The Romans made little use of cattle as food; and the fattening of cattle for this specific purpose was unknown to them. Neither can we find evidence that beef and mutton were eaten by the Roman people generally. Pliny mentions the use of beef, roasted, or in the shape of broth, as a medicine, but not as food. Plautus speaks of beef and mutton as sold in the markets; but, amidst the immense variety of fish, flesh, and fowl, we hear little of the above meats in the Roman larder. Fish and game, poultry, venison, and pork, are often mentioned as elements of a luxurious banquet; but undoubtedly the common food of all classes was vegetable, flavoured with lard or bacon. Among the Romans the hare was held in great estimation. Alexander Severus had a hare daily served at his table; yet Cæsar says that in his time the Britons did not eat the flesh of hare.
"The Romans, after their colonization of Britain, must have enjoyed its great supplies of fish; with them its fine oysters were celebrities. They were fattened in pits and ponds by the Romans, who obtained the finest oysters from Ruterpiæ, now Sandwich, in Kent. The Roman epicures iced their oysters before eating them; the ladies used the calcined shell as a cosmetic and depilatory. Apicius is said to have supplied Trajan with fresh oysters at all seasons of the year. The Romans, according to Pliny, made _Ostrearii_, or loaves of bread baked with oysters. There is one secret we may well desire to learn from the Romans; namely, the manner of preserving oysters alive in any journey, however long or distant. The possession of this secret is the more extraordinary, as it is well known that a shower of rain will kill oysters subjected to its influence, or the smallest grain of quick-lime destroy their vitality."[19] Pliny records that one gentleman, Asinius Celer, gave 8,000 nummi (between 64_l_. and 65_l_. sterling) for one mullet, such as may now be bought in good seasons in London for sixpence! How the Anglo-Roman epicure must have enjoyed the mullet from our western coast! The lamprey was also with the Romans a pet fish: it is now rare. The celebrated Roman garum must here have been made in perfection. A Roman supper is thus described by the officer of the household of Theodosius:--"For the first course there were sea-hedgehogs, raw oysters, and asparagus; for the second, a fat fowl, with another plate of oysters and shell-fish; several species of dates, fig-peckers, roebuck, and wild boar, fowls encrusted with paste, and the purple shell-fish, then esteemed so great a delicacy. The third course was composed of a wild-boar's head, of ducks, of a _compôte_ of river-birds, of leverets, roast-fowls, Ancona-cakes, called _panes picandi_," which must have somewhat resembled Yorkshire pudding. The old Romans had their fancy bread as well as the moderns, as loaves baked with oysters, cakes like our rolls, and others. A sort, of nearly the same quality as our middle sort of wheaten bread, was sold, according to the calculation of antiquaries, at 3_s_. 2_d_. the peck-loaf, present money.