The Testament of the Piglet

Bibliographic Data

ID4939009
AuthorsEdward Champlin (corresponding author)
Year1987
Volume41
Issue2
Pages174
Publication date1987-01-01
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenuePhoenix (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0031-8299 • E-ISSN: 1929-4883
PublisherJSTOR (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.2307/1088743
OpenAlexW2334174376
LanguageEN
Citations received17

THE RECENT EXCAVATIONS at the so-called Schola Praeconum in Rome have offered striking confirmation of the literary evidence the main meat consumed by the urban population of late Imperial Rome was pork, followed by beef and mutton.' An astonishing amount is known about the large-scale organization of the city's pork supply from the Theodosian Code (especially 14.4), and it is clear that almost every part of the ancient pig was put to culinary use. Moreover, while Apicius might concern himself with the proper method of fattening sows' livers, pork was not a dish confined to gourmands, for (in the words of the elder Pliny) there was no commoner animal food consumed in eating-houses, and in the fifth century some 1800 tons of pork were distributed free to the populace of Rome annually.2 In one way then, pigs were much in the public eye. People considered them to be intelligent animals: Pliny gives examples of their cleverness, and Plutarch's Gryllus was a true philosopher.3 It would be useful to have a pig's views on the human race, and by unusual good fortune the words of one late antique witness survive, in the last will and testament of M. Grunnius Corocotta (or Marcus Grunter Hyena), the piglet. The Testamentum Porcelli will never win great popularity as a work of literature, with its high spirits, low humour, and bad Latin.4 In 1860 Mortz Haupt, its first modern editor, railed in elegant Latin against its tasteless and feeble jokes and its ignorance of law and custom, and he returned in the end

Classical Antiquity Studies · Philosophy

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