Food, Drink, & Dining

"After lessons with her daughters, Aemilia hurried to refresh her makeup. Her husband was throwing a dinner party that night for a group of very important guests, and Aemilia was serving as hostess alongside him.
"Just half an hour later, Aemilia heard the sounds of voices at the door. She dashed down the stairs to arrive, perfectly put together, in the dining room. Her husband was there already, showing the guests to their places. Aemilia let herself recline on the low couch, to the right of her husband's place, and plucked an oyster from a plate of appetizers that was waiting on the table. In the corner, a musician struck up, accompanied by a young dancer in extravagant clothing.
"The meal was long, consisting of many courses, and by the end of the night Aemilia was exhausted, her cheeks red with the heat of wine. Good byes were said at the door, and Aemilia breathed a sigh of relief as the house was quiet once more.
"Returning to her quarters, her servants reversed the process of that morning, and Aemilia was soon ready for bed.
"The attendants backed out of the room, and in mere seconds Aemilia Maximius was quietly breathing, fast asleep."

Dining was an important part of Imperial Roman culture. Parties were often held by the wealthy and upper-class, consisting of lots of wine and courses upon courses of extravagant food. In the Roman Empire, women were allowed to join, sitting alongside their male counterparts.

Diagram courtesy of blogs.getty.edu.

This diagram shows the typical set-up at a dinner party. The benches were used for reclining, with the occupants laying at an angle. This way, their heads would all point towards the center table, where the food was laid for each course.
Typical dinner parties in the Empire consisted of three courses. The first was an appetizer course, where dishes such as salad, mushrooms, shellfish, and eggs may have been served, followed by a round of mulsum, which was wine that had been sweetened with honey.
The second course was the main course of the night. It could contain up to seven courses, mostly made up of various meats and fish, along with side dishes of vegetables and sauces.
After this course, the servants would replace the table completely, bringing on the final course that was known as the secundae mensae, or second tables. In our modern era, we would consider this the dessert course, as it came after the main meal and was made up of fruits, nuts, and sweet cakes.
And, of course, large quantities of wine would have been served all throughout the meal.

Roman floor mosaic, courtesy of commons.wikimedia.org.

While the food shared at dinner parties tended towards the unusual (such as peacock tongues), the everyday menus of the rich were a bit more normal. They were able to indulge themselves in a variety of meats like beef, pork, lamb, fowl, and fish, and could easily afford to use the higher quality wheat as opposed to the millet used by the poor. The richest of the Romans also enjoyed exotic spices such as cinnamon, pepper, nutmeg, and cloves, which were brought from India by way of traders. And, of course, the true staples of the Roman diet were olive oil and wine.
All of these foods, however, would have been served as dinner, known as cena. The other meals of the day were much small, simpler affairs, consisting of light fair. A typical breakfast may have been biscuits or wheat, served with honey or fruit. Similar in menu was the prandium, or lunchtime meal.

SOURCES:

http://blogs.getty.edu/iris/reclining-and-dining-and-drinking-in-ancient-rome/
Usborne Internet-Linked Romans by Anthony Marks and Graham Tingay, pages 38-39
https://quatr.us/romans/roman-food-rich-poor.htm
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:0_Mosaico_pavimentale_%E2%80%93_Grotte_Celloni_%E2%80%93_Pal._Massimo.JPG