Roman banquets were built for spectacle: reclining couches, fattened dormice rolled in honey, flamingo tongues, and household slaves choreographed down to the last course. We dig into how the elite really dined, the sumptuary laws that tried (and failed) to rein it in, Lucullus's legendary feasts, and the real meaning behind the infamous "vomitorium." Plus: Petronius's satirical Roman dinner party from hell, and what ordinary Romans actually ate. For more stories of ancient empires, follow this show anywhere you get your podcasts.

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Nearly every Roman recipe called for garum, a fermented fish sauce made in vats left to ferment for weeks in the sun. We trace the trade in this pungent, expensive condiment from Pompeii's famous garum-merchant house to the premium grades shipped from Cartagena, and ask what garum can tell us about ancient globalization and taste.

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From Hadrian's beloved horse Borysthenes, who got a full tomb and epitaph, to pet monkeys imported through the Egyptian port of Berenike and Martial's poems about a spoiled lapdog named Issa, wealthy Romans kept an astonishing range of animals. We look at the real evidence for exotic Roman pets, alongside the darker world of the arena that existed right next to it.

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Every May, Roman households performed a strange midnight ritual to drive restless ghosts from their homes, spitting black beans and chanting the same nine words nine times. We trace the Lemuria festival back through Ovid's origin myth about Remus, a real haunted-house story from Pliny the Younger, and the ancient distinction between honored ancestors and wandering spirits.

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