Excerpt from Roman Cooks
This study of Roman cooks may be considered a companion piece to Edwin Moore Rankin's dissertation which was published in Chicago, 1907, on The Role of the Mayeipoi in the Life of the Ancient Greeks. I have consulted his work particularly on all questions concerning the cook in Greece, and wish to express acknowledgment for the information thus gained.
While the Roman cook occupies a far less prominent place in literature than does the Greek, he doubtless was quite as important a factor, at least in later Roman times, in the daily life of the people. The very fact of the scarcity of material and consequent lack of information in regard to him, may be given as the raison d'etre of the following study.
Aside from Plautus and Petronius, Latin authors mention cooks only in scattered passages. While the baker has received rather much attention from modern writers, the cook has been comparatively neglected. The most comprehensive study of the subject is to be found in the article by E. Pottier, in Daremberg et Saglio, Dictionnaire des Antiquites grecques et romaines, under 'coquus,' and this on the Roman side covers only a page. Other works which devote a small space to the cook are Blumner's Technologie und Terminologie der Gewerbe und Kunste bei Griechen und Romern, Leipzig und Berlin, 1912, pp. 91-92, and his Romische Privat-Altertumer, in Muller's Handbuch, iv, 2, ii, 192, 594; Marquardt, Das Privatleben der Romer, Leipzig, 1886, i, 146; and De Ruggiero's Dizionario Epigrafico di Antichita Romane, under 'cocus.' These works, however, have little to say on the subject, and other books on Roman private life dismiss the cook with a line, a paragraph, or at most a page.
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