[Sca-cooks] Roman stuff WAS: Can't afford the SCA?

[Christina Nevin]

	>Second, all we require is an attempt at medieval
	>garb of some sort.  A quick and dirty tee tunic
	>is an attempt.

	I have some costumes from when I do Nero, now I have to see which
ones are
	acceptable.

Saluti Glenn!

I will undoubtedly get a few boos and hisses from the peanut gallery (See!
Food Content!) for saying this but Roman garb is perfectly legal.
Our official Articles of Incorporation state:

"This corporation is a nonprofit public benefit corporation and is not
organized for the private gain of any person. It is organized under the
Nonprofit Public Benefit Corporation Law for charitable purposes. The
purposes for which this corporation is formed include:
a) Research and education in the field of pre-17th-Century Western Culture.
b) Generally, to engage in research, publish material of relevance and
interest to the field of pre-17th-Century Western Culture; to present
activities and events which re-create the environment of said era, such as,
but not limited to, tournaments, jousts, fairs, dances, classes, et cetera;
to acquire authentic or reproduced replicas of chattels representative of
said era; and to collect a library."

No mention of a start date whatsoever (though I hafta say I think anything
BCE would be ridiculous).

There are a lot of Romans up in the north of the continent (including of
course, our very own Adamantius) and some even have whole military bands and
households. I have an alternate C.4th Roman persona myself (Lucretia instead
of Lucrezia - and as almost everyone mangles my name it's usually pronounced
the same, so it's not much of a leap!). Roman garb is perfect for hot
weather, easy to make for the sewing-impaired like myself (how hard is it to
stitch 2 rectangles together? brilliant, as I don't have a machine), cheap
to make (i.e. rectangles of fabric of varying weights and warmth), and both
male and female Roman clothing is obvious as to what style/era it is, rather
than just looking generic.  There is lots of easily accessible resource
material both in libraries and on the web (such as www.novaroma.org), and
last (but certainly not least to me) the jewellery is way cool...

Not that I'm saying you should stick to a Roman persona - most people's do
come from post-600 up to 1600 (my primary persona is Renaissance Venetian),
but it is a simple and quick way to get you started and ease yourself into
re-enactment - and can easily be segued into Byzantine. And if you have the
garb already - well, you're halfway there!

And to give you some real food content - there are two relevant cookbooks:
Apicius, which ranges from the C.3rd to C.9th centuries (Flower & Rosenbaum
do the only worthwhile translation) and Anthimus, C.6th century (translated
by Mark Grant).

Al Servizio Vostro, e del Sogno
Lady Lucrezia-Isabella di Freccia

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Lady Lucrezia-Isabella di Freccia   |  mka Tina Nevin
Thamesreach Shire, The Isles, Drachenwald | London, UK
mailto:thorngrove at yahoo.com | http://www.geocities.com/~thorngrove
"There is no doubt that great leaders prefer hard drinkers to good
versifiers"
- Aretino, 1536
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