Empire of Pleasures presents an evocative survey of the sensory culture of the Roman Empire, showing how the Romans themselves depicted their food, wine and entertainments in literature and in art. This fascinating journey envelops the reader in a world devoted to the titillation and fulfilment of the senses, allowing them to recapture the Empire as it was sensed and imagined by those who lived in it. It will fascinate and entrance anyone with a love of the classical world
Author
Andrew Dalby (born Liverpool, 1947) is an English linguist, translator and historian who most often writes about food history. Dalby studied at the Bristol Grammar School, where he learned some Latin, French and Greek; then at the University of Cambridge. There he studied Latin and Greek at first, afterwards Romance languages and linguistics. He earned a bachelor's degree in 1970. Dalby then worked for fifteen years at Cambridge University Library, eventually specializing in Southern Asia. He gained familiarity with some other languages because of his work there, where he had to work with foreign serials and afterwards with South and Southeast Asian materials. In 1982 and 1983 he collaborated with Sao Saimong in cataloguing the Scott Collection of manuscripts and documents from Burma (especially the Shan States) and Indochina; He was later to publish a short biography of the colonial civil servant and explorer J. G. Scott, who formed the collection.[1] To help him with this task, he took classes in Cambridge again in Sanskrit, Hindi and Pali and in London in Burmese and Thai.
