Black Pepper Consumption in the Roman Empire

Abstract

AbstractDuring the Roman Imperial period huge quantities of black pepper arrived into the Empire from southern India and were employed in a range of contexts, from the culinary and medicinal, to the religious. This article seeks to examine the popularity of black pepper in the Roman Empire and test the theory that its consumption was not simply restricted to elite circles, but reached a wider spectrum of the population. In particular, price and wage data from theEdict of Maximum Pricesis examined to see how feasible it was for those lower down the socio-economic spectrum to make such purchases.