WHAT TYPE OF FOOD OR PRODUCT IS “PRECIOUS” TO YOU? HOW MUCH WOULD YOU BE WILLING TO PAY if it BECAME DIFFICULT TO find? WHAT would you do if it was no longer available?

What is this, How does it taste, and where does it come from?

Roman Custard: Add honey or sugar to a large glass of milk and bring the mixture to a boil in a saucepan. Take a little of the boiling milk and add three egg or egg yolks to it. After this, place the mixture in an oven and cook until the dessert is set. Garnish with nutmeg or cinnamon before serving. Roman Dates Alexandrina Recipe: Stuff stoned dates with almonds and cinnamon powder. Cover them in honey and butter. Then cook the stuffed dates in an oven at high temperature for about ten minutes. Serve hot. Pears Cooked with Cinnamon and Wine: Boil pears till tender and drain the liquid. Reserve the fruit stock for use. Mash the pears and cook then in the stock. Add cumin, cinnamon, honey and olive oil, and sweet wine to this. Cook this mixture on a low flame for a few minutes. Add egg yolks to thicken the mixture.

So, where did ancient Mediterranean civilizations get their Cinnamon from? Still more wonderful is the way in which they collect the cinnamon. Where the wood grows, and what country produces it, they cannot tell……Great birds, they say, bring the sticks which we Greeks, taking the word from the Phoenicians, call cinnamon, and carry them up into the air to make their nests. These are fastened with a sort of mud to a sheer face of rock, where no foot of man is able to climb. So the Arabians, to get the cinnamon, use the following technique. They cut all the oxen and asses and beasts of burden that die in their land into large pieces, which they carry with them into those regions, and place near the nests: then they withdraw to a distance, and the old birds, swooping down, seize the pieces of meat and fly with them up to their nests; which, not being able to support the weight, break off and fall to the ground.[10] Hereupon the Arabians return and collect the cinnamon, which is afterwards carried from Arabia into other countries. Excerpted from Book 3, Chapters , in The Histories of Herodotus, by Herodotus, BCE. “These old tales were invented by the Arabs to raise the price of their goods!” Pliny the Elder, Roman Writer c. 77 CE

QUESTIONS TO ANSWER! What made cinnamon such a precious item in the ancient Mediterranean world? Why were spices like cinnamon so important to the civilizations of the ancient Mediterranean world?