Peter Jones
An Ancient Stew
Around the Roman Table
By Patrick Faas, Shaun Whiteside (trans.)
Macmillan 371pp £15.99 order from our bookshop
WE CLASSICISTS SPEND a lot of our time taking things on trust, without quite knowing how they can be true. The use of olive oil provides a good example. Every book on the 'Amazing Ancients' reports that olive oil was a multi-purpose product, used for lighting, cooking and cleaning and for making perfumes, cosmetics and medicines. Until now it has always been the last use that has had me baffled, but Patrick Faas explains all, and embarrassingly obvious it is too.
As today, olive oil came in different qualities in ancient Rome. First, there were the late-harvested olives that were turning black. These produced viridum ('green'), in three pressing, the last pressing being the low-grade oil used for cooling and lighting. (One litre of oil produces about 134 hours of light
Sign Up to our newsletter
Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.@Lit_Review
Follow Literary Review on Twitter
'Perhaps, rather than having diagnosed a real societal malaise, she has merely projected onto an entire generation a neurosis that actually affects only a small number of people.'
@HoumanBarekat on Patricia Lockwood's 'No One is Talking About This'.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/culturecrisis
*Offer ends in TWO days*
Take advantage of our February offer: a six-month subscription for only £19.99.
https://www.mymagazinesub.co.uk/literary-review/promo/literaryfebruary/
'Nourished on a diet of exceptionalism and meritocracy, millennials internalised the harmful falsehood that hard work necessarily yields success. The very least they should settle for is a "cool job", one that ... is the focus of their "passion".'
https://literaryreview.co.uk/workers-twerkers