although necessarily coarse.
Cleaning.-In antiquity, most of the grain was apparently ground
together with all the foreign matter and dirt in and on it. PLINY,
who described the most refined grain-processing known in Europe
at his time, had nothing to say on the cleaning of the grain before
grinding. In the Near East some of the wheat, the choice grain,
was washed-a thorough method of cleaning. Hand picking of
foreign matter, probably mainly larger stones, also is indicated
by the sources only for the Near East (The Mishnah) but was
probably practised also in other areas. More frequent than those
operations was possibly the use of one or two sieves for removing
the foreign matter larger and smaller than the grain proper.
In Egypt the use of a sieve for this purpose is indicated by
the reliefs even for pre-classical times, but the practice is unlikely
to have been common. The worn state of the teeth of the
mummies is commonly explained by the presence of a great deal
of sand in their bread, and it seems unlikely that this sand came
solely from the grinding stones (35). Even for classical times the
practice of cleaning the grain with a sieve is mentioned by Egyptian
sources only, or mainly, in cases when repayment of a debt in
grain was involved, i.e., when there was reason to be afraid that
the grain would be purposely in poor condition (36).
(34) For example, the translation of similago (Cato, LXXV) as " fine flour "
in Loeb Classical Library.
(35) These worn teeth incidentally testify also against the extensive use of a
sieve in the preparation of flour in old Egypt, commonly accepted by students
as the standard practice.
(36) MICHAEL SCHNEBEL, Die Landwirtschaft im Hellenistischen Aegypten,
(Munchen, 1925), pp. i8i-2.
244 N. JASNY
dealing with the three-grade grindings (37). Yet even PLINY con-
tains a great deal of evidence on other types of grinding. Whatever
PLINY said, however, the proportion of grain ground to three grades
or more of flour certainly did not exceed a few percent of the
total in antiquity, and may not have been much larger than one
percent.
The principal food, maza, made by the Greeks from grain (see
next section) was made of alphiton. When the present writer first
came across the interpretation that alphiton was common hulled
barley coarsely ground in its natural state, i.e., with all the hulls,
he refused to believe it; nevertheless, a search of an indication
that anything was ever removed before or after the grinding was
in vain. One has to reconcile oneself to the idea that the glorious
era of PERICLES, DEMOSTHENES, ARISTOTLE, and PLATO was based
on " bread " which now, even in only moderately civilized
countries, would be considered good enough only for swine.
According to GALEN, the hull was removed from the barley
when the product was intended for bread production. Even this
may have been the standard practice only in Greece or only in
Greek cities, where the daily food was maza made from barley
with all the hull in, while bread, even from barley, was something
extra. However, the small farmer in VIRGIL'S Moretum (verses
39-41) also sifted the barley after grinding before using it for baking.
PLINY was not much interested in the bread eaten by the small
fry in Rome and in the provinces. Yet even from his writings
it is obvious that whole-grain meal was very important. In
stating the prices of flour, for example (XVIII, go), he put the
price of farina, whole-wheat meal, in the first place. PLINY's and
other evidence leave no doubt that the predominant portion of
grain ground to flour (flour in the wide sense) was converted by
one passage through the mill or mortar into meal, with the sieve
used only when unhulled barley was involved, which had to serve
as the material for bread preparation. Even this may have been
practiced primarily in cities and suburban areas.
So far as flour better than whole-grain meal was prepared in
(37) See for example TENNEY FRANK, An economic survey of ancient Rome
(Baltimore, 1939), Vol. V, p. 144; or AUGUST MAU in Pauly's Encyclopedia, 2,
2735, I896.
DAILY BREAD OF THE ANCIENT GREEKSAND ROMANS 245
(38) See for example PLINY, XVIII, 67. The incorrect interpretation of all
of PLINY's statements on flour other than farina as pertaining to the three-grade
grindings is due to the interpretation of siligo and similago as the second grades
of those grindings. Actually siligo and similago almost always represented one-
grade flours. For details see the writer's " Wheat Prices and Milling Costs in
Classical Antiquity," Wheat studies of the Food Research Institute, 20, 151-56, I944.
(39) Op. cit., PP. 155-56.
(40) " The breads of Ephesus and their prices," Agricultural history, 21, 190,
'947.
(41) See ROJoBERTUS, " Zur Frage des Sachwertes des Geldes im Altertum,"
a/ahrbucherfur Nationzklikonomie und Statistik, 14, p. V, I870, and MICHAEL
ROSTOWZEW, " Frumentum," Pauly's Encyclopedia, 7, 149, 1912.
246 N. JASNY
the three-grade grindings was white. The erroneous idea that the
three-grade grindings were widespread in antiquity has already
been mentioned. White bread was indeed so rare that even in
Rome a plebeian did not get a slice of it even when, perhaps
once in a lifetime, he was invited to dinner by his patron (42).
The error of assuming a low extraction of flour, discussed above
in connection with one-grade flours, was actually made in con-
nection with PLINY'S three-grade grindings. (The existence of
one-grade flours in antiquity has been entirely disregarded.) The
students quoted in note 41 above assumed the extraction of flour
in those grindings to have been only about 6o per cent. The
present writer's analysis (43) indicates that the extraction of all
three grades was closer to 90 per cent. The last or 3rd grade,
cibarium or secundarium, not included with the flour by RODBERTUS
and ROSTOWZEW, must be treated as flour for antiquity because
it was used for human food. According to present standards it
was, of course, nothing but fine bran or a mixture of fine bran
and middlings.
If all three grades of PLINY'S three-grade grindings were mixed
together, they would have yielded a flour which (provided the
grain were clean and the baking proper) would have produced
grey and coarse but welltasting and palatable bread. However,
the 3rd grade would now pass only as animal feed not only in
the United States but in most of the world. Yet bread was made
and used both as animal feed and human food in antiquity even
from the coarse bran (panis furfureus), obtained in addition to
the three grades of " flour."
Groats. Porridge rather than bread was the principal food of
the Romans in their early history. A saying has it that the Roman
legionnaires conquered the world on porridge. The principal
material for porridge in Italy was emmer (a hulled wheat), from
which the hull but not the skin was removed. The best material
for porridge (alica) was prepared by breaking up the hulled
emmer into bits, and sorting the product into three sizes of which
the largest and poorest was recognized as an inferior product and
had a special name. In a similar way the Greeks made their
porridge from barley with the hull but not the skin removed;
the breaking into bits, if done at all, was part of the cooking
proper. The mortar was the instrument used in both countries
in the preparation of groats. An immense distance separates
those products from the farina made of wheat and from pearl
barley of today.
BREAD
Picenum still maintains its ancient reputation for making bread which it was
the first to invent, alica being the material employed. The alica is kept in soak
for nine days, and is kneaded on the tenth with raisin juice, in the shape of long
rolls, after which it is baked in the oven in earthen pots, till these break. This
bread is never eaten until it has been soaked, which is mostly done in milk mixed
with honey.
One is tempted to think that the raisin juice and the milk mixed
with honey were added to offset the sourness and foulness
developed in the dough during the long exposure to the bacilli
of the air. Yet Picenum bread is mentioned as a delicacy even
by the gourmet Athenaeus.
The use of amulum from wheat for bread-making in antiquity
is another indication that the most elementary aspects of bread-
making were not understood then. The bread-making properties
of the wheat were destroyed in the preparation of the amulum
with the removal, indeed the destruction, of the proteins, the
most valuable part of the wheat. With the techniques of that
time, amulum and the products from it may have been an easy
way of obtaining white products, and this whiteness was a strong
attraction.
des sciences, 57, (Paris, i863), pp. 475-79. The breads, when fresh, probably
weighed 3 Roman pounds, i.e., slightly over iooo grams.
252 N. JASNY
under the pot or cooked in the pot (54). At least in some Italian
towns, bread is still baked in commercial bakeries by the people
themselves.
(54) FRANK, OP. Cit., V, p. 26i, gives as reasons for the centralization of baking
in commercial shops in Pompeii ... inadequate methods of milling," scarcity
of fuel, and " slow process of baking." Only scarcity of fuel could have been
a factor, but there is a saving of fuel involved when the heat used for baking
simultaneously warms the room (baking on braziers, which were in wide use
in antiquity and the like). Inadequate methods of milling fostered home rather
than commercial grinding. 'T'he process of baking was fast rather than slow
in antiquity because of little or no fermentation and the flat form of the individual
breads. In any case, the slowness of the baking, particularly pronounced in
rye-bread preparation, nowhere proved a hindrance to home baking.