DINING POSTURE IN ANCIENT ROME: BODIES, VALUES, AND STATUS

"A scholarly and significant book on an important aspect of Roman conviviality, written with clarity and elegance."--Oswyn Murray, University of Oxford "Matthew Roller is refreshingly challenging in his unwillingness to accept the communis opinio of scholarship while candid about the speculative character of many of his own conclusions. The book engages consistently and persuasively with past and current work on Roman dining and the topic is timely and sure to be of interest."--Anthony Corbeill, University of Kansas What was really going on at Roman banquets? In this lively new book, veteran Romanist Matthew Roller looks at a little-explored feature of Roman culture: dining posture. In ancient Rome, where dining was an indicator of social position as well as an extended social occasion, dining posture offered a telling window into the day-to-day lives of the city''s inhabitants. This book investigates the meaning and importance of the three principal dining postures--reclining, sitting, and standing--in the period 200 B.C.-200 A.D. It explores the social values and distinctions associated with each of the postures and with the diners who assumed them. Roller shows that dining posture was entangled with a variety of pressing social issues, such as gender roles and relations, sexual values, rites of passage, and distinctions among the slave, freed, and freeborn conditions.