This got me thinking, a dangerous course of action which, had my wife caught it, would have been stopped on the spot. I was considering other ages and places where people ate to repletion--indeed, beyond; indulging in a grotesque parody of this Sunday buffet, consuming bizarre and exotic fare for hours on end. Then...well, in Ancient Rome, they invented the vomitorium, a place where you could induce vomiting (yes, the term came from that use), and return for more; while in Louis XIV's Versailles, the fine lords and ladies had recourse to a range of emetics to serve the same purpose. (You never rejected a plate at one of the Sun King's meals. To do so was tantamount to rejecting him, and that meant social disaster, and possible loss of income.)
It's fascinating stuff.
Eating customs, I mean, and not just among the elite, or (as in our case) the celebrating idiots who should know better. What are the eating customs like in your culture, among the various classes? How do you eat, yourself? What do you enjoy, dislike, and dislike, in the way of food?
