Romans eating out.

[docoflove1974]

Ah! while they come out on my computer, maybe that's not true for everyone...or that they see them, but don't understand them. So...

 

nāranǧ, the last sound sounds like the second 'g' in garage [iPA: voiced palatal fricative]

 

nāraṅga. I believe the second 'n' is the question here...and that should be like the nasal sound in sing [iPA: voice velar nasal], but I'm less sure of that pronunciation (just following intuition on that one).

 

Hope that helps!

[Klingan]

NN, the strawberries are just an example they're from the late 19th century. (The original species from the American continents and the crossbreed from Europe I believe.

 

I'm afraid I can't answer your question The Augusta, my knowledge about fruits are quite limited, just what I picked up at school when I was a kid.

[Andrew Dalby]

Would this be an appropriate thread to ask about citrus fruits and the Romans? They did not use the word 'orange' to describe that colour, for instance - do we then take it that the fruit was not known to the Romans either? Same with lemons and limes. Have the Spanish always had their Seville oranges? Even when they were a Roman province? ...

 

I've done some work on this. Citrus fruits all seem to come from southern China and southeast Asia originally. The first citrus fruit to reach the attention of Greeks and Romans was a not-very-well-known one, the citron -- same colour as a lemon but bigger and knobblier, not very good to eat. This one is described by Theophrastus, 310 BC (and it is still quite widely grown in Mediterranean countries). It's possible, but not certain, that by later Roman times the lemon was known. It came second, anyway. Bitter oranges -- Seville oranges -- seem to have reached the Arabian peninsula by the 10th century AD, and from there they must have been spread by Arab fruit-growers to southern Spain (hence Seville!) They do turn up in Byzantine texts in late medieval times (the medieval Greek name is nerantzion: you can see the link with the Sanskrit and Arabic terms mentioned by the Doc). Finally, sweet oranges apparently didn't get to Europe till about the 16th century.

 

Others -- tangerines, grapefruit etc. -- are very recent arrivals, and some are definitely hybrids.

 

Any use, Augusta?

[The Augusta]

Would this be an appropriate thread to ask about citrus fruits and the Romans? They did not use the word 'orange' to describe that colour, for instance - do we then take it that the fruit was not known to the Romans either? Same with lemons and limes. Have the Spanish always had their Seville oranges? Even when they were a Roman province? ...

 

I've done some work on this. Citrus fruits all seem to come from southern China and southeast Asia originally. The first citrus fruit to reach the attention of Greeks and Romans was a not-very-well-known one, the citron -- same colour as a lemon but bigger and knobblier, not very good to eat. This one is described by Theophrastus, 310 BC (and it is still quite widely grown in Mediterranean countries). It's possible, but not certain, that by later Roman times the lemon was known. It came second, anyway. Bitter oranges -- Seville oranges -- seem to have reached the Arabian peninsula by the 10th century AD, and from there they must have been spread by Arab fruit-growers to southern Spain (hence Seville!) They do turn up in Byzantine texts in late medieval times (the medieval Greek name is nerantzion: you can see the link with the Sanskrit and Arabic terms mentioned by the Doc). Finally, sweet oranges apparently didn't get to Europe till about the 16th century.

 

Others -- tangerines, grapefruit etc. -- are very recent arrivals, and some are definitely hybrids.

 

Any use, Augusta?

 

 

Fantastic, AD - I thank you. It is indeed useful to me, and it thankfully confirms what I suspected - that the Romans did not have oranges and other citrus fruits that we know today.

[Kosmo]

Mosque courtyards in Spain had orange trees and orange cultivation with irrigation was spread by arabs. But it seems that this were bitter oranges.

Sweet oranges were brought by portuguese from India.

Lemons were cultivated by summerians and were spread in the Med by the greeks after Alexander's campaign under the name persian apple. Or so a book about Summer says. It might be the citron AD mentions.

Cofee originates from Ethiophia and it's use spreaded in the Ottoman Empire after XVI C.

Tea it's used in China since Antiquity. Use outside East Asia was started by dutch traders in the XVII C and in Russia as a result of trade with China thru Siberia. Cultivation spreaded outside China only in the second half of XIX C.

 

Did greeks and romans used plant "teas" - boiled parts of dried plants (not of the tea plant)? They are efficient as medicine and I often use mint tea for stomach problems. And boiling would have purified the water of dangerous life forms.

[Pantagathus]

Lemons were cultivated by summerians and were spread in the Med by the greeks after Alexander's campaign under the name persian apple. Or so a book about Summer says. It might be the citron AD mentions.

I have usually seen commentaries equate the Citron to the Persian Apple. However, why am I also wanting to say that this has also been used as a nomeclature for peach/apricots?

[Kosmo]

However, why am I also wanting to say that this has also been used as a nomeclature for peach/apricots?

 

Yes, why would you want to say that?

 

I understand that the greeks used the word "apple" for many fruits with something added like "persian". If both fruits were adopted from the Persian Empire this might make a confusion.

Modern french uses apple as a base for the name of other plants like "pomme-de-terre", ground-apple for potatos.

[Pantagathus]

Yes, why would you want to say that?

I have a nagging feeling it's in some footnote commentary in Herodotus. I'd try to verify but Perseus is of course down at the moment.

 

EDIT: I think I may have found one reason why my memory synapses were misfiring... At least in Strabo the peach is refered to as the persea. However, he relates that it comes from Egypt-Ethiopia.

[Gaius Octavius]

Fantastic, AD - I thank you. It is indeed useful to me, and it thankfully confirms what I suspected - that the Romans did not have oranges and other citrus fruits that we know today.

 

My Lady:

 

Take a peek here:

 

http://www.soupsong.com/fcitrus.html

[docoflove1974]

I have usually seen commentaries equate the Citron to the Persian Apple. However, why am I also wanting to say that this has also been used as a nomeclature for peach/apricots?

 

Quick info on the peach, from the Food Network (click here)

 

And info on the apricot, also from the Food Network (click here)

[Pantagathus]

I have usually seen commentaries equate the Citron to the Persian Apple. However, why am I also wanting to say that this has also been used as a nomeclature for peach/apricots?

 

Quick info on the peach, from the Food Network (click here)

 

And info on the apricot, also from the Food Network (click here)

Thanks Doc! Guess I'm not killing too many brain cells...

 

Native to China, this fruit came to Europe (and subsequently to the New World) via Persia, hence its ancient appellation Persian apple.

[The Augusta]

Fantastic, AD - I thank you. It is indeed useful to me, and it thankfully confirms what I suspected - that the Romans did not have oranges and other citrus fruits that we know today.

 

My Lady:

 

Take a peek here:

 

http://www.soupsong.com/fcitrus.html

 

Thanks for this, GO, but it still suggests that Rome did not know such fruits until Nero's reign, which is outside my 'period'.

[Andrew Dalby]

http://www.soupsong.com/fcitrus.html

 

I don't like to spoil people's illusions, believe me, but about a third of the statements on that page are shameless untruths. This is quite normal for writing about food history by journalists and other non-historians. To many of them, sadly, history doesn't matter -- it's just stories. It doesn't matter that there's not the slightest evidence in ancient Egypt or Iraq for any citrus fruits before Alexander's time, and not the slightest evidence that Romans paid anybody to grow oranges: they'll say it anyway, because history, pseudo-history and historical fiction are all the same to them.

 

If you want references on what is really known about the spread of citrus fruits: fairly reliable are Daniel Zohary and Maria Hopf, "Domestication of Plants in the Old World". I have the 3rd edition, 2000. In their brief survey on citrus fruits (pp. 184-5) they make two minor false deductions (I think) -- they place the citron in the Medietrranean basin a bit too early (because they didn't read Theophrastus carefully enough!) and the orange a bit too late (but you can't blame them, because the late medieval textual evidence for oranges in Europe wasn't yet generally known when they wrote: I drew attention to one source in /Flavours of Byzantium/, 2003).

 

Sorry about the rant, but it is quite difficult to do food history using the evidence, and it becomes more difficult when so many people pretend to do it without even caring about the evidence.

[Andrew Dalby]

Lemons were cultivated by summerians and were spread in the Med by the greeks after Alexander's campaign under the name persian apple. Or so a book about Summer says. It might be the citron AD mentions.

I have usually seen commentaries equate the Citron to the Persian Apple. However, why am I also wanting to say that this has also been used as a nomeclature for peach/apricots?

 

Whatever book that is, the statement is about a quarter true. Unless seeds have been found there since about 1998, there's no evidence the Sumerians cultivated any citrus fruits. On Alexander's campaign (probably) Greeks first encountered a "Median or Persian apple" -- but northeast of Iraq, in Iranian country, hence the names. This is the one that Theophrastus describes; he gives it those alternative names, and it is evidently the citron. After that time, Greeks began to spread it around the Med.

 

Theophrastus seems to have no description of the peach. In all later classical sources, the "Median apple" was the citron (hence its modern scientific name, Citrus medica) and the "Persian apple" was the name given to the peach. For what reason is not clear -- but possibly because it was grown there in classical times -- the apricot was originally known by Greeks and Romans as "Armenian apple".

 

Our word "peach" actually does derive from the Latin "persicum" (Persian apple).

 

Nowe I must go and do some gardening ...

[Gaius Octavius]

A.D., I am sure that you are correct about that site. Could you supply a time line for the migration of the fruits to western Europe?