In ancient Rome the tumultuous year of civil war 69 AD was known as the Year of Four Emperors,
and today we are making a dish named after Emperor number three,
Vitellian peas an ancient Roman form of the British side dish mushy peas.
We'll also take a look at some of the events of this wacky year in Roman history and see why the Emperor Vitellius
is mostly remembered for having food named after him.
Vitellian peas this time on Tasting History.
So this is week two of Rome Month sponsored by the folks over Creative Assembly and their
release of Total War Rome Remastered out on April 29th.
Now I used to play the original version in college for hours at a time. It's honestly a wonder that I even graduated,
but let us take a look at what the remastered version is going to look like.
Today we're going to be discussing one of Rome's less famous emperors Aulus Vitellius.
Is it just me or does that painting make it look like he's wearing overalls.
Has to be the least flattering portrait of a Roman Emperor ever.
Anyway during his short stint at the top
"All of the most costly viands were brought from afar...
and were prepared in so costly of fashion that even now certain cakes and other dishes are named Vitellian, after him."
Case in point Pisam Vitellianam Sive Fabam,
or vVitellian peas, or vitellian fava beans depending on the translation.
This is the recipe from Apicius, De Re Coquinaria.
Vitellian peas: boil the peas or beans,
stir until smooth. Pound pepper, lovage, ginger; and over the spices put yolks of hard-boiled eggs,
three ounces honey, liquamen, wine and vinegar.
Put all this including the spices which you have pounded, in a saucepan.
Add oil, and bring to a boil.
Season the peas with this stir until smooth. If lumpy, add honey and serve.
Definitely less cream and more hard-boiled egg
than your modern mushy pea, but I can still see a resemblance.
So for this recipe what you'll need is 1 pound or 450 grams of dried peas, or fava beans.
If you're in Britain you can use marrowfat peas for this. They work perfectly. You can also use split peas especially here in the
United States where it's a little hard to find marrowfat peas you could also use fava beans,
or broad beans for this. Either one is great.
A half teaspoon of pepper, one teaspoon lovage leaves,
or lovage seeds but if you use those use half a teaspoon. A half teaspoon dried ginger root,
three egg yolks from hard boiled eggs, three tablespoons of honey.
Now this is weird because it's the only ingredient in the recipe that they're very specific about how much to use,
no other ingredients. So i don't know if you're using like three times as many peas as someone
else do you still use the same amount of honey? It makes no sense you either need specifics for
everything or nothing. That said it's kind of to taste. You know it's like how sweet do you want
your peas.
One tablespoon of liquamen or garum.
I'll put a link in the description to where you can find garum or Colatura di Alici.
A half cup or 120 milliliters of wine.
Now you can use red or white for this it's not specific. I used white so I could keep the color of the green peas but if you
use red it'll just make it darker.
Two tablespoons of wine vinegar. Again red or white it's up to you.
And one tablespoon of olive oil.
So first depending on the type of dried pea or bean
that you're using they might need to be soaked for a few hours so go ahead and soak them if they do.
Otherwise put them into a pot and add just enough water to cover them before setting them over a
medium heat and bringing them to a boil.
Then let them simmer for about an hour and a half though
make sure to keep an eye on them because you might need to add water you don't want them to dry out.
Now when they're about 10 minutes left on the peas grab your mortar and pestle and grind up
the pepper, the ginger, and the lovage all together. tThen add your egg yolks and pound until smooth.
It should be like a paste then you can add all the liquid ingredients into the mortar
if you want but it's actually easier to just add them into the pot, makes less of a mess.
So take a small saucepan and add the honey, the garum, the wine, and the vinegar and mix.
Then mix in the egg yolk mixture and finally stir in the olive oil and set the pot over medium heat.
Then bring it to a boil and let it simmer for about five to seven minutes. Which is just enough
time to head back to that year of Roman Civil War 69 AD.
Now in Total War Rome Remastered not only do you have to manage your army and fighting other empires,
but you also have to manage the Senate and your own people.
And in the year 69 it was your own people you really had to watch out for.
Picture this Italy 69 AD. The Roman Empire is still reeling from the suicide of the Emperor Nero
just six months earlier.
Now donning the laurel wreath is the new Emperor Galba.
A man who was an inspiration to pretty much nobody.
One such uninspired citizen was Aulus Vitellius.
Now up to this point Vitellius had had a mediocre career but it wasn't that bad considering that he
was born into the equestrian or equites which is the second tier of Roman society, but his father
was Consul three times which allowed Vitellius to move his way up into that top tier of Roman society.
He was actually a companion to the Emperor Tiberius after the Emperor had retired
on the isle of Capri and while there became good friends with the future Emperor Caligula.
They bonded over a love of gambling and horse racing.
And Vitellius says bon vivant lifestyle made it
somewhat surprising when he became Consul in 48 and Pro-Consul of Africa in 61 and even he had to
be astonished when in 68 he was appointed as head of the army of Germanica inferior or the modern day Netherlands area.
Most shocking was that it was the new Emperor Galba who made the appointment
though it might have been a bit of a backhanded compliment.
"...since Galba openly declared that no men were less to be feared than those who thought of nothing but eating."
And that Vitellius's bottomless
gullet might be filled from the resources of the province,
it is clear to anyone that he was chosen rather through contempt than favor."
Though with Vitellius's lifestyle putting him so much in debt
that he had to sneak out of Rome pawning his mother's pearl earrings just to pay for his way to his new post.
I'm guessing he didn't really care why he got the job, it was just that he got the job.
But when he did get there he was welcomed with open arms by the legion,
partly because most of the military did not like the new emperor and also because Vitellius was cool.
Everybody liked him. He was generous and jovial and he didn't put himself above everyone and he
knew all of the common soldiers,
"And at the post houses and inns he was unusually affable to the mule drivers and travelers,
asking each of them in the morning whether they had breakfasted and even
showing by belching that he had done so."
He spent lavishly on his soldiers and gave them whatever they petitioned for, so that
"hardly a month had passed when the soldiers... hastily took him from his bedroom...
dressed in his common house clothes and declared him Emperor."
Other armies in Russia and Gaul and Britannia joined in to declare him Emperor as well, and he took the name
Germanicus instead of the traditional Caesar and off he went to Italy to get rid of Galba,
but then he found out that Galba had been murdered
and there was a new Emperor on the throne, Emperor Otho. Which is
how my little sister used to say Arthur when she was growing up, though actually maybe it was ofo?
I can't remember.
Anyway at the battle of Bedriacu,, Vitellius's armies defeated Otho
and Otho committed suicide. Easiest coup ever. Though seeing as in just a few months
there were three emperors I'm guessing that the coin makers of Rome were getting kind of annoyed.
Now the author's Suetonius says that Vitellius entered Rome with great pomp and circumstance.
He was quickly acknowledged by the Senate as Emperor and made offerings to the people's then
favorite ex-Emperor Nero. He actually tried to model himself after Nero and during one of his
very first banquets as Emperor he asked one of the flute players to play Nero's greatest hits.
"No new crap. Taking care of business. Now!"
That is a great historical regret of mine is the fact
that we don't have sheet music from ancient Rome especially that we could have actually known what
Nero's music sounded like. How cool would that be?
Now as Emperor Vitellius actually did some really cool stuff.
He expanded many of the imperial offices to include people from the equites,
that second class that he was born into.
He also put an end to the sale of furloughs by centurions to their soldiers.
It'd be like if today military members had to pay their drill sergeant five hundred
every time that they went on leave.
But those are not the things that Vitellius is remembered for.
Sadly Vitellius is remembered for being a glutton and that's about it.
"He divided his feasts into three, sometimes into four a day; breakfast, luncheon, dinner,
and a bout of drinking.
And he was readily able to do justice to all of them through his habit of taking emetics.
An emetic is something that would induce vomiting, and it is true
that there were some ancient Romans who would induce vomiting so that they could eat more but
it is not a vomitorium. That is something very different. That was never a room where you went to do that.
A vomitorium is a later term that refers to part of an arena where patrons would spew forth.
Same etymology though.
Vitellius was known for inviting himself over pretty much daily
to wealthy people's villas where he would demand that a feast be prepared costing no
less than four hundred thousand sastercis according to Suetonius. Now that is between
like $200k-$800k roughly somewhere in there, so I think that that's probably crazy EXCEPT
that another author Cassius Dayo says that there was one dish that he had made for a million sasturcis
That dish might have been served at a dinner given by Vitellius's brother.
"Two thousand of the choicest fishes and seven thousand birds are said to have been served. On a platter so large
he called it the shield of Minerva defender of the city... He mingled the livers of pike, the brains of
pheasants, and peacocks. The tongues of flamingoes and the milt of lampreys brought by the captains
and triremes from the whole empire from Parthia to the Spanish Straight."
So I made a mistake and instead of leaving well enough alone
I looked up what milt was, because I had never heard that term
and it turns out that it is the reproductive fluid of
some male animals...
like lampreys...
D:
Anyway, Suetonius says that Vitellius "Being a man of an appetite that was not only boundless
but also regardless of time or decency could never refrain even when sacrificing... from snatching bits
of meat and cakes amid the altars... and devouring them on the spot."
Kind of like filling up on communion wafers.
Suetonius goes on for the next chapter to discuss how horrible Vitellius was,
how he would refuse to pay his debts. He loved to torture and execute people just on a whim.
He also accuses Vitellius of poisoning his own mother because of an Oracle that said that Vitellius
would have a longer rule if his mother died first.
Now while no author is particularly complementary to Vitellius they all agree that
he was audacious and licentious, and prone to protegality.
Suetonius seems particularly harsh on the man but you have to realize that Suetonius's own father
was in the army that Vitellius's army defeated at that first Battle of Bedriacum so he's probably
not a very impartial judge, and it just goes to show that
history is not always written by the victors, history is written by those who write stuff down.
Now Vitellius's over-the-top lifestyle
surely would have caught up to him sooner or later, had he not been Emperor number three
in the year of four Emperors. See almost as soon as he took power a commander in the East
was also proclaimed Emperor, and his name was Vespasian, and Vespasian had a general under him
who was excellent on the battlefield and had like the coolest name ever:
Marcus Antonius Primus.
*Rolling out intensifies
So Primus led the Sixth Legion into Italy and defeated Vitellius's army. Oddly enough
at that same spot Bedriacum at the Second Battle of Bedriacum, and when Vitellius heard
this he went to Vespasian's brother who was in Rome at the time, and offered in exchange for
his wicked life two things:
to resign as Emperor and a hundred million cistercies,
and the brother took it. So Vitellius went to the palace steps to tell all of his men
and the people of Rome that he was stepping down. It was a nice ride while it lasted boys
but let's pack it in. Unfortunately,
they did not agree. And when Vespasian's army came into Rome
there was a great deal of street fighting where Cassius Dayo says, "50,000 Romans died. Much of
the city was destroyed including the Temple of Jupiter and Vespasian eventually took the city and
Vitellius "Put on a girdle filled with gold pieces and took refuge in the lodge of a door-keeper tying
a dog outside the door and putting a couch and mattress against it."
I love that image, this Roman Emperor like pushing furniture up against the doors. It's kind of silly.
Well anyway they found him, you know after not too long, and they wrapped a noose around his neck,
and tore off most of his clothes, and dragged him through the streets where people would pelt him with dung.
Many of the people were the same ones who wouldn't let him abdicate just days before.
So fickle.
Then he was taken to the Gemonian Stairs also known as the Stairs of Death,
not just a clever name, where he was tortured and executed. He was beheaded, his head being
paraded around the city and his body being thrown into the Tiber River.
That's Rome baby,
for when you play the Game of Emperor you win or you die,
and he died. And Vespasian ended up becoming Emperor and actually quite a good one.
So if you want to stay Emperor in the PC strategy game
Total War Rome Remastered you better learn how to command an army better than poor Vitellius.
So once your seasoning is cooked for a few minutes go ahead and mix it in with the peas,
and stir until smooth, and if you do want those peas a little sweeter go ahead
and bedight them with a little more honey.
Then serve it forth, and here we are Vitellian peas.
Factoid for you these peas and other foods are not the only things named after the emperor Vitellius
because the oldest surviving Beowulf manuscript is known as Cotton Vitellius A XV because it
was kept in a bookcase that had the Emperor Vitellius's bust on it in Sir Robert Cotton's library.
Just thought that was kind of cool. Anyway let's try these peas. Vitellian peas.
They look green, they actually don't look very, very appetizing but here we go.
Hm.
That's weird, it's not bad...
It's like so much other Roman food.
Who put those flavors together?
Because you can kind of taste the savory- I mean you can taste peas but then there's
also like the savoriness from the garum, then wow that honey is sweet. They're weird.
I don't know if I like them or not...
I really don't know but sometimes that's okay you know?
You don't need to know how you feel about every little thing including Vitellian peas it seems.
I think they actually might grow on me. The after flavor is is actually quite nice.
Anyway Vitellius was known for having great feasts so next week we are going to cover
one of the most famous feasts in Roman literature,
Trimalchio's feast from the Satyricon.
So make sure to join me for the continuation of Rome Month next week on Tasting History. ^_^y