Note 489 — Chapter XIV
Reading edition
“The Treatise we now possess is a sort of Cook-Confectioners’ Manual, containing a multitude of recipes for preparing and cooking all kinds of flesh, fish, and fowl. From the solecisms of style it is probable that it was compiled at a late period by one who prefixed the name of Apicius in order to attract attention and insure the circulation of his book.”—Smith’s Dict. Gk. Rom. Biog. and Myth.
Teuffel and Schwabe, History of Roman Literature (trans. G. C. W. Warr, London, 1892), II. 28 f., point out that Cœlius Apicius, the traditional author of the work de re coquinaria, should rather be Cœlii Apicius, i.e. “the Apicius of Cœlius,” Apicius being the title and Cœlius the writer. The book was founded on Greek originals.
In Seneca (ad. Helv., 10), “sestertium milies in culinam consumpsit.” See Martial, III. 22, who flays Apicius with biting scorn in his—
“Dederas, Apici, bis trecenties ventri, Sed adhuc supererat centiens tibi laxum. Hoc tu gravatus ut famem et sitim ferre Summa venenum potione perduxti. Nil est, Apici, tibi gulosius factum.”
For C. Matius the earliest (in the time of Augustus) and for other Latin writers on Cookery, see Columella, XXI. 4 and 44.