Tōta mihi dormītur hiems et pinguior illō
Tempore sum, quō mē nīl nisi
somnus alit.
(Martial 13.59)
"I sleep through the
whole winter, and have become fatter during the time, with nothing but sleep to
nourish me."
Martial describes a dormouse
(glis) although our understanding of a dormouse is not what they were
referring to in Ancient Rome. The fat, edible dormouse from Southern Europe is
a tree-dweller and the size of a rat. While you might not like to include one –
and, yes, sometimes honey-dipped – in your kid’s lunch box, they were a
favourite of the Romans.
Below is a recipe for
stuffed dormouse from Dē rē coquīnāriā (On the Subject of
Cooking), a 5th century collection of Roman recipes:
“…stuffed with a forcemeat
of pork and small pieces of dormouse meat trimmings, all pounded with pepper,
nuts, laser, broth. Put the dormouse thus stuffed in an earthen casserole,
roast it in the oven, or boil it in the stock pot.”
The glirarium was
the vessel used to keep the dormice. Normally of terracotta, it was perforated
to allow air and polished inside to stop the dormouse from escaping with the
added security of a sealed lid. The glirarium would induce
hibernation, thereby causing the dormouse to fatten.
Below are images of a
luckier mouse than the one in the glirarium, and one of an actual
"Roman" dormouse.
Glirarium: not the most useful word
in Latin, but it is a type of storage and, in the next post, we'll look at a
few more and, using them, we'll do some more practice in cases.
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