The existence of sumptuary legislation presumes a tension between the government and the citizen. It suggests a definite and tangible impetus towards luxury, among at least a section of the population, that should be checked or controlled. Sumptuary laws, designed to restrain and regulate the exercise of hedonistic impulses, are moralistic in tone, authoritarian in nature. They view human nature through the prism of pessimism: man as an an animal in thrall to corporeal appetites, a gluttonous, rutting beast, dazzled and ensnared by baubles and trinkets. The tradition of sumptuary legislation is still alive in contemporary societies. It may not take the form of edicts about clothing, or class-based tables of what may or may not be consumed, but the state is still concerned with citizens’ behaviour inasmuch as it impacts on public health or the administration of justice. The unspoken rationale for these laws, however, will often be an amalgam of distrust of sensual pleasure and a fear of social destabilization. The sociologist and historian of sumptuary laws, Alan Hunt, notes their two defining features. They were an active measure to preserve and strengthen the status quo, and they often possess a gender bias, although not always, as expected, directed against the female sex.1
In this chapter I discuss such legislation in two ancient societies: the Greek city-state of Sparta and the Roman republic and early empire. In both, anti-luxury laws tap into deep-rooted insecurities and aim straight for the very heart of identity, whether acting as a form of sticking-plaster pressed ineffectually over the gaping arterial wound of perceived eastern decadence in republican Rome, or a bulwark against the perceived evils of encroaching foreign customs in Sparta. They seek to protect and nurture some perceived form of national and cultural identity. These concerns about luxury and its effects arose at times of social, religious and political upheaval. The adversary is change. Sumptuary legislation is a conservative beast and sees in alteration not progress but decay and degeneration. It aims to preserve the status quo, or to force society into reverse gear.2
The historian of racism in antiquity, Benjamin Isaac, sees Greek thought as more isolationist than Roman although he suggests that xenophobic senti-ments found in literature were often belied by political practice.3 He cites a fragment of Xenophanes, the fifth-century bc philosopher and poet from the Ionian city of Colophon, in the Deipnosophistae of Athenaeus that refers to the Colophonians becoming degenerate and corrupted owing to their contact with the Lydians (of whom the most celebrated was King Croesus).4 He also reminds us of Plato’s assertion that the ideal location of a city should not be too close to the coast, as this would encourage the import of foreign goods.5 The ocean may act as a conduit for corruption, alien ideologies, immigration (and escape), and luxury. However, an isolationist policy could only go so far in preserving moral integrity; the peril was not just external. Sumptuary legislation was as often used to combat social change from within, to ensure social and hierarchical boundaries were not blurred or dissolved.6
The definition of what constitutes a luxury and what is essential may depend on cultural and economic contexts as well as personal views. While some luxuries endure through time (the value placed upon gems and precious metals, works of art or rare foods), some pertain to particular circumstances.7 Many today will be perplexed at the veneration for fish displayed in fifth century Athens and the dying years of the Roman republic (although, as fish stocks dwindle, we may soon share their sentiments). In an era of widespread poverty, profligacy was thought morally doubtful, but at other times an impulse towards possessing rare and precious objects had both an aesthetic and economic rationale. In modern societies, consumer spending on non-essentials is one of the many factors ensuring the buoyancy of market economies.8
A common feature of goods seen as luxuries is their association with physical pleasure.9 Another is exoticism: the perfume, the spice, or the remarkable plant must be sourced from abroad. Luxury is also frequently characterized as feminine. In antiquity, the quality of femininity possessed negative connotations, associated with physical weakness and lack of moral fibre: an inability to practise self-control.10 Developing from this, it was also deemed tyrannical, the subject of the feminine whims and self-indulgence of oriental despots. The control of female social behaviour is inextricably linked with sumptuary legislation. Female emancipation, like the love of expensive food or a predilection for silk, may be regarded as a sign of weakness, a chink in the state’s inviolable moral defences.
The notion of luxury in antiquity simultaneously tapped into many of the most problematic and sensitive areas of ancient cultural identity: race, gender and class. The development of luxury and its transmission between cultures, and the many attempts made to suppress impulses towards luxurious behaviour, may be regarded as a symbolic embodiment of the cultural anxieties that afflicted the Graeco-Roman world. The territorial growth of nations, increases in personal and collective wealth and population migrations forced unfamiliar peoples and cultures into close proximity and compelled many to embark upon a process of self-examination. It obliged them to define their own character, to identify those qualities they saw as essential. The focus of this chapter will be the ways in which luxury and the intermittent war against it manifested itself in dietary matters. This will often mean food, rather than alcohol, as surprisingly, this dangerous liquid was subject to far fewer state controls than may be supposed (see the preceding chapter).
Food may at first appear an unlikely candidate for the sobriquet luxury. There is nothing more essential to man’s survival. But, in reality, it may well be the most apposite. Expenditure of money and effort upon things like statues and buildings was justified on the grounds of permanence. But what pleasure was more ephemeral, more transitory than a meal? To spend great wealth on food, something quickly consumed, scarcely remembered and ultimately excreted, was indeed the ultimate luxury.
Originally, sumptuary laws seem to have been aimed predominantly at funeral activities. Alan Hunt views this as being linked with the control of women.11 This seems to be borne out by Solon’s legislation in Athens, which placed limits on both female freedom of expression and movement and on female lamentation at funerals. The words of Dryden’s translation of Plutarch have it thus: 12
He [Solon] regulated the walks, feasts, and mourning of the women and took away everything that was either unbecoming or immodest; when they walked abroad, no more than three articles of dress were allowed them;anobol’s worth of meat and drink;and no basket above a cubit high; and at night they were not to go about unless in a chariot with a torch before them. Mourners tearing themselves to raise pity, and set wailings, and at one man’s funeral to lament for another, he forbade. To offer an ox at the grave was not permitted, nor to bury above three pieces of dress with the body, or visit the tombs of any besides their own family, unless at the very funeral; most of which are likewise forbidden by our laws, but this is further added in ours, that those that are convicted of extravagance in their mournings are to be punished as soft and effeminate by the censors of women.
An inscription found on an island not far from Athens,dated to the fifth century bc and thought to be a copy of a Solonic law, provides limits for expenditure and expressions of grief at burials. There is more emphasis placed upon costume thanfood,andHuntnotesthat,despiteasimilarconcernwithfuneralpractices, this was a significant difference between Greek and Roman legislation.13
Certain writers used the theme of sumptuary legislation as a springboard to explore issues of cultural identity. In the austerity these laws promoted, they saw a way of offering a critique of their own societies. Scholars are divided on the motives behind such lawmaking. Was there a genuine moral impetus? Was it to preserve the unity of the Roman patrician class of the first and second centuries bc, divided by strife, with members competing for prestige and status?14 Could they have been, as for example the Lex Oppia of 215 bc, a reaction to specific events (in that case, the defeat at Cannae in the Second Punic War)?15 Or was the legislation, as some have characterized the laws enacted by Demetrius of Phaleron in Athens at the beginning of the fourth century bc, little more than an exercise in public relations designed to quieten the jealousies and resentments of the lower orders?16
Both our chosen examples of sumptuary regulation (Sparta and Rome) attracted the attention of many writers in the first and second centuries ad and beyond. They sought to make explicit connections between the two societies. They often seem to have written to a specific agenda. They look back at the past with a strong nostalgia and use their explorations (and recreations) of the past to make pointed criticism of what they see as the decadence of Rome. The historical and the imaginary merge as they redefine and reinterpret the past and reinvent the present. Greeks, in particular, look at Greek ethnic identity and draw parallels between the past glories of a free Hellas and the realities of present Roman subjugation.
Archaic Sparta under the authority of Lycurgus sought through radical social measures to create an abstemious and militaristic society, purged of extraneous wealth and extravagant personal behaviour and isolated from external influence.17 As related by Xenophon (and much later by Plutarch), the Spartan constitution offers an example (perhaps par excellence) of mortal dread of indulgence and luxury lying at the heart of government and social mores. This anxiety governed how they reared their children, the clothes they wore, their economy, and how they ate. At least, this is what we are told by certain texts.18 Our principal sources are writers distant in time and place from their subject, unable as outsiders, by their own admission, to gain access to the territory. So their accuracy, and indeed their disinterest, are in question. Xenophon and Plutarch both had their own agendas. Xenophon’s comments probably reflect his concerns about the Athens of his own day (the early fourth century bc). In the case of Plutarch, it seems clear from his other writings (particularly the Lives and the essays of the Moralia) that his view of Sparta dovetailed into his concerns with moral behaviour, the problems of luxury, and restricted diet. Plutarch’s own Greek heritage, and the question of what it was to be Greek in a Roman-dominated world, act as filters. It is a view that idealizes the past. It presents a vision of a strong, disciplined military state that existed long before Rome, which itself built on and emulated this earlier example.
Later discussions of Sparta give the impression that the Lycurgan reforms displayed a collective anxiety about alien contamination.19 The creation of the constitution was attributed to Lycurgus, the lawgiver.20 Biographical details are vague, with confusion about his activities and even as to when he lived.21 In a sense, such matters are inconsequential, sufficient to note that he was assumed to have lived before or at the same time as Homer and the Spartan constitution was thought to have the weighty respectability of age.22 Plutarch’s Life makes Lycurgus almost a heroic archetype, personifying and crystallizing a process of social and political mutation that may have, in reality, been a gradual and piecemeal process of constitutional and legislative reform, taking place over many years.23
What exactly was intended by Spartan moral/sumptuary legislation?24 The impetus seems to have been an attempt to forge a society that was martial in character, perpetually ready for war. To this end, it needed to be pared back to bare necessities and to be essentially communist in form: to remove every source of inequality. Equality, however, only for the Spartiates (the homoioi). Strict hierarchical divisions still applied to those under Spartan subjection: the perioikoi and the helots. Land ownership was re-organized to remove the evils both of excessive wealth and penury.25 Individualism was firmly discouraged, and the lifestyle of a Spartiate was firmly regimented.
The common mess-meal, syssitia, has been regarded by some as the prin-cipal symbol of Spartan cultural and political identity.26 Membership was apparently a mandatory part of being a citizen.27 This system of communal eating was unusual in the Greek world but was not unique. Its origin is to some extent confused, with doubt cast on whether Lycurgus was responsible or not.28 Similar arrangements could be found in Crete, Miletus, Thebes and Carthage.29 Scholars such as Humfrey Michell believed that Sparta adopted their eating practices from Crete. A Cretan derivation is absent from Xenophon and Plutarch, although the latter’s Life claimed that Lycurgus visited Crete and took inspiration from some, although not all, of the laws he found there.30
Communal eating seems to have been poly-functional. Plutarch asserted that it removed the desire and the opportunity for indulging in soft and decadent behaviour. It laid open one’s eating habits to the scrutiny of one’s peers.31 Texts suggest that it was not universally popular; Plutarch thought the wealthier citizens resented it the most.32 In spite of government attempts to achieve an egalitarian society, therefore, a form of economic hierarchy persisted. Indeed, this economic imbalance was judged by Aristotle the crucial defect of the mess-meal.33 Unlike the Cretan system which was subsidized by the state, Spartan messes demanded a fixed minimum contribution of food each month from every member.34 This dietary levy meant, according to Aristotle, the exclusion of poorer citizens. Even within the syssitia, equality was conspicuous by its absence. Seating was graduated by rank, and wealth allowed a member to go beyond the provision of the minimum contribution to provide extra food donations.35 These may have been behind the most infamous element of Spartan diet: the black broth.36 This dish of pork and blood, notorious for its foulness, was supposed to have been a Spartiate staple. It seems likely that, in spite of the popular notion of the uniformity of Spartan diet – its blandness and its communal nature – meals were more varied in content and context. Athenaeus, for instance, has a long excursus on Spartan meals and feasting including a fragment from Cratinus about the festival called Kopis, ‘Cleaver’.37 The feast, open to foreigners, involved the sacrifice of goats.38 At the meal was also served a cake (phusikillon), as well as cheese, sausages, and a dessert consisting of dried figs, dried beans and green beans.39 This was certainly not lavish, indeed meagre by comparison with other Greek states, but it was hardly starvation. Austerity, it seems, was relative. Cratinus also remarked that at Cleaver, ‘in the public lounges sausages hang nailed to the walls for the old men to bite off with their teeth.’
As an ideological utopia, with a constitution that was orally transmitted not written, Sparta could be all things to all people. It offered a model vague enough for later writers to overlay their own emphases and concerns. Sparta, as a paragon of military virtue and order, was a source of imitation and comparison for the nascent Roman state. And both fell victim to corruption brought by wealth and foreign values. Points of comparison between Sparta and Rome were a frequent theme of many second-century writers.40
Correspondences between their eating habits were also noted, especially the ways that access to and spending on food was controlled.41 Hence Valerius Maximus’ comparison of the severity of Lycurgan Sparta with that of earlier Rome.42
In Rome, we possess many accounts of successive sumptuary laws that were proposed and passed (occasionally repealed) for a period of approximately two centuries from the beginning of the second century bc until the reign of Nero.43 They chronicle what seems a Canute-like attempt to control lavish personal expenditure by the aristocracy. The laws offer moralizing authors an opportunity to compare and contrast, and they often used food as both a metaphor and an instance of the perceived decay of society.44 It would be largely pointless to fix a date for the start of this activity (as if social changes may be fixed absolutely in moments of time) but Romans themselves liked to do so. They did not always agree. Often, the destruction of Carthage in 146 bc was regarded as significant.45 The removal of this potent political rival led to introspection and subsequent decadence.46 In the Deipnosophistae, the Roman host Larensis cites Lucullus as being the first man to introduce such extravagances.47 Livy takes us back further to 187 bc with the influx of foreign luxury goods into Rome following the victories in the east of Gnaeus Manlius Vulso.48 It does however reveal the tacit assumption that indolence bred iniquity. The elimination of a target for the exercise of Roman martial virtue inevitably led to a dissipation of this energy.49 Ironically, victory may mean eventual defeat. These attempts to locate this ‘immorality’ in a single external source (the removal of Carthage as a focus for Rome’s energy), and very often to the acts of individuals, ignore that sumptuary legislation may be traced back much further. Livy tells of the attempted repeal in 195 bc of the Lex Oppia, passed twenty years previously, which placed restrictions upon female behaviour.50
Our principal sources for the legislation are Aulus Gellius and, much later, Macrobius.51 Gellius maintains that early Roman austerity was produced by a combination of custom and law;52 laws which sought to control the amount of expenditure spent by private citizens on dining, entertainment and clothing, and types of food consumed. His first example is the Lex Fannia of 161 bc which tried to limit expenditure on meals to no more than one hundred and twenty asses (excluding vegetables, bread and wine),53 and stipulated that any wine served should not be of foreign origin.54 If Athenaeus is to be believed, this law was ineffectual.55 His second was the Lex Licinia (date uncertain) which restricted the daily intake of dried meat and salted goods while permitting fruits, vegetables and wine ad libitum.56
Evidence suggests that such laws were either ignored or greeted with hostility. There is a reference in Valerius Maximus (the sole one to this incident) where a tribune, Duronius, is expelled from the senate (probably in 97 bc) by the censors M. Antonius and L. Flaccus for revoking a law to cap the amount that could be spent on banquets.57 The Lex Cornelia of Sulla in 81 bc was an effort to reinforce earlier laws. Strangely, its provisions, if reported correctly (by Macrobius; Gellius passes it over with little comment), appear counter-productive. It proposed lowering prices of luxurious commodities, not raising them. Thus, more people could afford them.58 Macrobius thought the law useless. However, its purpose may have been to widen the availability of these goods. The very property that makes these items attractive – their exclusivity – is diluted and tarnished. Witness, in our own culture, how long-haul air travel, champagne, caviar, and designer clothing have become accessible to the masses to the chagrin of the élite. This suggests an alternative motive for such laws: limiting competition between members of the aristocracy.
The emphasis on dining in Sulla’s laws may have less to do with concern for the nation’s soul and more to restrict the opportunities afforded by aristocratic dinner parties to plot, intrigue and subvert – all in secret. Macrobius notes that, as a pre-emptive strike, it was ordered that dinners be eaten with open doors.59 This is a little reminiscent of the laws enacted by the Spartan regime many centuries before.60 Valerius Maximus also makes reference to this habit of the ancients of eating al fresco.61 The meals they took, he said, were plain and simple.
The Sullan legislation was followed in 78 bc by the Lex Aemilia, that sought to regulate not the expenditure on dinners, but the type of food that could be bought.62 A law a few years later, the Lex Antia, was concerned with the dining behaviour of magistrates. To credit the much later account of Macrobius, the law, though never repealed, was generally ignored by a population thoroughly imbued with the vices of extravagance. Such was its ineffectiveness that its sponsor, Antius Restio, was reported never afterwards to have dined outside his house for fear of witnessing the public’s disregard.63
Julius Caesar also weighed in with sumptuary enactments of his own. Suetonius writes:
He imposed duties on foreign wares. He denied the use of litters and the wearing of scarlet robes or pearls to all except those of a designated position and age, and on set days. In particular he enforced the laws against extravagance, setting watchmen in various parts of the market, to seize and bring to him dainties which were exposed for sale in violation of the law; and sometimes he sent his lictors and soldiers to take from a dining-room any articles which had escaped the vigilance of his watchmen, even after they had been served.
It is unclear whether he was more interested in punishing these acts of culinary villainy or ensuring that laws were strictly upheld.64 His reputed parsimony may have had something to do with it. Suetonius writes of his punctilious dining habits, and of the unfortunate baker punished for serving guests different types of bread, graded according to the status of the guest.65
While there is a brief reference to laws passed in this area by Augustus, few details were given by Suetonius.66 Gellius suggested he proposed limiting the amount spent on food per diem, depending on whether it was a working or festival day.67 The last substantial mention of sumptuary legislation in the texts comes from the reign of Tiberius.68 Suetonius made reference to measures to enforce frugality, including market price regulation by the senate, and restrictions on the sale of goods in cook-shops and eating-houses. He claimed that Tiberius set an example by his own frugality. The serving of leftovers at formal banquets was not unusual.69 Gellius talked of a reference by Ateius Capito to a law passed either by Augustus or Tiberius (Gellius is unsure which) that raised the amount that might be spent on dinners on various festal days from three hundred sesterces to two thousand. The legislation appears to acknowledge that the state was fighting a losing battle against the increasing personal expenditure of the aristocracy.
Tacitus addressed this issue in greater detail. In his view, extravagance was a significant concern. In ad 22, Tiberius vetoed sumptuary legislation on the grounds that it would be a humiliating loss of face for the emperor to fail to enforce a law routinely ignored. The alternative, successful enforcement, would mean humbling some of the most illustrious citizens. To Tiberius, neither was acceptable.70With this in mind, a letter was sent to the senate, explaining the imperial position. The scale of the problem was acknowledged, with Tiberius asking the best place to start: villas, slaves, personal wealth, clothing?71 He speaks of past laws, including those enacted by Augustus, which are useless and forgotten. For Tiberius coercion was ineffectual. The only way to achieve austerity was through personal effort.72 He blamed this moral laxity on the extent of the empire; these problems did not exist (or, at least, were far less serious) when Rome was a smaller territory. He urged self-restraint upon the population, in effect washing his hands of the matter. At the end of this passage, Tacitus offered a rather strange summary. Extravagance, he said, ‘gradually went out of fashion’ as a result of this imperial announcement.73 The culmination came with Vespasian. Tacitus ascribed the change to both the personal example of this thrifty emperor and to an influx into the senate of men from the colonies and provinces that brought with them good household habits.74 This Tacitean conclusion may have contained a good deal of irony.75
This was hardly the end of luxury in the Roman world. Curbs upon patrician spending were always doomed to failure.76 Nonetheless, Tacitus’ comments shed some light upon Roman notions of luxury. He uses Tiberius as a mouthpiece to express conservative anxieties about wealth, social identity and ethnicity, here touching on traditional motifs in Latin literature. He emphasizes the importance of self-control. In this instance, one is reminded of how the Greeks used self-imposed controls upon sympotic drinking. Again, the old notion of the contamination of Roman morals by foreign wealth and customs rears its head. Of course, there is never the slightest suggestion that a remedy might be the return of all plundered goods to their original owners and the cession of all conquered territories. Tiberius claimed, said Tacitus, that political expansion was the cause of moral decay. How do we reconcile this with the Virgilian mission to civilize others? This paradox seems to lie at the heart of Roman anxieties about identity. That which defines them – their military prowess and the extent of their empire – may be the very thing that eventually conspires to destroy them.
The writers under scrutiny track the social, economic and cultural changes that occur within the Roman world over a number of centuries. Livy’s account of Cato’s challenge to those wishing to repeal the Lex Oppia in 195 bc, written during the reign of Augustus, looked back to the earliest days, when the pressure of foreign influence and wealth first made themselves felt. The republic was a period of escalating conflict between aristocratic parties.
In relentless pursuit of personal glory and political supremacy, wealth was a weapon to be deployed. Extravagant dining was an opportunity to display largesse, to impress and perhaps intimidate. Simultaneously, it was something considered un-Roman; it could be a source of shame.
Extreme wealth became almost synonymous with the requirements of Roman citizenship (at least from the point of view of the élite). Virtue was no longer enough. The inflation of competition and the flood of wealth into society caused the meaning of affluence and poverty to be reset. At the end of the republic, it was no longer enough to be rich; one had to be very rich.
Tacitus’ assertion that sumptuary legislation ceases to become an issue in the reign of Tiberius appears to bring the matter to a close. His observation that from the time of Vespasian, the example set by the ruler led to widespread frugality may have been true up to a point, but obviously he did not live to see the courts of Commodus or Elagabalus. Perhaps the reason that Tiberius gave up worrying about extravagance is that it no longer posed a threat. The use of wealth to gain power is largely irrelevant when all power lay with the emperor. Luxury was seen differently in the republic. Its political dimension was more potent. Under the empire, luxury itself becomes impotent. If it has any significance beyond the moral realm, it lies in enhancement of status. But by some strange reversal, there was an incentive actually to understate the extent of one’s wealth. This may have less to do with the example of the emperor’s frugality, and more with a strategy for survival. Competing with the emperor in ostentatious spending was a dangerous game. And some emperors (Tiberius, Caligula and Nero to name but three) were not averse to having themselves named beneficiaries in the wills of the wealthy, then disposing of those individuals.
Dietary restriction within the context of ancient sumptuary legislation is a beast with many heads. It clearly has a moral impetus. An appeal to the stomach for restraint, an entreaty to the pleasures of culinary simplicity is both a means of appeasing nostalgia and a means of exercising social control. Archetypes of purer heroic societies appealed to conservative minds that saw social and political change as a path to destruction. These idealized portraits appeared repeatedly over the centuries in both Greek and Latin literature. In a world of complex and shifting identities, where multiculturalism was the norm, these strong moral certitudes were satisfying. Blame for the vices of modernity could be safely laid at the door of outsiders who brought the alien customs and afflictions concomitant with wealth. A love of spices or exotic fruits was a mnemonic for moral degeneracy, while a plain and unadorned diet represented a righteous nature or the food-as-fuel mentality of the warrior.
However, clearly there is something else going on. Dietary restriction is doing more than tapping into the rustic fantasies of Roman moralists or Greeks who feel the need to lose themselves in dreams of past glories. It seems to have been a tool to control social mobility and the exercise of power. Equally, it may be a voluntary method of self-definition, but it may also be used to define others. The fact that it repeatedly seems to fail may indicate as much the importance placed upon personal regulation of such things as a failure of the legislature.
Although notionally targeted at all society, sumptuary laws inevitably most affect the wealthy. It is they who are both able to travel abroad, and who possess the resources to procure rare and expensive items. For Spartans, even this was prohibited. The indulgence of self-expression through food was limited to the élite. The poor were politically impotent, so simply did not matter. Their form of dietary restriction was hunger. If it defined their identity in any way, it is simply to mark them out as poor and lacking choice. Sumptuary legislation would have made no difference to those for whom a simple diet was not a moral choice but a daily fact.
(1) Hunt (1996), xii–xiii.
(2) See Isaac (2004), 239.
(3) See Isaac (2004), 240. However, this still remains of interest owing to the ideological preoccupation with cultural separation, clearly at odds with actual practice (if Isaac’s assertion is correct).
(4) Xenophanes F3B (Diels Kranz) =F3 (West) = (Lesher); Ath. Deip.526a; Isaac (2004),239. Wilkins (2000), 263.
(5) Pl. Leg. 706; Isaac (2004), 241.
(6) This is not entirely true. Sparta’s own form of anti-luxury legislation (at least as expressed in the texts of Xenophon and Plutarch) sought to achieve a society in which the economic and social differences between Spartiates were deliberately de-emphasized.
(7) The same items could be regarded as both an essential and a luxury, depending upon how it is used. A mineral element may have an intrinsic value, or it may be perform a useful function within a technological context. Sekora (1977).
(8) And it is noteworthy that in these types of capitalist societies, sumptuary legislation does not exist.
(9) It could be argued, as I have attempted to do so in the case of foodstuffs, that the epithet ‘luxury’ may also be usefully applied to items that may be physically insubstantial in nature, for example music, or perhaps literature or philosophy that is not preserved as written text for posterity.
(10) See Dench, 121–146 in Wyke (1998). Book 12 of the Deipnosophistae contains numerous examples of eastern tyrants, whose decadence is characterized by effeminacy, use of cosmetics and exotic clothing.
(11) Hunt (1996), 18.
(12) Plut. Sol.21.4. It is dubious how accurate Plutarch’s account of Solonian legislation is, given the chronological distance from the events he is describing. Mills (1984), 255–265; Seaford (1994), 74–86; Dryden’s translation is at http://classics.mit.edu/Plutarch/solon. html (accessed 3 February 2010).
(13) Hunt (1996), 19. The Twelve Tables of the Romans contained a provision for the curtailment of extravagant funeral arrangements (Table X). It is possible that such legislature may have been influenced by the Solonic code; Cic. De leg. ii,64.AlsoSeaford (1994), 75.
(14) Crawford (1992), 75–76.
(15) Dupont (1992), 146.
(16) Green (1990), 47.
(17) For Spartan dietary legislations, see David (1978), 486–495; Figueira (1984), 87–109; Fisher (1988), 26–50.
(18) For discussion of Spartan social laws, particularly pertaining to food and drink, see Fisher (1988), 26–50. I hesitate to label the Spartan laws as ‘sumptuary legislation’. They are not the same as what was enacted in republican Rome (although there appear to be certain similarities).
(19) It is difficult to state with any great certainty how far the reality of daily existence for the Spartiate corresponded with the details preserved in texts such as Xenophon’s. The legislation may have been little more than a hope lessly idealistic and aspirational set of rules.
(20) Xen. Lac. i. 2; Plut. Lyc. For Lycurgus, see Hammond (1950), 42–64; Forrest (1963), 157–179; Hodkinson (1983) and (2000); Rawson (1969).
(21) Plut. Lyc. i.1.
(22) Xen. Lac. x. 8. Xenophon dates Lycurgus to the time of the Heracleidae.
(23) Rawson (1969), 9: ’In reality it seems likely that Sparta underwent a fundamental reform or series of reforms about the early seventh century bc rather than at any of the variable but earlier dates given us for Lycurgus’.
(24) For more on this, see Hodkinson (2000), 200–235; MacDowell (1986), 111–122.
(25) Plut. Lyc. viii. 1–2.
(26) Hodkinson (2000), 217.
(27) Arist. Pol. 1271a 26–37; MacDowell (1986), 211.
(28) Michell (1952) writes: ‘The Spartans themselves of course attributed, quite erroneously, the foundation of these messes to Lycurgus, who made a law’, 281. Athenaeus, in his discussion of Spartan dietary behaviour in Book 4, does not comment upon the origins of this custom, although he has a good deal to say about the nature of the mess meals. He does comment, at 141f, that the Spartans eventually abandoned this life and embraced luxury.However,later,in Book6,the philosopher Ponti an usasserts that Lycurgus would allow nothing luxurious into his state (233a–b).
(29) Michell (1952), 286.
(30) Plut. Lyc. IV.i. Polybius rejects any similarity between the Cretan and Spartan constitution; Polyb.VI, 47.
(31) Plut. Lyc. x.3.
(32) Plut. Lyc. XII.
(33) Arist. Pol. 1271A.26–37.
(34) Plut. Lyc. XII.
(35) Hodkinson (2000), 253–254.
(36) Plut. Lyc. XII.7; Inst. Lac. 236F.
(37) Ath. Deip. 138e.
(38) This goes against what Plutarch says about Sparta being closed to foreigners, unless the foreigners referred to by Athenaeus are the limited number of diplomats to whom Holladay (1977) refers, 119–120.
(39) Ath. Deip. IV.138f–139b.
(40) See Rawson (1969), 107–115.
(41) Ael. VH. 3.34. It is unclear to which law Aelian is referring here.
(42) Val. Max. II.6. See Skidmore (1996).
(43) From Livy, Aulus Gellius and Macrobius.
(44) Gowers (1993), 21; Macrob. Sat. 3.17.9.
(45) Polyb. VI.57; Val. Max. IX.1.3; Vell. Pat. II.i. 1–2.
(46) Levick (1982), 53. And yet, the theme of Romans being contaminated and corrupted by foreign customs is ubiquitous in Latin literature; Isaac (2004), 242. In a sense, Roman culture is in a no-win situation. It is perceived that ‘Roman virtues’ only manifest themselves in war and conquest (which involves foreign contact and thus potential contamination). Success in the theatre of war leads to indolence and decadence. Isaac notes that, in a twist to the argument, contamination may flow in both directions, citing a passage in Strabo (7.3.7) that suggests that Romans taint other peoples with luxurious habits and vices; 242.
(47) Ath. Deip. 274e–f. For Lucullus’ extravagant dining habits, see Plut. Lucull. xxxix–xli.
(48) Livy XXXIX. vi. 3–9.
(49) Vell. Pat. II. I. 1.
(50) Livy XXXIV. I. 8. The chief defender of the Oppian law, Cato the Elder, was himself portrayed as an archetype of the frugal Roman statesman. See Crawford (1992), 75–76; Culham (2004), 146.
(51) Livy’s account is closest temporally to the event; Gellius and (especially) Macrobius are chronologically distant, casting some doubt on the accuracy of their data.
(52) Gell. NA II. xxiv. 1.
(53) See Rosivach (2006), 1–15.
(54) Gell. NA II. xxiv. 3–4. See Rosivach (2006), 3, note 9 for a discrepancy between Gellius and Macrobius over the amount. Gellius has the price limit for the dinner, Macrobius for each diner. Rosivach believes Macrobius must be mistaken.
(55) Ath. Deip. VI. 274e–f.
(56) Gell. NA II. xxiv. 7–10
(57) Val. Max. II.9.5.
(58) Macrob. Sat. III. 17. 11. Also Aubert in Flower (2004), 169.
(59) John of Salisbury 8.7 (731d); Macrob. Sat. III. 17. 1
(60) Xen. Lac. V.2.
(61) Val. Max. II.5.
(62) Gell. NA II. xxiv. 12.
(63) Macrob. Sat. III. 17.13.
(64) Suet. Iul. 43.
(65) Suet. Iul. 48.
(66) Suet. Aug. 34.
(67) Gell. NA II. xxiv.13.
(68) There is a brief mention by Suetonius of sumptuary laws passed by Nero, restricting the type of foodstuffs that could be sold in wine shops to green vegetables and dried beans; Suet: Ner. 16.
(69) Suet. Tib. 34.
(70) Tac. Ann. III. lii–lv.
(71) Tac. Ann. III. liii. Food appears not to have been an issue.
(72) Tac. Ann. III. liv.
(73) Tac. Ann. III. lv.
(74) Tac. Ann. III. lv.
(75) Edwards (1993), 202.
(76) Crawford (1992), 75–76; Finley (1981), 188.