Roman Banquets

Due to my own interest in ancient banquets, clubs and associations, I would like to direct your attention to the review of this book:Katherine M. D. Dunbabin,
The Roman Banquet: Images of Conviviality.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003. Pp. xvii, 291. ISBN 0-521-82252-1. $75.00.Reviewed by
Ruth Westgate, Cardiff School of History and Archaeology, Cardiff
University (WestgateR@cardiff.ac.uk)
Snipped from her introduction to the review:
"Banquets and food are among the most popular subjects in Roman art, and eating and drinking have been among the most popular objects of scholarship in recent years, but, as Katherine Dunbabin points out in her introduction to this book, the Roman banquet has never received the same volume of academic attention as the Greek symposium. Here, she sets out to remedy that deficit by examining the representation of banquets in Roman art from the first century BC to the sixth century AD, with the laudable aim of treating the visual material as a source in its own right, rather than as a mere illustration of the textual evidence. The book grew out of a series of lectures delivered at Harvard in 1998, and it retains the somewhat discontinuous feel of a collection of separate papers, but this is more than compensated for by
the richness of Dunbabin's insights into a collection of material which, as she demonstrates, was produced by a much wider section of society than that represented by the literary sources."

You can read the rest of the review HERE.