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Apicius

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Apicius was a name applied to three celebrated Roman epicures, the first of whom lived during the Republic; the second of whom, Marcus Gavius (or Gabius) Apicius—the most famous in his own time—lived under the early Empire; a third lived in the late 4th or early 5th century. The name is famous because of the only surviving Roman cookbook bearing his name. A family of Apici cannot be found in literature. In the later empire his name seems to be synonymous with "gourmet".

The famous "Apicius," M. Gavius Apicius, moved in the Imperial circle of Tiberius and his son Drusus (died CE 23) and was a close friend of Sejanus, according to Pliny the Elder's Natural History (Book 19:137). Apicata, Sejanus’ erstwhile wife, may even have been the daughter of the famous Apicius. Rumours were also current that Sejanus had "sold his person to [that] wealthy debauchee" (Tacitus, Annales IV.1). Pliny considered Apicius born to enjoy every extravagant luxury that could be contrived (ad omne luxus ingenium natus, in NH 9:66). According to Pliny, in his search for astounding delicacies (plates of nightingales' tongues and such), Apicius fed his pigs with dried figs and slaughtered them by means of overdoses of honeyed wine. If it is true that he had his geese force-fed with dried figs and honey in order to enlarge their livers, this would indicate that the origins of foie gras are Greco-Roman, not French.

This Apicius invented various dishes and sauces in which refined delicacy was taken to eccentric extremes. According to Athenaeus (Deipn. I.7), having heard of the boasted size and sweetness of the shrimps taken near the Libyan coast, Apicius commandeered a boat and crew, but when he arrived, disappointed by the ones he was offered by the local fishermen, turned round and had his crew return him to Rome without going ashore. He is said to have kept a school, after the manner of a philosopher, to the disgust of the moralist Seneca (Consolatio ad Helviam, chapter 10) who saw him as a corrupter who infected the age with his example. But when Seneca links Apicius with the great literary patron and book collector Maecenas, the force of his diatribe in favor of the good old Roman ways is blunted for us.

Apicius is said to have written two books on cuisine, one (the name De condituriis a modern conjection) devoted to garum and other sauces, both fresh and fermented. The second one dealt with dishes for the evening meal. The textual history is very complicated and confusing. If there was a 1st century manuscript (which cannot be proven), it was heavily altered in the following centuries. At least six other sources of recipes can be identified.

The aim of these books must have been the professional cook. The patron did not cook, house-wifes were probably not able to read. The cook-slave in an upper-class household had the opportunity and the material to cook as the book describes.

It included complicated recipes, to judge from the elaborate dishes denoted Apiciani ("in the style of Apicius") in the late 4th-century recipe repertory that we do have. In such "Apician" cuisine, complicated preparation were combined with rare ingredients like "a pinch of silphium," an herb from Libya that is now actually extinct, pepper and cassia (cinnamon), which came from India in the Red Sea trade that was also bringing frankincense. This Greek-derived luxury cuisine of the ancient world kept itself as remote as possible from the commonplace cooking of fresh, salted and dried local ingredients, used according to the season. The remnants of Apicius' cookbook might possibly form the nucleus of the later one that has survived.

Such pursuits for an upper-class Roman were considered so demeaning in the eyes of his contemporaries (and so scandalous to the ascetic Church fathers who succeeded to their position) that a legend grew up that, though he lived in the lap of luxury, with a more than comfortable fortune, he impoverished himself through his culinary extravagances to such an extent, that he became haunted enough by the fear of practically starving to death, to poison himself in order to to escape such a fate. Take this legend cum grano salis. It was Seneca, a contemporary, who started this story. It has been tried to link this story of his suicide to the fate of Sejanus. It was Seneca who wrote that Apicius had taken state money from the Capitol. If he was right, Apicius had quite a good reason to commit suicide.

The well-known collection of Roman recipes for cooking that has been alluded to, in ten very brief little books, entitled De re coquinaria, ("The Art of Cooking") is of later date, the late 4th or early 5th century CE, written in a debased Latin. However, debased as it may be, it is a text to be used in the kitchen, not a speech in the senate. To compare it to literature is quite misguided. Attributing it to one otherwise unknown as "Caelius Apicius", is a mistake hard to eliminate. The idea is linked to the fact that one of the two manuscripts has a word fragement "CAE" on its cover. The real title is unknown.

The ten books seem to be divided like modern cookbook:

  1. Epimeles — The Chef
  2. Sarcoptes — Meats
  3. Cepuros — From the garden
  4. Pandecter — Various dishes
  5. Ospreos — Peas, beans, lentils, chickpeas, etc.
  6. Aeropetes — Fowl
  7. Polyteles — Fowl
  8. Tetrapus — Quadrupeds
  9. Thalassa — Seafood
  10. Halieus — Fish

The contents are messed up, i.e. some of the recipes should belong in some other chapter. Some recipes are there in two versions, some are clearly truncated, sometimes one line must be missing.

In a completely different manuscript there is also a very abbreviated epitome Apici Excerpta a Vinidario a "pocket Apicius" by a certain Vinidarius, made in the 5th century. However, although it says so in the title, this booklet is not an excerpt from the manuscript we have today. It contains text that is not in the longer Apicius-manuscripts. Either text was lost between the time the excerpt was made and the time the manuscripts were written, or there never was a "standard Apicius" text, because every cook would add his own notes.

Once manuscripts surfaced, there were two early printed editions of Apicius, in Milan (1498) and Venice (1500). But in the flood of heavy tomes of pagan and Christian antiquity, it was delightful to read a Roman cookbook. Four more editions in the next four decades reflect the appeal of Apicius. In the long-standard edition of C. T. Schuch (Heidelberg, 1867), the editor added some recipes from the Vindarius-manuscript. The modern standard edition is by Mary Ella Milham (see link below).

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