In one of her outstanding documentaries on Ancient Rome, Professor Mary Beard visits sewers and (use your imagination) identifies the varied diet enjoyed by the Romans. There are, however, other ways of identifying what foodstuffs the Romans knew about.
Not only vegetables but an astonishing range of foods are discussed
by Aulus Cornelius Celsus in his dē Medicīnā, “a primary source on diet,
pharmacy, surgery and related fields, … one of the best sources concerning
medical knowledge in the Roman world” (Wikipedia)
I'm posting two extracts (the second is in the next post). For both these extracts, I have only highlighted those words which were not in the previous posts and those which are very common and have appeared many times before.
[1]
Inbēcillissimam vērō māteriam esse omnem caulem
holeris et quicquid in caule nāscitur, quālis est cucurbita et cucumis et capparis,
omnia pōma, oleās, cochleās, itemque conchulae. (Celsus)
The weakest of food materials are: all vegetable stalks
and whatever forms on a stalk, such as the gourd and cucumber and caper,
all orchard fruits, olives, snails, and likewise shellfish.
capparis, -is [3/f]: caper
caulis, -is [3/m]: [i] stalk, stem [ii] cabbage-stalk; Engl.
cauliflower is, via Fr. chou-fleur, derived from this
cochlea, -ae [1/f]: snail; image: mosaic of snails from Aquileia
(4th century AD)
conchula, -ae [1/f] (very rare), a small shell-fish,
diminutive of concha, -ae [1/f]: mussel
olea, -ae [1/f]: olive (fruit or tree)
- also: olīva, -ae [1/f]; image: from the Tacuinum Sānitātis, a man climbing the tree to pick olives; note again the Mediaeval spelling: olīve nigre = olīvae nigrae = black olives
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