by Crystal King
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.
“You are still quite rich, Apicius! There is not an equestrian alive who wouldn’t still be envious of your fortune!”
He laughed, a jolly sound that grated against my ears. How could he laugh?
“Oh, Thrasius. An equestrian! All my life you would have said patrician, but I have sunk and only the world of the plebs lies before me.”
I stood, knocking several silk-covered pillows onto the floor. “This is ludicrous!” I was shouting, but didn’t care. “Patrician, equestrian, it matters not! You need not do this. Your coffers are still fat and we can do things to bring more money in. We can convert one of your farms into a garum factory. You don’t have to give out expensive togas to guests. There is so much we can do!” I knew as the words fell off my tongue that they fell on deaf ears.
“No, no, no. I do not want to worry about such things.” He sat up and waved me over with a chubby hand. “Come here, Thrasius.”
I took the few steps toward him, my body shaking. “I don’t understand.”
He stood and reached up to his neck and lifted off the amulet he wore. My silphium carved amulet. I had forgotten about it, that he had stolen it so many years ago. “I believe this is yours,” he said as he put it over my head.
“No, it’s yours!”
He took my face between his hands. He bent forward and kissed both of my cheeks. Still holding my shoulders, he leaned back to look at me.
“My dear boy, how much you have changed since that day in the market. I remember how much you stank, how much you worried me. And that rotten haruspex . . .” He let me go, a wistful look in his eye.
I had kept the priest’s words in my head for decades, always shoving them to the back of my mind, hating that the man had so much foresight. You will feel the blood of life mingling with the pang of death. Your good fortune will be as a disease throughout your life. The more you work toward success, the more your sky will darken.
“Please, Apicius, do not do this.” I fell to my knees. As though in a dream, I wrapped my arms around his legs as a child might.
He ruffled my hair, making me feel more like a child. “I must, Thrasius. Please do not fret. You have such love in your life. I have so little. Let me leave with dignity.”
I held on to him for a few more moments, barely able to comprehend what was happening. Finally, I let go. I scrambled to my feet, even though my legs threatened to collapse from under me at any given moment.
I wiped away tears, trying to regain my own dignity so I could give him his.
• • •
“The first course will be out shortly, Dominus Apicius.” I tried to keep my voice from trembling. “I suspect you will be very pleased.”
He clapped his hands together. “Excellent! Bring out the girls and the boys! Bring out the snails, the apples, the mussels, apricots, and the dormice!”
When I left, Sotas was still beside the door, but he turned away from me as I walked out. He didn’t want me to see him cry.
I went through all the motions of the meal, sending out the slaves with the food when the courses dictated. I sent the entertainment in—flutists, harpists, and singers. I sent the girls, the boys, all dressed in ever-amazing costumes, some like birds and animals, some like monsters, some like heroes, and some like nymphs.
And oh, the food was magnificent! I had re-created all the old stories of the gods. Venus carved from a gourd, emerging from her shell. Fantastic Roman triremes made from hollowed cucumbers and holding tiny white carrot men fought battles across an ocean of cold beet soup. A platter of cheese and figs shaped into Cerberus and his double heads. And the dishes! Only the finest delicacies were served, with the pinnacle of each course flavored with the few dried sprigs of silphium I had been hoarding for a year—there was no fresh silphium to be had. Plate after plate of marinated mushrooms, Baian beans in mustard sauce, pork meatballs, honey melons, stuffed boiled eggs, fried veal slices, crunchy duck and flamingo tongues, pork pastries stuffed with figs, pear patinae, steamed lamb, soufflés of little fishes . . . even now my mouth salivates thinking back to that meal. I hope Apicius found great pleasure in those dishes.
I couldn’t bear to sit with him while he ate. Instead I remained in the kitchen, tasting only ash and tears.
I wished Rúan had been there to help me when I faltered, because falter was all I seemed to do. I had to send Passia away—her keening was more than I could bear. I put the fear of the gods in the slaves, telling them that if they did not perform their best for Apicius that night I would have them put to death. At one point Tycho took my new knives from me, afraid I would follow through on my threats, or hurt myself.
After the final course went out, one of the boys returned with a message that Apicius was asking for me. He wanted me to bring the finest wine in the cellar.
I walked that long hallway with the heaviest of feet. I had never before known such dread and sorrow mixed together as they were those two hundred steps.
Sotas was not at the door when I arrived. I drew upon all my courage, determined to control my emotions. I pushed the door open and saw Sotas standing behind his master. His eyes were red but there were no tears on his cheeks.
Apicius lay back on the pillows, rubbing his bulging stomach. “Ahh, here he is! Thrasius, come with my best wine!”
I held up the small pitcher, the last of Apicius’s favorite Falernian vintage, seventy-five years old. “I mixed it for you too.” I was surprised that I could speak, but the words fell off my tongue, my resolve holding.
He motioned for me to sit and he waved Sotas to sit on his other side. “Have a glass with me, you and Sotas.”
My shaking hands poured the wine into goblets that should have been for other guests. I handed one to Apicius and one to Sotas.
Apicius reached into the fold of his toga and pulled out a tiny green glass flask. He unstopped it and poured a muddy liquid into the glass. “A very strong dose of opium and hemlock,” he explained. “As you know, I’m not one for pain.”
I watched him stir the liquid into the wine with the long handle of his spoon. I suddenly chuckled, surprising myself.
Apicius looked at me, the corner of his mouth curling upward. “What’s so funny, Thrasius?”
“You are right; you never were one for pain! I remember you stubbing your toe on a rock on the beach at Baiae once. You made us carry you back to the villa!” I couldn’t stop laughing and soon both Apicius and Sotas were laughing as well.
“You mean, I carried him back to the villa!” Sotas snorted.
“Well, you’re a beast! Why should they have expended energy when you could practically pick me up in one hand?” Apicius was crying tears of laughter.
“He can’t do that anymore,” I managed, wheezing.
“That’s your fault, Thrasius,” Apicius said. “All those damn milk-fed snails you addicted me to!”
“I don’t think it was just the snails.” Sotas chuckled.
Apicius did not wait for our laughter to fade. He lifted the glass. “To you, my friends.”
“No, Apicius, we raise our glasses to you,” Sotas said solemnly.
Apicius laughed again. It was the last time I would hear that bright sound. “Let us raise our glasses—to us!” He knocked back the glass. We followed suit. Sotas drained the contents of his goblet and set it down on the table next to him.
“Oh, my, what a wonderful vintage this is!” Apicius lifted the glass again and downed all that was left. He fell back on the pillows.
“Sit with me, my friends. Tell me stories about the best meals we have ever eaten.” He reached out a hand to me and one to Sotas. His grip was tight. He closed his eyes.
Sotas drew a deep breath, and for a moment I thought he would not be able to speak. “I remember the first time you let me try a fried dormouse.” He too had closed his eyes in memory. “I was fifteen and Fannia was giving a party. You snuck one out to me as a reward for not telling your father you had been
the one to graffiti the wall of the barn. I remember how the bones crunched, how the skin crackled, and the way the juices ran across my mouth. I think it tasted even better because I wasn’t supposed to have it and because I had pleased you.”
Apicius gave a small grunt of pleasure but said nothing, his eyes still closed.
His grip was starting to slacken in my hand. “I remember the first apricots we had a few years ago,” I said. “Oh, what a new taste it was for both of us! Who would have thought the gods could give us something so lush, so full of honey and sunlight. And you were right, Apicius, they did make the most amazing patina, didn’t they? I think I will make one for you tomorrow, in fact.”
No sound from Apicius. His grip had weakened as I spoke and soon it was me gripping his hand, not him gripping mine.
I moved my hand to his wrist, clasping it, feeling his pulse weaken. The tears came unbidden. Sotas and I sat with him, crying until his pulse was no more.
I pulled three coins from the pouch at my belt. I placed one on each eye and gently opened his mouth to place the coin on his tongue, which would guarantee that Charon took him across the River Styx to the Underworld.
I didn’t notice that Sotas had retrieved his sword until he knelt with it in front of him.
“Oh, my friend, no, not you too . . .”
“It’s how it was meant to be,” he said. “My lady Fides pledged me to Apicius in my youth. My pledge is complete and now she will take me to Elysium.”
“No, no, it’s not like that.”
He smiled a little. “Yes it is. Good-bye, Thrasius. You were a friend indeed, to both my master and me. The gods will reward you richly, of that I’m sure.”
Sotas plunged forward suddenly, falling on the point of his sword so hard it emerged through his back in a spurt of bright blood. He did not cry out.
“No!” I moved forward, knowing that nothing I did would matter. I reached him as he slumped forward, dead.
I screamed my sorrow to the gods until all the slaves came running.
EPILOGUE
Seven Years Later
Athens, Greece—July, 38 C.E.
Passia, Junius, Tycho, and I came to Athens in March, afraid that Emperor Caligula’s greed would stretch its long arm toward us and demand our fortune. We were in especial danger as we were not patricians, but made rich by the inheritance Apicius left to us.
I eventually sold all of Apicius’s villas and farms, save the domus in Minturnae, where we first found each other and where so much began. I put the money away for Junius, who at twenty-five has become one of the best orators in all of Athens. He married a beautiful girl with eyes that remind me of Apicata’s. She is heavy with child and I feel such pride and hope for my grandchild-to-be.
Rúan came with us when we fled to Athens, bringing with him the beautiful woman who was once Antonia’s scribe. I bought them an expansive house nearby, down the street from us on the hill where our villa overlooks the sea. Together, Rúan and I still cook, but now we cook for our friends and our families, sharing our love of food only with those whom we love the most.
I still have my knives and I use them daily. I know not what spell Apicius had them bound with but I have yet to sharpen them. They shine as they did on that fateful morning he gifted them to me. They are sharp enough to slice papyrus and bone with equal measure and the swirl of waves has not faded from the blades.
My memory of him is as sharp as those knives, even now, so many years gone by and so many miles away.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
Though it is likely that there were other gourmands in ancient Rome, Marcus Gavius Apicius is the only one known to us. Historians believe that he lived sometime in the first century C.E., during the time of Caesar Tiberius, and many of the events described in Feast of Sorrow are documented in sources dating from that time.
Apicius, who was known to be one of the wealthiest men in Rome, achieved fame as a lover of luxury and fine food. On the Luxury of Apicius, written by his contemporary, the Greek grammarian and orator Apion, is now lost, but surviving sources largely condemn Apicius as a spendthrift. In his Consolations, Seneca relays the story of Apicius’s death—it seems he really did poison himself because he feared starvation when he learned that his fortune had dwindled to ten million sestertii—and asks, “How great must the luxury of that man have been, to whom ten millions signified want?” In reference to his cooking school, Seneca also decries that Apicius “defiled the age with his teaching,” a critique commonly leveled against those who displayed their great wealth in a vulgar fashion. In the centuries that followed, Apicius became one of the most iconic examples of such flagrancy and, in fact, the very word Apician came to mean “glutton.”
Many of the other characters in Feast of Sorrow—Sejanus, Apicata, Livia, Livilla, Tiberius, Drusus, Claudius, Antonia, Pliny, to name a few—were also real people whose lives are recorded in the annals of Roman history, and I endeavored to stay true to the historical record as much as possible. In his Annals, for example, Tacitus tells us that Sejanus “had disposed of his virtue at a price to Apicius, a rich man and a prodigal.” I found that anecdote to be particularly intriguing, as some scholars believe that Sejanus’s wife, Apicata, must have been a relation to Apicius given the naming conventions of women during that time. I had to wonder what would compel Apicius to marry his daughter to a former lover. Other details, including Sejanus’s horrific downfall as well as Apicata’s and Livilla’s fates, are well documented, and those scenes are imagined retellings of what their contemporaries recorded. Still others were fabricated to add color and clarification to the text. Claudius’s son, Drusus, for example, was not nicknamed Albus; I gave him this moniker to distinguish him from his relatives with similar names, a common occurrence among the Romans.
Parricide, or the murder of a parent, considered the most heinous crime one could commit, was an act punishable by death in ancient Rome. In fact, the Romans devised a particularly cruel and unusual form of capital punishment solely for those found guilty of this crime. The poena cullei, or punishment of the sack, which was first documented in 100 B.C.E., typically involved flogging the culprit, sewing him into a leather sack, sometimes with an assortment of live animals, and throwing him into the sea. However, it is not clear with what frequency this punishment was doled out, and some ancient sources maintain that only those caught in the act of murdering a parent faced any penalty at all. Moreover, the very wealthy were often above punishment, and that’s the direction I chose to take in Feast of Sorrow.
There is no record of the slaves whom Apicius owned, but given his wealth it is probable that he owned many hundreds. None of the slaves in Feast of Sorrow were real people, though slaves did often become a cherished part of the household, could earn their freedom, be buried in the family mausoleum, and, in some cases, inherit their masters’ wealth.
When it comes to food and feasts, we know that Apicius dined with Augustus’s adviser, Maecenas, with Martial the poet, and with several Roman consuls. In his Natural History, Pliny notes that Apicius advised Tiberius’s son, Drusus, not to eat cabbage tops or any cabbage sprouts because those were for commoners and that he declared that the tongues of flamingos were of the “most exquisite flavor.” The scene where Tiberius wagers that either Apicius or Publius Octavius would buy the extraordinary red mullet was recorded by Seneca in his Letters to Lucilius. And, in his Deipnosophistae, the rhetorician Athenaeus shares the story of Apicius sailing to the coast of Africa to look for prawns.
It is thought that Apicius was responsible for several different books about cooking, including one on sauces referenced by several ancient chroniclers, but none has survived. However, a cookbook that bears his name has survived and, ultimately, it is Apicius’s most important legacy. The oldest known collection of recipes, it is believed to have been compiled in the third or fourth century, long after Marcus Gavius Apicius lived, though it is likely that some of the recipes were first developed in his kitchen. While Apicius is full o
f ancient delicacies such as roasted peacock, boiled sow vulva, testicles, and other foods we would not commonly eat today, there are many others that are still popular, including tapenade, absinthe, flatbreads, and meatballs. There is even a recipe for Roman milk and egg bread that is identical to what we call French toast. And, contrary to popular belief, foie gras was not originally a French delicacy. The dish dates back twenty-five hundred years, and Pliny credits Apicius with developing a version using pigs instead of geese by feeding hogs dried figs and giving them an overdose of mulsum (honey wine) before slaughtering them.
The best adaptation of this cookbook is Apicius, A Critical Edition with an Introduction and English Translation, translated by Christopher Grocock and Sally Grainger (Devon, England: Prospect Books, 2006). In fact, the recipes on Feast of Sorrow’s part title pages (with minor changes by the author) are from this book. Sally Grainger’s companion cookbook, Cooking with Apicius (London, England: Marion Boyars, 2006), offers wonderful modern interpretations of the original recipes. My favorite is the Parthian chicken. I’ve included a modified version of this recipe, along with several other recipes for ancient Roman foods, on my site, crystalking.com, and I would love to hear from you if you try one!
Buon appetito!
Crystal King
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Feast of Sorrow would not have been possible without the support I received from Boston’s GrubStreet writing community. It is there that I workshopped early drafts, began teaching, found my writing group, and met my agent. There are so many wonderful individuals associated with this center of excellence that it would be difficult to name them all, but a few deserve a special shout-out: Christopher Castellani, Eve Bridburg, Lisa Borders, Sonya Larson, Whitney Scharer, Michelle Toth, and Michelle Seaton.