Many insulae were not constructed very well. The larger apartments were also near the bottom with the smallest at the top. The individual apartments usually consisted of two small rooms. The bottom floor of the insulae often housed shops and stores that opened out to the streets. Insulae were generally three to five stories high and housed from 30 to 50 people. The vast majority of the people living in Roman cities lived in cramped apartment buildings called insulae. The wealthy lived in single family homes called domus of various sizes depending on how rich they were. Most people in the cities of Ancient Rome lived in apartments called insulae. One Roman recipe called for the dormice to be dipped in honey and rolled in poppy seeds. Dormice were considered a delicacy and were sometimes eaten as appetizers. Perhaps the strangest thing they ate was dormice. At fancy banquets they sometimes ate things like flamingo's tongues, roast peacock, and stewed snails. Some of the foods that the Ancient Romans ate would seem strange to us today. It was often watered down for daily consumption. They sometimes used a knife or a fork like utensil for cutting or spearing a piece of food. The main drink of the Romans was wine. The main utensil used by the Romans for eating was the spoon. For less formal meals, the Romans would sit on a stool or stand while eating. They would lay on their left arm and then eat from the center table using their right hand. They would have a variety of foods including fruit, eggs, vegetables, meats, fish, and cakes. At formal dinner parties, the Romans reclined on couches around a low table. They would often have fancy dinner parties that lasted for hours and had several courses. The wealthy ate much better than the poor. Sometimes they might get some vegetables or fruit to eat with their puls. The main food of the poor was a porridge call "puls." Puls was made by mixing ground wheat and water. The main meal of the day was the "cena." It was eaten in the afternoon.Īs you might expect, the poor people in Rome did not eat the same food as the wealthy. The prandium was a very small meal eaten around 11 AM. The next meal (lunch) was called the "prandium".
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The first meal (breakfast) was called the "lentaculum." It was usually eaten around sunrise and consisted of bread and maybe some fruit. The Romans ate three meals during a typical day. Food was imported from all around the empire to feed the large populations in the capital city of Rome. What a person ate depended on both their wealth and where they lived in the Roman Empire. People in Ancient Rome ate a wide variety of foods.