Reprinted with permission from Populus: Living and Dying in Ancient Rome by Guy de la Bédoyère, published by the University of Chicago Press. © 2024 by Guy de la Bédoyère. All rights reserved. Certain Roman emperors led the field when it came to dining. Colorful anecdotes abounded of spectacular profligacy, all treated as contemptuous examples of degeneracy but viewed, it seems, with a certain amount of prurient jealousy. For writers of the time these stories made for excellent copy, all adding to a rhetorical image of rottenness and decay at…
