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Among the lesser poems ascribed to
Virgil there is one, the _Moretum_, which gives a charming picture of
the food-supply of the small cultivator in the country. He rises very
early, gropes his way to the hearth, and stirs the embers into flame:
then takes from his meal-bin a supply of grain for three days and
proceeds to grind it in a hand-mill, knead it with water, shape it
into round cakes divided into four parts like a "hot-cross bun," and,
with the help of his one female slave, to bake these in the embers. He
has no sides of smoked bacon, says the poet, hanging from his roof,
but only a cheese, so to add to his meal he goes into his garden and
gathers thence a number of various herbs and vegetables, which he then
makes into the hotch-potch, or _pot-au-feu_ which gives the name to
the poem. This bit of delicate genre-painting, which is as good in its
way as anything in Crabbe's homely poems, has indeed nothing to tell
us of life in an insula at Rome; but it may serve to show what was the
ordinary food of the Italian of that day.


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