[Sca-cooks] salad of fennel and seville oranges?

[Terry Decker]

Snarky is fine.  It admits to its nonsense, "for the snark was a boojum, you 
see."  I will accept the caveat of there being no linguistic certainty.  But 
with Classic Latin, being "dead" and "fixed" and one of the most widely 
studied languages around, it's difficult to see how one would miss "orange."

The orange fruit is interesting enough that it should have been described in 
the Roman writings we have.  It isn't, so the odds are oranges hadn't 
reached the Mediterranean by the 1st Century.  Platina writing in the 15th 
Century used "citron" as the Latin equivalent of the orange in Master 
Martino's recipes, which again suggests that there was no word for orange in 
Classic Latin.  I'm certain Pliny would have pontificated on the different 
types of citron if the word was being used generally for a variety of citrus 
fruit.

Late Latin uses the word "aurantium" to describe the orange.  Late Latin
roughly covers the 3rd to 7th Centuries, encompassing the rise of Byzantium
and the Eastern Empire and the furthest extent of Roman trade (definitely
into India and possibly into SE Asia).  Where and how the word came into use
is indeterminable at present.  Due to the war and trade between the Romans
and the Persians during this period, it is very likely that oranges were
introduced into Byzantium from Persia, but were not readily available
anywhere else in the Empire.

If one considers the timing, it is highly unlikely that oranges entered
general cultivation during the height of the Roman Empire.  Citrons were
brought to the Mediterranean in the late 4th Century BCE by Alexander's
armies.  It is believed the orange was introduced into Persia by a Chinese
embassy seeking allies against the Huns in the mid 2nd Century BCE.  The
first reference to the "naranga" is from India in the 1st Century.  Roman
advance into the region begins in the 2nd Century just as the Empire starts
going to hell in a handbasket.  Between the decline in trade, the internal
political problems and the military set backs, it is unlikely that many new
plants made their way into the Mediterranean basin.

The evidence for oranges being in the Mediterranean basin  during the height 
of the Roman Empire is sketchy, debatable, and anomalous.  It's not as good 
as the Tudor banana.  As for NYX, I'm kinda curious as to how many orange 
seeds have turned up in Roman middens or latrines.  AFAIK, none.  While 
absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, in this case it is a pretty 
good indicator.  Even if you turn up an orange tree in the right place and 
right time, it is an anomaly until the tree can be tied to a wider culture 
of orange cultivation.

I think I better end this disjointed pedantic ramble or I'll have to write a 
paper.

Bear


> Am Freitag, 14. April 2006 00:58 schrieb Terry Decker:
>> Even if they did, they couldn't tell us.  Classic Latin didn't have a
>> word
>> for orange.
>
> ...that we know of. Sorry to sound snarky, but the science of ancient
> culinary
> language is not that exact. I don't think they had it, but if they did, we
> might just overlook it on the assumption that some kind of apple or citron
> was being referenced in the one spot.
>
> Among Roman army reenactors, the phrase for things like this is NYX - Not
> Yet
> eXcavated. Etiquette says, don't do it, but don't be all shocked once they
> find it, either :-)
>
> Giano