Sleeping Pixie: marble statuette of a small boy wearing a hooded cloak, from the House of the Small Fountain at Pompeii (before A.D. 79). Round
him he three baskets, one of which serves as his pillow; they have been identified as the apparatus of a fisherman. Such genre subjects were much in
fashion as garden-ornaments in the imperial age.
The banquets described by Martial, Pliny, Petronius, and others should not mislead us; the diet of the vast mass of the people was always frugal, and
even the great men of affairs ate little before evening. But when occasion demanded meals could be splendid and cooking carried to the realms of fine
art. A cookery book ascribed to the early-imperial gastronome M. Gavius Apicius gives some fascinating glimpses of Roman haute cuisine: for
example, 'Sucking pig a la Frontinus: fillet, brown, and dress; put in a casserole of fish-sauce and wine, wrap in a bouquet of leeks and dill, pour off
the juice when half-cooked. When cooked, remove and dry, sprinkle with pepper and serve.' Apicius was famous for his sauces and dressings, and
gave his name to various cakes; he is also said by Pliny to have invented dishes of flamingos' tongues and mullets' livers, and to have pioneered a form
of pate de foie gras. It was one of the arts of the Roman chef to disguise dishes so that no one could divine their ingredients. This was taken to
extremes at the feast described by Petronius, where a dish of pork was dressed up by Trimalchio's cook to look like a fattened goose garnished with
fish and different kinds of birds ('If you want it, he'll make you a fish out of a sow's womb, a wood-pigeon out of bacon, and a turtle-dove out of a
ham', brags the host), and the guests were treated to a whole sequence of unnerving surprises: peahens' eggs containing beccaficos rolled in spiced egg-
yolk, a wild boar containing live thrushes, a pig full of sausages and black puddings, cakes and fruit filled with liquid saffron, thrushes made of pastry
and stuffed with raisins and nuts, quinces decorated with thorns to look like sea-urchins.
Each dish emerged in artistic form or with some histrionic display; the wild boar, for example, arrived with an escort of hunting dogs, and a boiled calf
was sliced with a sword by a slave impersonating the frenzied Ajax. Such excesses, though inflated by the writer's fertile imagination, were certainly
based upon the pageantry of real banquets. So too were some of the entertainments devised for Trimalchio's guests. The gold hoop laden with gifts
which was let down from the ceiling recalls the revolving dome of Nero's Golden House which showered flowers on the diners below. The musicians,
singers, acrobats, and dancing girls echo the performances provided at banquets such as the one that seduced a potential guest of Pliny: invited to a
homely supper with a poetry recitation and a performance on the lyre, this philistine preferred the gourmet dishes and Spanish dancing-girls of another
host.