14/10/2026
Dulcia Domsetica from Ancient Rome
In Book 12 of his Natural History, Pliny the Elder voiced utter bewilderment over Rome’s obsession with imported black pepper, marveling that a condiment with neither visual beauty nor pleasant sweetness had taken Roman dining by storm. He complained that pepper offered nothing to recommend itself as a fruit or berry aside from a harsh “pungency,” asking rhetorically,
“Who was the first person who was willing to try it on his viands, or in his greed for an appetite was not content merely to be hungry?”
Beyond culinary taste, Pliny resented the economics. He recorded steep prices—long pepper sold for 15 denarii per pound, white for 7, and black for 4—which invited widespread adulteration with juniper berries, and he scoffed that Romans bought an imported wild plant “by weight like gold or silver,” bleeding millions of sesterces out of the empire to India just to spice their dinner.
