Feast of Sorrow

In the twenty-sixth year of Augustus Caesar’s reign, on a day hot enough to fry sausage on the market stones, a young slave sells on the block for the exorbitant price of twenty thousand denarii. His purchaser is none other than Marcus Gavius Apicius, a notoriously profligate gourmet whose recipes appear in the world’s oldest known cookbook and who has only one ambition in life: to serve as gastronomic advisor to the Emperor. Apicius rightfully believes that this chattel will be the key to his culinary success; with the help of his new chef, Thrasius, Apicius quickly becomes known for his lavish dinner parties as more and more patrons offer up valuable favors in the hopes of securing an invitation. But Thrasius is powerless when his master’s quest for culinary greatness takes a dangerous turn. Narrated by Apicius’ fictional slave and master chef, and set against the politics and culture of Imperial Rome, Feast of Sorrow imagines the course of events that might have led to Apicius’ dramatic demise, an incident recorded in Seneca’s Consolations.

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