Marcus Gavius Apicius
Marcus Gavius Apicius (* around 25 BC; † before 42) was a Roman gourmet of antiquity who lived in what is now Cologne . He is one of several Roman gourmets with the (surname) Apicius , which has been handed down as the author's name of De re coquinaria ("About the art of cooking"), the oldest surviving Roman cookbook.
Apicius lived under the emperor Tiberius (ruled 14–37). Pliny the Elder writes of him that he is the greatest glutton and born to all kinds of luxury. This is proven by the fact that Apicius praised flamingo tongues as a special delicacy. According to Pliny, Apicius also had the idea of fattening pigs with figs in order to obtain a particularly tasty liver. This ficatum has been preserved in the Romance languages as fegato (Italian), hígado (Spanish), foie (French) etc. as a term for liver. Seneca reports that Apicius ended his life with poison after he had already wasted 100 million sesterces in the kitchen and calculated that he had "only" 10 million sesterces left to live. This text dates to the 1940s, so Apicius was already dead.
The amount of 10 million sesterces, converted into silver money, corresponded to 2.5 million denarii or 20 million euros (as of 2015). A sum with which Emperor Tiberius could have paid the wages of 12,500 legionaries for a whole year.
Another episode in the life of this gourmet who pursues the perfection of the culinary delights with a certain radicalism is reported by Athenaios in the scholarly meal: Apicius lived mainly in Minturnae on the coast of the Tyrrhenian Sea , a city known for the excellent quality of the crabs ( and their exorbitant prices). When Apicius heard that the crabs in Africa might be bigger and better, he immediately sailed there, suffering greatly from the trip. The arrival of a cancer-obsessed super-rich had already made the rounds at the destination, so that on arrival the ship of Apicius was surrounded by boats of the local fishermen who offered their crabs for sale. Apicius looked at the crabs and asked if there were perhaps bigger and better ones? When he was told that the offer represented the greatest and best that was to be had here, Apicius ordered immediate repentance without even having set foot on the land. Athenaios also mentions that a certain type of cheesecake is named after Apicius.
It could be that Apicius was involved in the Seianus affair in the early 1930s.
literature
- Matthias Bode: On the role of the late antique upper classes in the tradition of the Apicius cookbook . In: Laverna . No. 12, 2001, pp. 139-154.
- Karl Fiehn : Gavius 7b . In: Paulys Realencyclopadie der classischen Antiquity Science (RE). Supplementary Volume VII, Stuttgart 1940, Col. 204.
- Linda-Marie Günther: Cooking with the Romans . 1st edition. CH Beck, Munich 2015, ISBN 978-3-406-68145-5 , p. 208 .
Web links
- Literature by and about Marcus Gavius Apicius in the catalog of the German National Library
Individual evidence
- ^ Metzler Lexicon of Ancient Authors. Stuttgart & Weimar 1969, sv Apicius .
- ↑ "Many cooks in the Rhenish kitchen." In: Irmgard Wolf, Manfred Engelhardt: Small cultural history of the Rhineland. Verlag des General-Anzeiger Bonn, 1998; P. 231.
- ↑ Pliny, Naturalis historia 9, 66 ; 10, 133 .
- ↑ Pliny, Naturalis Historia 10, 133.
- ^ Pliny, Naturalis Historia 8, 209 .
- ↑ Seneca, De consolatione ad Helviam 10, 8–9 .
- ^ Günther, Cooking with the Romans 17
- ↑ Athenaios Deipnosophistai 1.7ac ( English translation ).
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Apicius, Marcus Gavius |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Apicius |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Roman foodie and cookbook author |
| DATE OF BIRTH | around 25 BC Chr. |
| DATE OF DEATH | before 42 |