Influence of Poisons on Silverware Design.

March 6, 2010

Preamble

We often use things surrounding us without much thinking of their origin, and why they are this, or that particular way. I have always been interested in old techniques and very frequently the best way to decipher a manufacturing method is to understand the reasons behind it. Silverware design in general and shape of drinking vessels in particular, is an area of exploration of this writing.

Introduction

To understand silverware design, we have to deal with dark pages of Human History. This is simply unavoidable. We all like to believe in goodness of our fellow human being, but History lessons cannot be ignored. We need to understand the role of poisons and their effects on civilization.

Poisons in Ancient World.

Here is a link to article, which is a very good introduction to the subject

Poisons In Ancient Rome

For those who do not have time to read complete text, here is an excerpt from the article.

Poisons and poisoning are frequently mentioned in Roman literature. The question whether the murder-rate and the percentage of suicides were greater than they are today is still debatable and cannot be decided with any degree of accuracy. Scholars cannot even agree on the size of the population of Rome itself at any given period, in spite of much research and many deductions. Much less can the death-rates from unnatural causes be determined. However, the crime of poisoning seems to have been much more frequent in ancient than in modern times. Perhaps this can be attributed to the absence of gunpowder and bullets.

The word venenum is derived, according to Walde,1 from Venus and means a love potion. It has three meanings from actual usage: remedy, 2 poison, 3 and magic drug or abortive. 4 The exact meaning is frequently determined by the qualifying adjective bonum or malum. 5 Veneficium means poisoning6 and practicing sorcery, 7 while veneficus or venefica was applied to a poisoner8 or maker of drugs. 9 However, in this paper we are primarily concerned with poisoning.

The first known instance of the crime of poisoning at Rome was in 331 B.C., when a high mortality, the result, probably, of a pestilence, was attributed to poisoning. Even Livy doubted the validity of the charges, but he10 gives the whole account as found in his sources. After many leading citizens had died from the same disease, a slave-girl gave information to the curule aediles that the reason for this high mortality was the poisons prepared and administered by the Roman matrons.

On investigation they found about twenty matrons, including patrician ladies, in the act of brewing poisons, which they declared were salutary.  On being forced to drink their own concoctions to prove the charges false, they perished by their own wickedness. Following this, a hundred and seventy more were found guilty of the same offense.  The second case of extensive poisoning is found in 186 B.C. in connection with the licentious worship of Bacchus.  After a careful and extensive investigation of four months, carried on throughout Italy, the praetor Quintus Naevius made a grand exposé resulting in the condemnation of two thousand persons. Poisoning was one of the crimes prominently mentioned with the rest.

I want to bring your attention to the underlined sentence in bold. Bacchus was a god of Wine and Bacchus worship was basically a drinking orgy, accompanied with, let's use the proper term, lascivious activities. This is one of the earliest, if not the first, documented case of mass poisoning with wine. Since, it is unlikely that many people would be targeted for assassination in this manner, we have a documented case mass poisoning with bad wine. This is an important point for later discussion.