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We could learn from them
(thelemmy.club)
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this post was submitted on 18 May 2026
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Fun Fact! Romans considering dining at the houses of others to be a regular affair, and would have often-strong opinions on the quality of each household's cooking (and sometimes get involved in bidding wars over hiring their chef). "Doggie bags" were also a common feature even of upper-class dining, wherein if you liked the food, you'd wrap the leftovers up in your napkin (you bring your own napkin, mind) to take home!
I didn't think that Roman women were allowed to recline? 🤔
Women were allowed to recline! The fashion of the period varied, but in general, from the Late Republic onwards reclining was always acceptable to some degree for women, and being seated was usually, either the woman or the head of the household (by insisting on the women being seated), 'virtue signaling' their modesty, if you will.
it never ceases to astound me how weird roman cultural norms were compared to basically everything i'm aware of since then.
It's like starting with a basically egalitarian society and rolling a dice to determine how sexist any one thing will be.
"ooh, a six! Let's go with... Women aren't allowed to cook while wearing shoes!"
It's funny, because the Romans often argued about their own traditions and sometimes couldn't even figure out the origin or purpose of them.
I'm currently reading a book about how the Romans didn't even understand what one major segment of their commonly-worshipped gods were SUPPOSED to be (the lares, which are cited as everything from ancestral ghosts to nature spirits to the soul of individual places to the equivalent of friendly household gremlins); but my favorite example is always a conservative Roman jurist (Gaius, maybe?) musing that he didn't actually know why the fuck women were supposed to have a male guardian for certain legal procedures since the law otherwise recognized them as capable independent agents.
For such an immensely rules-and-organization oriented culture, they really just pieced together a society and tried not to think about it too much. XD