What was roman cutlery like?

Answer 1

The Romans developed many types of iron knives for a variety of uses. Knives were considered important and they were treasured. People were often buried with their eating knives. They were not provided at dinner parties and people brought their own knives.

The Romans also used knives to cut hair

The Romans made sophisticated spoon made of bone, pewter, bronze and silver. Roman spoons developed from simple bowls with a handle to thinner bowls which could come in a variety of shapes: round, oval, pointed, or flared at the front.

For most of their history the Roman used forks only as cooking or serving tools. The use of table forks for eating began in the eastern part of the Roman Empire in the 4th century AD. They were used only by the elites.

Table forks came in common use in the in the Middle East and in what is now Turkey by the 10th century. They were introduced in Italy in the 11th century because they were useful for eating pasta. They become popular with the aristocracy and the wealthy merchants by the 14th century and became part of etiquette in Italy in the 16th century. Dinner guests brought their own forks. A Florentine, Catherine de Medici, introduced them at the French court in the mid-16th century. In the rest of Western Europe the use of the table fork remained manly a court custom until the 18th century when it spread to other wealthy classes. The use of the table fork by common people started in Italy in the late 18th century with the invention of the tomato sauce. Forks were needed to eat pasta with tomato sauce.