Bread in the Roman Empire

In the early days of Rome, most people made their bread from grain they produced.

In the later times in the Roman Empire, bread replaced porridge as the most important part of the Roman diet. Bread was the food of ‘citizens’ of Rome, a status commonly achieved by successful military service.

The ancient Roman bread was a flat, hard cake called ‘libum’ which was baked in hot embers and ashes and which continued in favor even when wheat-bread and leaven was introduced.

In later days of the Roman Empire, bread was distributed as a right to the citizens of Rome.

The professional baker appears around 174 BC and by that time throughout the Empire most middle and lower class Romans relied upon commercial bakeries for their bread. Also, Rome began to important grain from territories in its empire because Rome could not produce enough grain for its growing population.

Rome politicians used bread from the centralized bakeries as political capital to buy votes of the plebeians.

According to Pliny the Elder and Seneca that the poor ate inferior kinds of bread, while the rich consumed bread of the finest quality. The poorer citizens would have to grind their own corn, preferred wheat meal porridge or groats to bread.

In Roman Palestine, the poor often ate nothing but cheap bread. For them bread seems to have been more important than gruel or porridge.

In fact, both cereal products were often eaten in combination, i.e. gruel was scooped out of the pot with a piece of bread.

Romans in Gauls (modern French) discovered that adding the froth from beer to bread dough made especially light, well leavened bread. This is the beginning of the use of a controlled yeast source for making bread doughs.
Bread in the Roman Empire

Meat for Gods

The abundance of food in Mesopotamia is evident on the records of what presented to the gods and goddesses, who needed to eat four times a day.

The meat gifts can be seen as a way of bringing the gods closer to the worshippers during the ritual by offering the food of the kind that men prepare and eat.

The gifts of meat led more weight to the god’s part of ritual and constitute an additional way for worshippers to show their respect for the gods.

The main god, Anu, and three main goddesses, Antu, Ishtar and Nayana got thirty love of bread a day each.

There was also much meat given every day to them and to other minor divinities, about then total at the four meals.

The butchers had to recite prayers of thanks to the gods and goddesses as they slaughtered the animals. Pliny writes that without prayers the sacrifice is useless.

Then the priest placed the food on golden platters and set it before the gods, perhaps on a table.

While mortals ate just as gladly flesh obtained in the hunt, the gods accepted only the sacrifice of domestic animas.

The gods it was believed, enjoyed the smell of the burned sacrifice. Whether the meat is of oxen, sheep, goat or pigs, the food is carefully shared out.

The burned offerings are usually associated with petitions or entreaties set before god. The general purpose for sacrifice in the ancient world was to appease the anger of the gods by gifts of food, and drink.
Meat for Gods