Abstract

Since the last decades of the Republic and in the early Empire, a refined lifestyle in general, the consumption of luxury goods imported from all over the known world and the competitive increase of refinement of the preparation of extravagant foodstuffs in particular became part and parcel of the set of cultural strategies with which social distinction and hierarchies, reputation and rank within the élite were permanently re-negotiated and re-constructed. This paper explores the interdependence and particular dynamics of these processes.