The Last Supper: the food and drink

[guy]

Dried grapes used in passum production

 

 

Below are a couple of articles on the Last Supper dinner. Passum was probably the wine. Passum is a sweet dessert wine made from dried grapes that was popular at the time.

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The studies reveal that beyond unleavened bread and wine, the Last Supper probably included tzir, a variant of garum, a typical Roman fish sauce; lamb meat; cholent, a slow-cooked baked beans stew; olives with hyssop, a mint-flavored herb; bitter herbs with pistachios; date charoset; and, most likely, walnut paste.

 

https://aleteia.org/2024/05/28/what-wine-was-served-at-the-last-supper/

 

 

https://aleteia.org/2017/04/28/archaeologists-discover-what-was-served-at-the-last-supper/

 

 

Although there may have been some restrictions on females’ drinking wine in the early Archaic Period of Ancient Rome, passum appears to have been the accepted drink for females throughout Roman history.

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Nevertheless, a number of scholars from the early twentieth century assumed that the literary evidence is reliable and that women were not allowed to drink wine, relating the prohibition to feminine weakness (wine drinking led them to adultery or to the abortive properties of wine. These ideas – especially the relation between a wine taboo and adultery – continue to haunt much more recent research regarding the role of women in ancient Roman religious rituals. However, they do not stand up to critical investigation, as they do not explain why women were allowed to drink lora, passum, and other alcoholic beverages, or why drinking was commonly accepted during the Late Republican period, when adultery was still severely punished.

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In the light of the evidence presented above, the hypothesis of Gras regarding wine drinking by Roman women seems more acceptable than Bettini's, given that fewer questions are left unanswered. It seems that the archaic wine taboo had a religious character and was associated only with temetum, which referred to the sacred wine of Jupiter, made probably from not fully domesticated, unpruned vines. This beverage, which originated in Italian tradition before Greek colonization, was prohibited to women. Those who broke the taboo were punished by death. However, during the archaic age women were allowed to drink alcohol beverages, such as wines imported from Greece and Phoenicia, spiced wines, lora, and sweet beverages (dulcia) such as passum. These drinks were inappropriate for libations and other religious usages, because they were impure.

When wine consumption became more popular, which was probably associated with the spread of sympotic [of or partaking to the Greek symposium] practices, the prohibition disappeared. This might have been associated with the fact that wine became commonly available and was no longer a rare and sacred drink. Nonetheless, since Roman religious practices were rather conservative, the taboo remained in certain religious rituals. During the Late Republican and Early Imperial period certain writers evoked the prohibition, but they were no longer aware of its original cause and meaning. The popular moral renewal and the search for moral examples in archaic times resulted in the association of wine drinking with immoral behaviour. Therefore, it seems that Late Republican and Early Imperial written sources transmitted a distorted understanding of archaic Roman traditions regarding wine drinking, which resulted in a common and erroneous opinion that women in the archaic age were not permitted to drink alcohol.

 

 

 

 

WINE TABOO REGARDING WOMEN IN ARCHAIC ROME, ORIGINS OF ITALIAN VITICULTURE, AND THE TASTE OF ANCIENT WINES | Greece & Rome | Cambridge Core

Edited June 5 by guy

[caesar novus]

One evening in narrow passages of Rome I ran across a wine fest. For eu5 they gave a wineglass with strap around your neck, good for unlimited visits to tasting stations. I'm not big on wine or any alcohol, but was seduced by their sweet wines in fancy bottles maybe similar to above. Be prepared for serendipity (and disappointment) in Rome. P.S. I ran across claim that Rome had a racetrack larger than Circus Maximus but it was abandoned after a decade. Traces east of central train station.