A Taste of Rome

Today at Porta Maggiore, one of the surviving city gates of ancient Rome, stands the tomb of Eurysaces, a wealthy baker who died in 30 B. C.E. The tomb is shaped like an oven, and a relief carving shows Eurysaces and his slaves pulling a loaf of bread from the oven— a round loaf called ciambella that is still widely eaten in Europe today. Many other ancient Roman cooking techniques, flavors, and ingredients also turn up in modern Italian cooking. For example, the ancient Romans enjoyed flatbreads, sometimes topped with

Vegetables or cheese—ancient pizza. The Romans used a cooking condiment called garum, made from fermented anchovies and sea salt, that is much like the salted anchovies and anchovy paste used today in Italian cooking. The peasants thickened their soup with dried bits of dough—just as modern Romans toss dried pasta into a pot of soup. De agri-cultura, a book about agriculture and food written by Roman statesman Cato (234-149 B. C.E.) and published in about 180 b. c.e., gives the very first published recipe for a layer cake.

With some provincial cities becoming centers of a particular trade. Capua, in Italy, for example, was known for all kinds of silver ware, while Patavi-um (the modern Italian city of Padua) was famous for wool clothing. Lugdunum (Lyons, France) was a glassmaking center, and cities in Asia Minor produced such goods as carpets and cloth.

A typical city in Roman times had many of the same businesses and professions that thrive in modern cities. Pompeii, which was destroyed by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79, offers a good example. Although small compared to Rome, the city had all the merchants and shops urban Romans needed to live their daily lives: barbers, surgeons, bakers, cloth makers, carpenters, goldsmiths, and grocers. Some professions in Pompeii not usually seen today included mule driving and mat making. Less educated or skilled people could find short-term jobs, such as unloading ships or doing errands for the wealthy.

Two types of business provided many job opportunities in Rome and throughout the empire: construction and finance. The various emperors’ building projects created jobs for laborers and people who manufactured and transported building materials. The Romans used cement for many buildings (see page 97), but marble was also used in some of their most important structures. Some of this stone was imported from Greece,

Egypt, and Asia Minor, as well as taken from quarries on the Italian peninsula. Other building materials included wood, brick, and tile.

In A History of the Roman People, Allen Ward says, “Other than war, the business that. . . produced the biggest profits was finance, both public and private.” This involved both lending money and making investments. Money lenders served some of the same purposes as modern banks, loaning money to business people looking to start a new venture or expand an old one. The borrower paid back the money with interest.

One type of investment opportunity was known as tax farming. During the Republic, people known as publicani collected taxes on behalf of the Roman government in parts of the provinces. They paid the government for this right and then kept what they collected. Publicani also won contracts to build public buildings. Publicani raised money to start their businesses by selling shares. They offered investors a percentage of the profits they made, based on how much money the investors risked. Today, most large companies also sell shares to outside investors.