ÊTRE CUISINIER DANS L’OCCIDENT ROMAIN ANTIQUE IDENTITÉS SOCIO-JURIDIQUES ET STATUTS DE TRAVAIL

Abstract

This paper studies cooks in the context of ancient Roman Western world under the Republic and
the High Empire, starting with an observation about the poor attention scholars have paid to this
central figure of the aristocratic banquet. After a terminological analysis, based mostly on literature
and juridical texts, of the Latin word generally used to designate a cook, coquus (and of its orthographic
variant cocus), the author sheds light on the variety of contexts in which Roman cooks, far
from limiting themselves to the aristocratic houses, could practice their activity. She then proposes
a social investigation of their milieu, based on the exploitation of an epigraphic corpus inventorying
the specialists of cooking and cuisine in the ancient Roman West.