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The Bacchus Taverna.

The pleasures of the flesh are delightful!

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Welcome to our little Taverna. We sell soup. hot sausages, bread, cheese, dates, olives and of course lots of different wines.

If you require privacy and a little company just talk to my freedman Aurelius. Slip him some sestertii and you can visit our wench Aphrodite who is in the back room.

"Bacchus I saw on distant crags teaching hymns, and I beheld nymphs as his pupils, and the goat-faced satyrs with their pointed ears...." (Horace, Odes II.xix)

"It has pleased us to engrave scenes of license upon our goblets, and to drink through the midst of obscenities." (Pliny, Natural History XXXIII.5)

"Bronze is the mirror of the outward form, wine the mirror of the mind." (Athenaeus, Banquet of the Philosophers x.427).

"Just then some glass jars carefully sealed with gypsum were brought out, with labels tied on their necks. As we tried to read the old tags, Trimalchio clapped his hands and cried, 'Ah me, so wine lives longer than miserable man. So let us be merry, Wine is life'."(Petronius, Satyricon.34)

"Wine ruins beauty, wine spoils youth, wine often causes a mistress to mistake her man." (Propertius, Elegies II.xxxiii)

"The eating of meat and the drinking of wine and the fullness of the stomach is the seed plot of lust." (St. Jerome, Against Jovinianus II.7)

Shops were a common feature fronting Roman streets, occupying the front portion of many houses and apartment blocks. In some cases, it seems as though the shops were deliberately designed into the buildings, but in many others they were obviously added later. Most were single room tabernae, but a large number also had rooms in the back for storage and/or production, in addition to a mezzanine floor for storage and living quarters.

Many shops had large masonry counters with ceramic jars built into them, mouths flush with the counter. These conveniences were used to serve wine and food to customers.

Some shops sold imported goods, while others, like bakeries, would make their wares onsite. During the empire, many shops were built in planned, concentrated markets known as macella, while the town forum also acted as a focal point for business. Other types of shops, such as inns and brothels, were common, but unrecognizable unless specifically built for the purpose.

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