The Spice Seller - Pompeii, c. AD 70 - The Spicekeeper's Almanac - Issue Eight
- michel1492
- 1 day ago
- 24 min read
"The ledger remembers the coins. It forgets the gift pressed into a hand."
Michel
Welcome
"Some things outlast the empire that made them. A wall. A loaf of bread turned to stone. A handful of glass beads."
Welcome, my friend. Draw up a chair, and let me show you something I have kept close to my heart for many years.
It is a simple necklace of black-and-white glass beads that I bought at a museum sale. The little card that came with it said only, Roman. First century. They are not precious stones or the jewelry of a wealthy household.
They are ordinary beads, the sort that were made by the thousands and traded across the Roman world. The kind of necklace a working woman might have fastened around her neck before opening her stall for another day's business.
And that is exactly why I cannot stop thinking about her.
Someone chose these because she thought they were beautiful. She greeted customers, counted coins, worried about tomorrow, laughed with friends, and lived a life that mattered deeply to the people who knew her.
Yet history never thought to preserve her name. The beads survived. She did not.
As historians, there is much we can recover from the past, and just as much we never can. Archaeology gives us walls, streets, broken pottery, carbonized loaves of bread, and even the herbs that once scented a Roman kitchen. It cannot tell us who wore these beads or what she hoped for as she fastened them around her neck on an ordinary summer morning.
So tonight I want to do the only honest thing I can. I will imagine her without pretending to know her. Everything you are about to read about Pompeii, its rebuilding, its markets, its food, and its trade is grounded in the historical and archaeological record. The woman herself is not. She is a life carefully imagined from the evidence that remains, a tribute to the countless working women whose names disappeared while the cities they helped sustain became famous.
I have chosen to call her Victoria. It was a real Roman name, one that means victory, and it seems fitting for a woman who built her future with hard work, long days, and a market stall filled with fragrant herbs and precious spices. Whether that was truly her name does not matter nearly as much as this simple truth: after two thousand years of being forgotten, someone deserves to be remembered.
Come with me now. The market is opening, the bread is still warm from the ovens, and Victoria is arranging her jars as the streets of Pompeii begin another ordinary morning.
Pompeii, in the Year of Rebuilding
Before we follow Victoria through her morning, we need to understand the city that shaped it.
When most people think of Pompeii, they think of the eruption that buried it beneath ash. Victoria knew nothing of that future. She lived in a city filled not with fear, but with hope.
Eight years earlier, in AD 62, a powerful earthquake had shaken Pompeii. Houses collapsed, temples cracked, and the aqueduct that supplied the public fountains was badly damaged. For generations the people of Campania had lived with occasional tremors, but this earthquake was different. It left scars that were still visible nearly a decade later.
Today we know what the people of Pompeii could not. The earthquake was one sign that the mountain overlooking their vineyards was awakening. To them, Vesuvius was simply part of the landscape, green, fertile, and familiar. They had no reason to imagine that it was a volcano preparing to change history.
But Victoria did not wake each morning wondering about mountains.
She woke wondering whether enough customers would come to market.
By around AD 70, Pompeii had become a city of rebuilding. Fresh plaster covered old cracks. Carpenters and stonecutters worked beside painted walls. Public buildings were still being repaired, while homes and shops reopened one by one. Even another earthquake, probably sometime around this period, was treated more as an inconvenience than a warning. Life had to continue, and business had to be done.
In many ways, the earthquake had created opportunity as well as hardship. Some wealthy families never fully recovered, and properties changed hands as fortunes shifted. Ambitious freedmen, merchants, and skilled tradespeople found opportunities that had been harder to imagine a generation earlier. Archaeology and inscriptions remind us that women also participated in this commercial world as property owners, business managers, and merchants. A capable woman with a successful market stall was not unusual in Pompeii. She was part of a city quietly reinventing itself.
The wider Roman world was rebuilding too. Only a year earlier, Rome had endured the chaos remembered as the Year of the Four Emperors. Civil war had given way to stability under the new emperor, Vespasian, whose practical government began restoring confidence throughout the empire. Pompeii shared in that cautious optimism. The future seemed uncertain, but it also seemed full of possibility.
That is the Pompeii I want you to picture.
Not a city waiting to die, but a city busy living.
The streets are crowded. Bakers carry warm loaves to their shops. Builders call to one another from scaffolding. Merchants lift the shutters on their stalls. Somewhere, a woman named Victoria arranges jars of herbs and spices beneath the morning sun, believing she has years ahead of her.
So would any of us.
The Stall
If you had walked through the market that morning, you might not have noticed Victoria at first.
Her stall was not the largest, nor the loudest. It stood among dozens of others beneath the bright Campanian sun, its wooden shelves crowded with cloth packets, small ceramic jars, woven baskets, and the familiar tools of everyday trade. But if you came close enough, you would have noticed something every cook recognizes before seeing it.
The smell.
Fresh herbs, dried leaves, garlic, crushed coriander, warm pepper, olive oil, and sun-dried earth mingled into the kind of fragrance that promises supper long before the fire is lit.
Along the front of her table sat the herbs that grew easily in Campania and appear again and again in the archaeological record of Pompeii. Coriander, dill, oregano, mint, fennel, rue, sweet marjoram, and thyme could all find their way into a Roman kitchen. These were the dependable sellers, purchased by household cooks preparing the day's meals and by the cookshops that fed the city's workers. A few coins bought enough to season a family's dinner.
Behind them, where Victoria could keep a closer eye, stood the treasures.
Black pepper from India. Long pepper, prized for its deeper warmth. Cinnamon and ginger, carried over astonishing distances by merchants whose routes stretched across deserts and seas before ending in this busy provincial city. These spices were expensive, not because they were magical, but because every handful represented months of travel and countless exchanges before reaching Pompeii.
Nearby sat another part of Victoria's trade: fragrant mixtures of herbs and spices prepared for steeping in wine or hot water. The Romans did not drink tea as we know it today, but they did enjoy herbal infusions and warmly spiced wines. A customer might leave with a small cloth twist of herbs to soothe an unsettled stomach or a fragrant blend to stir into warmed wine on a cool evening.
The more I imagine Victoria's table, the more familiar it becomes.
I have stood behind one like it for years.
The herbs are different only in small ways. The jars still need filling before the first customers arrive.
The treasured spices still stay within easy reach. Regular customers still have their favorites, and after a while you find yourself measuring them out before they even ask.
Two thousand years separate our markets.
The work feels remarkably unchanged.
A Morning in the Market
Now let me hand the morning to Victoria. What follows is imagined, but every detail grows from what we know of Pompeii, its markets, and the people who worked them. Her voice is mine, lent across two thousand years in the hope of bringing one ordinary life a little closer.
I arrive before the first rays of sunlight reach the tops of the buildings. The bakers have been awake for hours, and the smell of fresh bread drifts through the streets long before the loaves appear. I lift the shutters from my stall, brush away yesterday's dust, and begin arranging the jars. Coriander near the front where the cookshop boys can reach it quickly. Pepper close beside me.
The costly spices never stray far from my hand.
The first customers come as they always do. Cooks buying for the day's meals, servants carrying small baskets, and men from the cookshops who know exactly how much coriander or cumin they need before the noon rush begins. We haggle because that is what people do in the market, though we both know where the price will end. One by one, worn copper asses pass into my palm, still warm from other hands. No single sale makes a living, but together they build a day.
As the sun climbs higher, the market finds its voice.
Builders carrying timber call to one another as they pass toward another house still waiting to be repaired. A mule train carefully picks its way across the worn paving stones. A bread seller walks by with fresh round loaves hanging from a pole across his shoulders, calling out the morning's price. Children weave through the crowd as though every stall belongs equally to them, while a prosperous matron pauses only long enough to send her household servant for pepper before continuing her conversation with a friend.
I enjoy watching them all. A market teaches you to know people without ever knowing their names. You learn who lingers over every purchase, who always counts their coins twice, who buys only what today's supper requires, and who comes simply because they enjoy talking before beginning the day's work.
Then I see Tullia.
She keeps the cookshop on the corner, and for three years she has stopped at my stall on every market day.
She has never argued over the price, never asked for credit, and never left without wishing me a good day. She knows my herbs are the finest, and I know she will return.
She asks for coriander, cumin, and a little pepper.
I measure the coriander, cumin, and pepper into a little square of linen, gather the corners into a neat bundle, and tie it with a bit of cord before counting her change into my hand. I then hand her the cloth twist.
Then I pause.
Tucked beneath the edge of the table is a small string of amber-colored glass beads I bought months ago from the trader two stalls away. They cost very little, but when the morning sun catches them, they glow the color of warm honey. I have carried them from market to market without quite knowing why.
This morning, suddenly, I do.
As I place her change into her hand, I fold the little necklace into her palm and gently close her fingers around it.
"These are for you," I say.
She looks down, expecting another coin.
When she opens her hand and sees the beads, she simply stares. For a moment the bustle of the market seems very far away.
"For me?" she asks at last.
I nod.
"I've been carrying them for months," I tell her. "Until today, I wasn't quite sure who they belonged to."
She looks from the beads back to me, and a slow smile spreads across her face.
"So they were waiting for me."
"I think they were."
Carefully, almost reverently, she slips them over her head. The amber beads catch the morning light as they settle against her tunic.
"They're beautiful," she whispers.
Then she reaches across the table and gives my hand a gentle squeeze.
No more than a heartbeat.
It is enough.
She gathers her herbs, thanks me once more, and disappears into the crowd toward her cookshop. Within moments another customer steps forward asking for fennel, and the morning continues as though nothing remarkable has happened.
But something has.
If the market clerk had stood nearby with his wax tablets, he could have written down every coin that changed hands that morning. He could have recorded the price of pepper, the measure of coriander, and the cost of cumin with perfect accuracy.
He would never have written down the necklace.
He would never have recorded the grateful smile on Tullia's face, the brief squeeze of a friend's hand, or the quiet understanding that passed between two women who earned their living one customer at a time.
The ledger remembered the coins.
The market remembered the kindness.
I think kindness was the more valuable trade.
A Word on Salt, and the Myth of It
Before we leave Victoria's stall, let me show you one more thing.
Somewhere on her table there would almost certainly have been a small container of salt. Not because she sold it in great quantities, but because no Roman kitchen could function without it. Salt-preserved meat and fish, seasoned vegetables and pottage, flavored sauces, and carried households through the seasons. It was as ordinary as bread, and every bit as necessary.
You've probably heard the old story that Roman soldiers were paid in salt, and that this is where our word salary comes from.
It's one of those stories that refuses to disappear.
The truth is a little more interesting.
Our word salary does indeed trace its roots to the Latin salarium, and salarium is connected to sal, the Latin word for salt. But no Roman writer ever clearly tells us that soldiers were routinely handed salt instead of wages. By Victoria's day, soldiers were paid in coin, just like everyone else. The famous tale of legionaries marching home with sacks of salt as their pay appears to have grown over the centuries because it made such a satisfying story.
Reality is usually quieter. And sometimes, quieter is better.
Salt did not need to be money to be valuable. It was one of the foundations of daily life. Without it, fish spoiled, meat disappeared from the table, vegetables could not be preserved for winter, and armies struggled to feed themselves. Entire trade routes existed because people needed salt. Towns prospered because of it. Families depended upon it.
Perhaps that is why the language itself remembered the connection.
Salt became so closely associated with value that its name found its way into the very word for compensation. Not because people were literally paid in salt, but because everyone understood that some things were too essential to measure only by their price.
I have always liked that better than the myth.
It reminds me that history is often richer than the stories we simplify for ourselves. If we take the time to look a little closer, we usually discover something more human than the legend we began with.
That, in many ways, is the whole purpose of this Almanac.
Not to repeat the stories everyone already knows.
But to uncover the quieter truths waiting just beneath them.
Setting Victoria's Table
The market day is ending.
The last customers have drifted home, the stalls are being covered for the night, and the streets are quieter now than they were only a few hours ago. Victoria gathers what remains of her herbs, ties shut the jars of pepper and cinnamon, and begins the familiar walk home.
Like most people in Pompeii, she did not eat the extravagant banquets that fill so many books about ancient Rome. Those belonged to the wealthy few. The meals that sustained ordinary families were simpler, humbler, and, in many ways, more familiar than we might expect.
Bread. Olive oil. Olives. Cheese. Lentils and chickpeas. Garlic. Herbs. Seasonal vegetables. A little fish when fortune allowed it. Nearly everything seasoned with garum, the fermented fish sauce that appeared on Roman tables as often as salt.
It was practical food, shaped by the rhythm of the seasons and the needs of working people. It was food that wasted little, relied heavily on plants, and drew remarkable flavor from herbs, good oil, and careful seasoning. Looking at it now, I cannot help smiling. Two thousand years later, nutritionists are encouraging many of us to eat in much the same way.
The recipes that follow are inspired by that everyday table, not by the elaborate feasts of emperors. A pounded herb and cheese spread much like the moretum described in Roman poetry. A comforting lentil pottage seasoned with the warm spices Victoria sold each morning. A round loaf inspired by the famous bread found in Pompeii's bakeries, served warm with fragrant olive oil.
Each recipe also carries a small piece of my own table.
Rather than asking you to chase dozens of individual herbs and spices, I have chosen Oak City Spice Blends that capture the spirit of Victoria's pantry while remaining honest about where modern convenience begins. Whenever a blend includes ingredients the Romans would not have known, I have said so plainly. History deserves that honesty.
My hope is not that you recreate Pompeii perfectly.
My hope is that, for one evening, you share something of Victoria's table.
Pour a little olive oil.
Tear the bread.
Pass the bowl.
And remember the woman whose name history forgot, but whose world still has something to teach us.
The Spicekeeper's Kitchen
History tells us what people ate; technique helps us understand why it tasted the way it did.
One of the simplest lessons I have learned after years of studying historical cooking is that herbs and spices are at their best when they are given a chance to wake up before the rest of the ingredients arrive. We call that blooming.
Most often, blooming means warming herbs and spices gently in olive oil, butter, or another cooking fat for about 30 seconds before adding the remaining ingredients. That brief moment releases fragrant oils, softens harsh edges, and allows the flavors to spread through the entire dish instead of sitting on the surface.
Not every recipe blooms the same way.
A Roman moretum, for example, comes alive not through heat but through pressure. Garlic, herbs, cheese, and oil are crushed together in a mortar, bruising the leaves and releasing their aroma with every turn of the pestle. It is a different kind of bloom, but the same principle is at work: helping the ingredients become more than the sum of their parts.
As you cook through these recipes, I'll note the bloom used in each one, explain why it works, and point out where modern ingredients or techniques gently depart from the historical record. I believe those moments are worth mentioning. Good history should be as honest as good cooking.
The recipes that follow are not intended to recreate Pompeii exactly as it was.
They are invitations.
Invitations to stand, for a little while, beside Victoria's table, to smell the herbs, tear the warm bread, stir the pottage, and discover that two thousand years is not nearly as long as it sometimes seems when people gather to share a meal.
I. THE STALL-KEEPER'S SPREAD
Moretum, a Pounded Herb, Garlic, and Cheese Paste
The Romans had a whole poem about this. A countryman rises before dawn, and with garlic, herbs, hard cheese, salt, and oil, pounds them all together in a mortar into a green-flecked paste to spread on his bread. It is, in plain truth, an ancestor of pesto, and it is the kind of quick, sharp, sustaining thing a market woman could make in a moment and eat standing up.
Featured blend: La Spezia
Bloom: No Bloom (Cold Pound)
Serves: 4 as a spread
Ingredients
4 oz hard sharp cheese, such as pecorino, grated (115 g)
2 to 3 garlic cloves
2 tsp La Spezia (4 g)
2 Tbsp fresh herbs (parsley, cilantro, celery leaf), chopped, optional
3 Tbsp olive oil (45 ml)
1 tsp white wine vinegar (5 ml)
Salt to taste
Method
In a mortar, pound the garlic with a pinch of salt to a paste. A bowl and the back of a spoon will do if you have no mortar.
Add the grated cheese and the La Spezia and pound again until the mixture comes together and the herbs in the blend release their fragrance. This crushing is the bloom.
Work in the olive oil a little at a time, then the vinegar, until you have a thick, spreadable paste. Stir in the fresh herbs if using.
Taste and adjust the salt. Let it sit a few minutes for the flavors to marry.
Spread thickly on warm bread.
Best With: Torn warm bread, or as a dip for raw vegetables. A glass of simple red wine.
Blooming Notes: La Spezia is a garlic-and-herb blend built on oregano, basil, rosemary, marjoram, and thyme, which makes it almost a ready-made moretum in a jar. Pounding rather than heating is the bloom here; the pressure of the mortar bruises the herbs and wakes their oils into the cheese and oil.
Anachronism flag: a true Roman moretum would have leaned on fresh herbs and raw garlic alone. Using a dried blend is a modern Oak City Spice Blends convenience. Basil is included in La Spezia; it was known in the Roman world but its culinary use in this exact period is debated, so consider it a gentle liberty.
II. THE COOKSHOP POT
Lentil Pottage with Cumin and Coriander
This is the food of the street and the home, the pottage that bubbled in every cookshop for the men and women who had no kitchen of their own. Lentils were cheap, filling, and endlessly forgiving, and the Romans seasoned them with the warm, earthy spices Victoria sold by the twist: cumin, coriander, pepper.
Featured blend: Baharat
Bloom: Fat Bloom
Serves: 4 to 6
Ingredients
1½ cups brown or green lentils, rinsed (300 g)
3 Tbsp olive oil (45 ml)
1 onion, finely chopped
2 garlic cloves, minced
1 Tbsp Baharat (8 g)
1 carrot, diced
1 stalk celery, diced
6 cups water or stock (1.4 L)
1 to 2 Tbsp red wine vinegar, to finish
1 to 2 Tbsp fish sauce or garum, optional but authentic
Salt to taste
Olive oil and chopped herbs, to serve
Method
Warm the olive oil in a heavy pot over medium heat. Add the onion and cook until soft and golden, about 6 minutes.
Add the garlic and the Baharat and bloom in the oil for about 30 seconds, until the cumin and coriander smell warm and toasted.
Add the carrot, celery, and lentils, and stir to coat in the spiced oil.
Pour in the water or stock. Bring to a simmer and cook, partly covered, for 30 to 40 minutes, until the lentils are tender and the pottage has body.
Finish with the vinegar and the fish sauce or garum if using, then salt to taste. Serve drizzled with olive oil and scattered with herbs.
Best With: Warm bread for sopping, and a green-herb salad. It is even better the next day.
Blooming Notes: Baharat is a warm Middle Eastern blend of black pepper, cumin, coriander, cinnamon, paprika, cardamom, and clove. Blooming it in the oil before the lentils go in builds the savory backbone of the whole pot. Without that step, the spices sit flat on top of the dish instead of running all the way through it.
Anachronism flag: cumin, coriander, and pepper are squarely Roman. Baharat also carries paprika, which is a New World pepper and could not have reached this table; treat it as a modern Oak City Spice Blends bridge to a flavor a Roman cook would still recognize in spirit.
III. THE SHARED LOAF
Panis Quadratus with a Warm Herb Dipping Oil
This is the bread of Pompeii itself. When the city was excavated, archaeologists found round loaves turned to carbon in the bakery ovens, scored into eight wedges, marked with a string tied round the middle so they could be carried on a pole or torn apart and shared at the table. Eighteen of them came out of the ovens. It was the everyday loaf, and we serve it the oldest way there is: torn warm and dipped in good oil bright with herbs and sesame.
Featured blend: Fluffy Za'atar (in the dipping oil)
Bloom: Fat Bloom (in the oil)
Serves: 6 to 8
Ingredients
For the bread (a simple same-day loaf)
4 cups bread flour, or half whole wheat (500 g)
1¼ cups warm water (300 ml)
2 tsp instant yeast (7 g)
2 tsp salt (10 g)
1 Tbsp olive oil (15 ml)
Optional: 1 tsp toasted sesame, poppy, or nigella seeds for the top
For the dipping oil
½ cup good olive oil (120 ml)
1 to 2 Tbsp Fluffy Za'atar
Method
Mix the flour, yeast, and salt. Add the warm water and olive oil and stir to a shaggy dough. Knead 8 to 10 minutes until smooth and elastic.
Cover and let rise in a warm place until doubled, about 1 to 1½ hours.
Knock back and shape into a round. Set on a floured tray. To echo the Pompeii loaf, tie a length of cotton kitchen string snugly around the middle, then press a thin rod or chopstick down from the center to mark eight wedges from the top. Do not cut.
Let rise again, about 30 to 45 minutes. Scatter the optional seeds on top.
Bake at 425°F (220°C) for 30 to 35 minutes, until deep golden and hollow-sounding. Remove the string once cooled.
For the oil, warm the olive oil gently in a small pan over low heat, stir in the Fluffy Za'atar, and let it bloom off the heat for a few minutes until fragrant. Pour into a shallow dish.
Tear the warm bread and dip.
Best With: Everything on this table. The moretum, the pottage, a dish of olives.
Blooming Notes: Warming Fluffy Za'atar gently in the oil is a classic Fat Bloom. The low heat toasts the sesame and opens the coriander, oregano, thyme, and sumac without scorching them. Do not let the oil get hot enough to fry; you want a slow, fragrant infusion.
Anachronism flag: the name "za'atar" comes from a later eastern-Mediterranean and Arab tradition, not first-century Rome. But the bones of this blend belong to Victoria's world: coriander, oregano, thyme, and sesame were all Roman pantry staples, and sumac was a genuine Roman souring spice used before lemons were common. A tart, herby, seeded oil for dipping bread would have been entirely at home on her table. The name is later; the flavor is ancient.
Michel's Notebook
I keep coming back to the gift.
We know an astonishing amount about the Romans. We know what they ate and what they paid for it because they left us shopping lists scratched onto walls that somehow survived the destruction of their city. A loaf. A few asses. Cheese. A sausage. Oil. A cucumber. A date. We can reconstruct the price of bread in Pompeii during the last year of its life with surprising confidence. The ledger of that world is remarkably complete.
But the ledger only ever records the coins.
What it cannot record is the other economy, the one that ran quietly alongside money and, I suspect, mattered just as much. It cannot tell us about the extra pinch of coriander slipped into a regular customer's parcel, the lentils sold a little cheaper to a neighbor having a difficult month, or the amber-colored beads Victoria quietly pressed into Tullia's hand. Those moments were never written down because they were never meant to be. They existed only between two people who understood one another, and when they were over, they disappeared into memory.
And yet I believe those forgotten moments are the truest part of any market.
I say that as someone who has spent years standing behind a table of herbs and spices. The coins matter. They keep the lights on, pay the bills, and allow the market to open again next week. But they are not why people come back. Regular customers are rarely returning simply because they need another pouch of seasoning. They return because someone remembers their favorite blend, asks how their family is doing, notices when they have missed a market, or saves them a fresh batch because they know they will be looking for it. Those small kindnesses cannot be listed on an invoice, yet they are often the most valuable thing exchanged all day.
As I hold these little black-and-white beads in my hand, I realize how little I truly know about the woman who once wore them. I do not know whether she bought them for herself after a successful market day, whether they were a gift from a friend, or whether they reminded her of someone she loved. I do not know whether she laughed often, worried constantly, or dreamed of something beyond the city walls. I do not even know her name. Victoria is mine, not hers.
But I know this much. She was real. She stood in the warmth of an ordinary morning, greeted familiar customers, counted small coins into weathered hands, and chose these beads because they pleased her. That simple truth feels far more important to me than any emperor's triumph or senator's speech.
History has always been good at remembering extraordinary people. I think it deserves to spend a little more time remembering ordinary ones. The women who opened their stalls before sunrise. The bakers who filled the streets with the smell of fresh bread. The cooks who stretched humble ingredients into nourishing meals. The merchants who quietly added a little extra for someone they cared about. Those are the people who held communities together, even if no historian thought to write down their names.
Perhaps that is what Victoria has carried across two thousand years to place in my hands. Not simply a string of glass beads, but a reminder that generosity is rarely recorded and almost never forgotten. Long after the price of pepper has been lost and the coins themselves have turned to dust, people still remember how they were treated.
If this Almanac encourages us to look a little more closely at the ordinary lives history overlooked, or to offer one unexpected kindness to someone standing across the table from us, then I think Victoria's morning in Pompeii has done exactly what I hoped it would.
She has been remembered.
And perhaps, in remembering her, we become a little more generous ourselves.
The Spicekeeper's Bookshelf
If Victoria's morning has left you wanting to know more about the real Pompeii, these are the books I would place in your hands first. Some explore the city itself, others its kitchens, and one preserves the closest thing we have to a Roman cookbook. Together they offer a wonderful doorway into the everyday world behind this story.
The Fires of Vesuvius: Pompeii Lost and Found - Mary Beard (2008)
If you read only one modern history of Pompeii, make it this one. Beard has an extraordinary gift for separating evidence from assumption while bringing ordinary Romans vividly back to life. It remains one of the finest introductions to the city.
ISBN: 978-0674045866
Pompeii: The Living City - Ray Laurence (2021)
One of today's leading Pompeii scholars, Laurence reconstructs the city through its streets, homes, workshops, taverns, and marketplaces. It is an outstanding companion for anyone wanting to picture Victoria's world.
ISBN: 978-0674981348
Around the Roman Table: Food and Feasting in Ancient Rome - Patrick Faas (2003)
Part history and part cookbook, this modern classic explains Roman ingredients, dining customs, and recipes with warmth and scholarship. It remains one of the most approachable books ever written on Roman cuisine.
ISBN: 978-0226233475
Cooking Apicius: Roman Recipes for Today - Sally Grainger (2006)
If your interest is less in reading about Roman food and more in cooking it, begin here. Grainger carefully adapts ancient recipes for the modern kitchen while remaining faithful to the historical evidence. It is one of the finest practical books available on Roman cooking.
ISBN: 978-1903018798
Apicius: A Critical Edition with an Introduction and English Translation - Christopher Grocock & Sally Grainger (2006)
This is the closest thing we possess to a surviving Roman cookbook. Although intended for professional Roman cooks rather than home kitchens, it provides an invaluable glimpse into the ingredients, techniques, and flavors that shaped the Roman table.
ISBN: 978-1903018132
Tavola Mediterranea - Farrell Monaco
Farrell Monaco's work in experimental archaeology has become one of the most respected resources for historical bread, Roman baking, and everyday Mediterranean foodways. Her reconstruction of panis quadratus, based directly on the carbonized loaves recovered from Pompeii, inspired the bread featured in this issue.
Whenever possible, I encourage reading the scholarship alongside the objects themselves. Stand for a few moments before a museum case holding a simple bead, a worn coin, a baker's stamp, or a carbonized loaf of bread. Those humble objects often tell us more about how people truly lived than the grand monuments ever can.
History has always whispered most clearly through ordinary lives.
You only have to stop long enough to listen.
Continue the Journey
By now, the market has grown quiet.
The shutters have been closed, the day's coins counted, and the last customers have disappeared into the gathering evening. Somewhere beyond the city walls, Vesuvius still waits in silence, though no one in Pompeii has reason to fear tomorrow. Victoria has gone home, supper has been shared, and another ordinary day has come to its peaceful end.
That ordinary day is what has stayed with me.
Not the empire. Not the politics. Not even the tragedy we know is still to come. What lingers is a woman who measured herbs into a cloth parcel, greeted familiar faces, and quietly slipped a small gift into a friend's waiting hand simply because kindness seemed the right thing to do.
You and I do not need a Roman marketplace to understand that lesson.
The next time you stand behind a counter, welcome someone through your door, or gather friends around your own table, remember that every exchange carries something more than the transaction itself. There is always another economy at work, one measured not in coins but in generosity. It is the extra pinch tucked into a familiar order, the loaf shared while it is still warm, the chair quietly pulled out for one more guest, the small kindness no receipt will ever record.
When you make the recipes from Victoria's table, I hope you will take your time. Pour the olive oil slowly. Tear the bread with your hands. Pass the bowl before serving yourself. Those simple rituals have connected people around tables for thousands of years, and they matter every bit as much now as they did on an ordinary evening in Pompeii.
As I look once more at the little black-and-white beads resting in my hand, I realize they have carried something far greater than glass across two thousand years. They have carried a reminder that ordinary lives are never truly ordinary. They are built from quiet moments, familiar faces, shared meals, and small acts of generosity that history rarely records but people rarely forget.
Perhaps that is Victoria's real gift to us.
Not a lesson about ancient Rome.
A reminder to notice the people standing across the table today.
Until our next table, may your jars stay fragrant, may your eye stay kind, and may your table always have room for one more chair.
Until then,
Michel
The Spicekeeper
"The market is swept, the lamps are out, but the road still leads to another city... and another table is already waiting."
A Note on This Issue
One of the questions I am asked most often is, "How much of this really happened?"
The answer is both simple and important.
Pompeii was a real city, rebuilt after the devastating earthquake of AD 62 and destroyed by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in AD 79. The streets, markets, foods, trades, bread, herbs, spices, and daily life described in this issue are drawn from the archaeological record and the work of historians who have spent generations studying the city. Wherever possible, I have followed that evidence closely.
The black-and-white glass beads that inspired this story are also real. They have been part of my collection for many years and are identified simply as Roman, first century. They were the beginning of this entire issue.
Victoria, however, is imagined.
There is no surviving record that tells us who wore those beads, what work she did, or what name she answered to. Rather than invent a dramatic life, I chose to imagine an ordinary one. Victoria is a market woman built from the evidence we do have, a plausible life woven from archaeology, history, and the countless unnamed women who bought, sold, cooked, traded, and helped sustain the Roman world.
Whenever this Almanac enters her thoughts, her conversations, or the quiet moments of her morning, you have stepped into historical fiction. Whenever it describes the city around her, the foods on her table, or the world in which she lived, you have returned to the historical record.
I believe history is at its most meaningful when we are honest about what we know, equally honest about what we do not, and willing to imagine kindly where the evidence falls silent.
That is the spirit in which Victoria's story has been told.
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