Abstract: International audience; This paper studies a group of legislative measures enacted during the reigns of Tiberius, Claudius, Nero and Vespasian, that aimed to reduce the menu of the Roman popinae, restaurants mainly patronized by the urban plebs. Festive products (pastries, meat dishes, hot water used to dilute wine) were forbidden, others, plain and ordinary (vegetables and pulses), remained authorized. Emperors based their regulation of plebeian eating habits on the normative and rhetorical frame provided by Republican sumptuary laws. Neverthe...
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