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As far as pop culture is concerned , a vomitorium is a room where ancient Romans get to throw up lavish meals so they could return to the board and feast some more . It ’s a striking illustration of gluttony and waste , and one that makes its way into modern texts . Suzanne Collins ' " The Hunger Games " serial , for good example , advert to vomitoriums when the lavish inhabitants of the Capitol — all with Romance names like Flavia and Octavia — imbibe a drinking to make them vomit at party so they can gorge themselves on more large calorie than citizens in the surround districts would see in months .
But the real story behind vomitoriums is much less repelling . Actual ancient Romans did love nutrient and crapulence . But even the flush did not have special room for flush . To Romans , vomitoriums were the entrances / exits in bowl or theaters , so dubbed by a fifth - one C writer because of the agency they ’d spew crowds out into the street . [ Who Were the Barbarians ? ]
Though ancient Romans didn’t have special “vomit” rooms so they could empty their tummies and fill them back up, they did love a good feast, scientists say.
" It ’s just kind of a trope , " that ancient Romans were luxurious and vapid enough to hire in rituals of binging and purging , said Sarah Bond , an assistant prof of classic at the University of Iowa .
Vomit. Vomitus. Vomitorium.
The Roman author Macrobius first referred to vomitoriums in his " Saturnalia . " The procedural vomitus already existed in Latin , Bond tell Live Science . Macrobius added the " orium " ending to turn it into a billet , a common type of paronomasia in ancient Latin . He was refer to the alcove inamphitheatersand the room hoi polloi seemed to erupt out of them to fill empty seats . [ exposure : Gladiators of the Roman Empire ]
At some point in the late nineteenth or early twentieth century , mass cause the wrong idea about vomitoriums . It seems likely that it was a single linguistic computer error : " Vomitorium " sounds like a lieu where people wouldvomit , and there was that pre - existent trope about gluttonous Romans .
Classically trained poet and writers at the metre would have been exposed to a few source that painted ancient Romans as just the sort of hoi polloi who would cat just to deplete more . One author was Seneca , the Stoic who lived from 4 B.C. to A.D. 65 and who give the impression that Romans were an emetic bunch . In one transition , he wrote of slaves cleaning up the vomitus of drunks at banquets , and in his Letter to Helvia , he summarize the vomitorium melodic theme compactly but metaphorically , referring to what he picture as the excesses of Rome : " They sick so they may wipe out , and eat so that they may vomit . "
Though ancient Romans didn’t have special “vomit” rooms so they could empty their tummies and fill them back up, they did love a good feast, scientists say.
Roman feasts
Another classic was a first - hundred A.D. piece of caustic remark called the " Satyricon , " in which an obnoxiously flush gentleman’s gentleman named Trimalchio throw fiesta in which he serves dishes like dormice rolled in beloved and poppy seed , a cony with annexe attached so that it looked like Pegasus , and a huge boar surrounding by suckle sloven , which the client could take out like party favors . ( F. Scott Fitzgerald was so prompt by this study that he to begin with titled " The Great Gatsby " " Trimalchio in West Egg . " )
author Aldous Huxley was similarly inspired , and wrote of vomitoriums as real places to regurgitate in his 1923 novel " Antic Hay . "
" I conceive it caught on , in all probability because , A , it ’s very close to what we already have in terms of the word vomit , so it was easily approachable linguistically and then , B , it already fit in with a cultural perception " spread through work like the " Satyricon , " Bond said .
Turns out, vomitoriums were not places where ancient Romans went to upchuck their food so they could continue feasting. Here, a vomitorium, or entrance/exit at a Roman amphitheater.
The thing about the " Satyricon , " though , is that it was caustic remark — and probably overstated . Seneca likewise had a " bad axe to crunch about luxury , " Bond enunciate . Wealthy Romans and miserable Romans ate like grain - found dieting , said Kristina Killgrove , an anthropologist at the University of West Florida , who has studied thediets of ancient Romansthrough molecular marker left in their teeth . The wealthy ate more straw ; the poor more millet . Richer Romans also got to eat more marrow than inadequate Romans .
The uber - wealthy did get it on a proficient banquet , though , Killgrove said . Roman fine dining was a biotic community amour and would have included entertainment like dancers and flutists . Unlike ancient Greeks , Romans included women at their upper - class purpose , so crew would have been co - ed . Historical recipes show a penchant for notional presentations of solid food , particularly meats stuffed inside other meat .
" The R.C. upper class really would have loved Turducken , " Killgrove told Live Science .
But they probably would n’t have thrown up that chicken - gorge - in - a duck - englut - in - a - turkey later on .
Original clause on Live Science .
