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Ancient
Chinese and Roman food and banquets
The
diets of the common people were rather simple in both realms. Feasts of the rich
and powerful were another matter. Textual descriptions aside, we can see the
great variety of food items depicted in market or kitchen scenes.
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1. A Roman woman shop keeper.
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2. A busy Chinese kitchen.
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Scene of shopping in a meat shop.
Poultry, rabbit, and pig are hanging for sale. (Torlonia
Museum, Rome).
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A kitchen scene showing fish and poultry
hanging on a rack, while an animal is being led in to be slaughtered. Cooks
are chopping meat, stoking the stove, and kneading dough. (Chendgu,
Sichuan).
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3. A Roman butcher.
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4. A Chinese cook.
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A butcher. Detail of a second-century base-relief in Ostia.
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A fish monger. Pottery model from a Latter Han tomb.
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5. A Roman kitchen.
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6. A Chinese stove-oven.
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Bronze pots
and pans on a kitchen hearth. Pompeii.
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Pottery stove. Former Han burial object unearth in Guangzhou, south
China. Stoves excavated from other parts of China have different shapes.
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The
Romans dined reclined. Some dining rooms had built-in inclined platforms for
the purpose. Food were placed on
light tables in front of the couch. Before the importation of chairs around
the sixth century, the Chinese dined sitting on mates. Food were brought in
on trays with short legs.
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7. A Roman banquet.
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8. A Chinese banquet.
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Detail of a painted plaster showing a symposium scene, from a tomb
in Paestum, south of Naples. Fifth century BCE. (Museo
Archeologico Nationale,
Paestum).
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Detail of a Latter Han tomb mural showing the host and hostess in a
banquet. (Luoyang Museum).
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9. A Roman party.
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10. A Chinese party.
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Courtesans and wine were common in Roman parties. Detail of a mural
in Pompeii.
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A banquet scene. The host and guests (upper right) sit before square
tables holding food. For entertainment, a musician plays the zither (upper
left), another beats the drum (lower left). A dancer is at the lower right.
A singer probably sits behind the zither player. Rubbing from tomb relief.
(Chengdu Museum.)
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Wine was drunk from cups of all shapes and
various materials. Adaptions of the Greek kylix and
Persian rhyton often appear in Roman paintings of
banquets, as the two shown above. The rhyton serves
as both a pourer and a cup. Filled via the funnel, it lets out the liquid
through a hole in the front. Bronze tripods called jue
were popular in pre-imperial times, but seemed to pass with the feudalistic
aristocracy.
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11. kylix
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12. sardonyx
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13. rhyton
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14. jue
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15. jade
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16. lacquer cup
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