“Non penso sia giusto per un medico ignorare completamente l’<b> <i>ars coquinaria</i> </b>”: la dieta malsana delle élites di Roma imperiale

Summary This article compares some recipes from De re coquinaria with the prescriptions contained in Galen’s De alimentorum facultatibus and De ptisana in order to examine the fatally ambiguous relationship between food and medicine. Although the cookbook attributed to “Apicius” dates, in the form in which it has come down to us, to the end of the 4 th century, a first substantial nucleus of recipes dating from the early imperial age was most likely the object of the punctilious corrections and sharp criticism of the Pergamene physician and archiater, who intended to stigmatise in this way the unhealthy diet of the urban elites of the Antonine age.