The typical meal for Jewish folks in Roman times featured
- Bread
- olive oil
- dried figs
- and a mess of stew made from beans, lentils, and peas.
I wrote about that in a recent article: Ancient diet for a trim look.
Richer folks could add some wine and meat. But women “have no right to wine since the wives of the poor don’t drink wine.” That’s a quote from the Tosefta, a set of Jewish guidelines from at least the AD 100’s, and perhaps earlier.
Poorer folks were more likely to use wine to help purify the drinking water. It killed some of the bacteria from pollutants such as dead critters upstream, algae in the underground spring, and laundry day every day along the shore.
It seems that nearly everyone who could afford to grow some grapes did, which is why archaeologists have found so many ruins of wine and olive presses all over what is now Israel and Palestinian Territories.
