Proto-"Pizza" from Pompeii

Textkit Community Civilization and Culture of the Greeks and Romans
1

Sadly, it’s not pizza, it’s focaccia, but I keep seeing headlines calling it pizza anyway because of a new fresco found in Pompeii.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/27/world/europe/pizza-mural-pompeii.html

Still, this makes a good time to check out the history of flatbread and moretum:
https://la.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moretum

Ovid, Virgil, Apicius and others talked about moretum and putting a mix of various spices, cheese, olive oil, herbs, etc on bread, and the versions of moretum with pine nuts and basil could have led to modern day pesto sauce.

Max Miller of Tasting History on YouTube made this, and I tried too because I never miss an opportunity to eat bread and cheese. Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eEgSGkp8nMA

He talks about Virgil here but I couldn’t find the Latin yet myself, apparently it’s in his early poems, a recipe in poem form for moretum, and then in the Aeneid there is talk of eating tables, and apparently “mensa” also referred to “bread plate,” i.e. flatbread but I am still digging through original sources for this and Apicius.

But in the end, all of this could lead to modern day pizza, at least, once tomatoes were introduced to Italy.

2

The “eating their tables” line in Aeneid is still hotly debated. If you have evidence that it referred to food, that would be nice to see.

3

I do not, as I haven’t read it in 30 years, but I will keep an eye out on what might be out there.

I have mainly only gone through Apicius to find similar things in there.

4

The “eating their tables” line in Aeneid is still hotly debated. If you have evidence that it referred to food, that would be nice to see.

By whom is this ‘hotly debated’? The only debate regarding this passage that I have found concerns the fact that while it harmlessly fulfills the harpies’ prophecy in book 3, Aeneas regards it as the fulfillment of an otherwise unmentioned prophecy by Anchises, and does this indicate an area that Vergil intended to revise.

from the OLD entry for mensa:

4 A dish, course; —a secunda, dessert.
damnosissimuin uentri mare est..tot ~is, tot piscium saporibus Piin.Nat.g.104;—mel ad principia conuiui et in secundam ~am adroinistratur VAR.K.3.16.5; VERG.G 2.101;
vas, felicia poma, secundas Ov.Me/.9.92; Pr1N.Nat.16.15; MART.3.50.6; (cf.) ad uina redit

5