Dining Posture in Ancient Rome: Bodies, Values, and Status

(Paperback)

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What was really going on at Roman banquets In this lively new book, veteran Romanist Matthew Roller looks at a little-explored feature of Roman culture: dining posture. In ancient Rome, where dining was an indicator of social position as well as an extended social occasion, dining posture offered a telling window into the day-to-day lives of the c

Reviews

"Roller can justifiably claim to have pulled the cloth from under an old and inadequate model of ancient dining, and in the process drawn important conclusions about the wider issue of the self-definition of elites and non-elites in Rome... [T]his stands out as a devoted, sophisticated and ambitious study of a central aspect of ancient culture."--Emily Gowers, Times Literary Supplement "Roller's book not only achieves its goal of disproving the communis opinio regarding dining posture but also shows that a detailed study of such a topic has much to teach us about the Roman world."--Carolyn Shank, Gastronomica "Dining Postures addresses a fascinating aspect of Roman social life which has never been given this amount of direct attention before. Its conclusions raise interesting questions and will open further debate; it is a provocative addition to the ever-growing bibliography on body language and social manners."--Mary Harlow, Journal of Roman Studies

Author Bio

Matthew B. Roller is Professor of Classics at Johns Hopkins University. He is the author of Constructing Autocracy: Aristocrats and Emperors in Julio-Claudian Rome (Princeton).