Читать книгу Cookery and Dining in Imperial Rome - Apicius - Страница 21

“About the time of Tiberius [42 B.C.-37 A.D.] there lived a man, named Apicius; very rich and luxurious, for whom several kinds of cheesecake called Apician, are named [not found in our present A.]. He spent myriads of drachmas on his belly, living chiefly at Minturnæ, a city of Campania, eating very expensive crawfish, which are found in that place superior in size to those of Smyrna, or even to the crabs of Alexandria. Hearing, too, that they were very large in Africa, he sailed thither, without waiting a single day, and suffered exceedingly on his voyage. But when he came near the coast, before he disembarked (for his arrival made a great stir among the Africans) the fishermen came alongside in their boats and brought him some very fine crawfish; and he, when he saw them, asked if they had any finer; and when they said that there were none finer than those which they had brought, he, recollecting those at Minturnæ ordered the master of the ship to sail back the same way into Italy, without going near the land. …

“When the emperor Trajan [A.D. 52 or 53–117] was in Parthia [a country in Asia, part of Persia?] at a distance of many days from the sea, Apicius sent him fresh oysters, which he had kept so by a clever contrivance of his own; real oysters. …”

(The instructions given in our Apicius book, Recipe 14, for the keeping of oysters would hardly guarantee their safe arrival on such a journey as described above.)

Athenaeus tells us further that many of the Apician recipes were famous and that many dishes were named after him. This confirms the theory that Apicius was not the author of the present book but that the book was dedicated to him by an unknown author or compiler. Athenaeus also mentions one Apion who wrote a book on luxurious living. Whether this man is identical with the author or patron of our book is problematic. Torinus, in his epistola dedicatoria to the 1541 edition expresses the same doubt.

Marcus Gabius (or Gavius) Apicius lived during Rome’s most interesting epoch, when the empire had reached its highest point, when the seeds of decline, not yet apparent, were in the ground, when in the quiet villages of that far-off province, Palestine, the Saviour’s doctrines fascinated humble audiences—teachings that later reaching the very heart of the world’s mistress were destined to tarnish the splendor of that autocrat.

According to the mention by various writers, this man, M. Gabius Apicius, was one of the many ancient gastronomers who took the subject of food seriously. Assuming a scientific attitude towards eating and food they were criticised for paying too much attention to their table. This was considered a superfluous and indeed wicked luxury when frugality was a virtue. These men who knew by intuition the importance of knowing something about nutrition are only now being vindicated by the findings of modern science.

M. Gabius Apicius, this most famous of the celebrated and much maligned bon-vivants, quite naturally took great interest in the preparation of food. He is said to have originated many dishes himself; he collected much material on the subject and he endowed a school for the teaching of cookery and for the promotion of culinary ideas. This very statement by his critics places him high in our esteem, as it shows him up as a scientist and educator. He spent his vast fortune for food, as the stories go, and when he had only a quarter million dollars left (a paltry sum today but a considerable one in those days when gold was scarce and monetary standards in a worse muddle than today) Apicius took his own life, fearing that he might have to starve to death some day.

This story seems absurd on the face of it, yet Seneca and Martial tell it (both with different tendencies) and Suidas, Albino and other writers repeat it without critical analysis. These writers who are unreliable in culinary matters anyway, claim that Apicius spent one hundred million sestertii on his appetite—in gulam. Finally when the hour of accounting came he found that there were only ten million sestertii left, so he concluded that life was not worth living if his gastronomic ideas could no longer be carried out in the accustomed and approved style, and he took poison at a banquet especially arranged for the occasion.

In the light of modern experience with psychology, with economics, depressions, journalism, we focus on this and similar stories, and we find them thoroughly unreliable. We cannot believe this one. It is too melodramatic, too moralistic perhaps to suit our modern taste. The underlying causes for the conduct, life and end of Apicius have not been told. Of course, we have to accept the facts as reported. If only a Petronius had written that story! What a story it might have been! But there is only one Petronius in antiquity. His Trimalchio, former slave, successful profiteer and food speculator, braggard and drunkard, wife-beater—an upstart who arranged extravagant banquets merely to show off, who, by the way, also arranged for his funeral at his banquet (Apician fashion and, indeed, Petronian fashion! for Petronius died in the same manner) and who peacefully “passed out” soundly intoxicated—this man is a figure true to life as it was then, as it is now and as it probably will continue to be. Last but not least: Mrs. Trimalchio, the resolute lady who helped him “make his pile”—these are human characters much more real, much more trustworthy than anything and everything else ever depicted by any ancient pen; they bring out so graphically the modernity of antiquity. Without Petronius and Pompeii the antique world would forever remain at an inexplicably remote distance to our modern conception of life. With him, and with the dead city, the riddles of antiquity are cleared up.