Even senators, we are told, were glad to pick a few green vegetables in their gardens to help out the porridge. On feast days there would be a little pork or bacon from the hanging rack, and if there was a public sacrifice the worshipers might each take home a lump of beef. Such was the dietary of the men who originally made possible the fortunes of an Apicius, and as late as 174 B.C. there were no professional cooks in Rome. Now, however, there are plenty of purple-fringed exquisites who “can tell at first bite whether an oyster comes from Circeii, or the Lucerine rocks or clear from Britain; or at one glance discover the native shore of a sea-urchin.” [Illustration: GRIST MILL TURNED BY HORSE AND FILLED AND EMPTIED BY A SLAVE.] =84. Bread and Vegetables.=--However, there are still multitudes who have to be content with very simple fare, and for them bread in some form is (as with all the Mediterranean peoples) very literally “the staff of life.” In the great mansions there is, of course, a bakehouse for the huge familia, but the bulk of people frequent the numerous public bakeries, near which the mills driven by patient donkeys or by less patient slaves are incessantly grinding flour. The standard loaves are made very flat, of moderate size, and about two inches thick, their backs often marked with six or eight notches. There is a cheap bread of coarse grain (_panis sordidus_) for the humblest; a second quality (_panis secundus_) for better class purchasers, and also the very white and sweet _siligineus_. You ask for “Picenian bread” if you want fine biscuit, and for _libæ_ if you desire smaller rolls. At feasts there will be wonderful structures of pastry, and by use of honey and chopped fruits sweet “cake” truly delectable comes out of many ovens. Vegetables and fruits can hardly play the part that they will in later gastronomy: potatoes, tomatoes, oranges, lemons--all these are grievously wanting. But there are admirable cabbages, “the finest vegetable in the world,” declared Cato the Elder, and turnips, the favorite dish of tough old Manius Curius, conqueror of the Samnites. Around Rome, for many miles, are long stretches of profitable truck gardens, which send an incessant supply of artichokes, asparagus, beans, beets, cucumbers, lentils, melons, onions, peas, and pumpkins into the city. A visitor to Rome should promptly accustom himself to garlic; and there is a certain fashionable rusticity about garlic eaters, as if they were trying to bring back the flavor and odor of “the good old times.”