Does This Taste Poisoned to You?
The perilous lives of food tasters
Hello! I am trying something today.
As you probably know, this newsletter usually comes out on Sunday, and focuses on historical images, art, and artifacts. But, as you may also know, I do a fair amount of writing that doesn’t show up in this newsletter (mostly here). I’ve really enjoyed working on Looking Through the Past over the last year and a half, and I’d like to start writing here more.
So: sometimes on Wednesdays, I’m going to try posting an extra historical piece. I don’t know that I’m ready to commit to twice a week, every week, so for now this will happen when the spirit moves me. I hope you enjoy!
In a royal family full of weirdos or worse, the Roman emperor Claudius was, by most accounts, a smart and capable ruler. Elevated to the throne by the army after it assassinated his unstable predecessor, Caligula, he stabilized the empire during his 13 years in power. During his time in office, he reformed the empire’s bureaucracy, added to Rome’s network of aqueducts and roads, and conquered parts of Britain.
Claudius’ capable leadership didn’t keep him from the fate that awaited so many of his fellow emperors. According to most of the ancient sources, he was murdered — poisoned, in fact, with a tainted mushroom.
Who killed Claudius? The ancient historians tell us several different stories about his death. Cassius Dio tells us that Claudius’ wife, Agrippina, killed him to secure the throne for her teenage son, Nero:
She sent for a famous dealer in poisons, a woman named Lucusta, who had recently been convicted on this very charge; and preparing with her aid a poison whose effect was sure, she put it in one of the vegetables called mushrooms. Then she herself ate of the others, but made her husband eat of the one which contained the poison; for it was the p31 largest and finest of them.
And so the victim of the plot was carried from the banquet apparently quite overcome by strong drink, a thing that had happened many times before; but during the night the poison took effect and he passed away, without having been able to say or hear a word.
Tacitus says that Claudius’ death was a little more drawn out. More people were involved, and Claudius pooped out the original poison, necessitating the intervention of a doctor with a poisoned feather:
An artist in this domain was selected — a woman by the name of Locusta, lately sentenced on a poisoning charge, and long retained as part of the stock-in-trade of absolutism. Her ingenuity supplied a potion, administered by the eunuch Halotus, whose regular duty was to bring in and taste the dishes.
So notorious, later, were the whole proceedings that authors of the period have recorded that the poison was sprinkled on an exceptionally fine mushroom; though, as a result of his natural sluggishness or intoxication, the effects of the drug were not immediately felt by Claudius.
At the same time, a motion of his bowels appeared to have removed the danger. Agrippina was in consternation: as the last consequences were to be apprehended, immediate infamy would have to be braved; and she fell back on the complicity — which she had already assured — of the doctor Xenophon. He, it is believed, under cover of assisting the emperor’s struggles to vomit, plunged a feather, dipped in a quick poison, down his throat: for he was well aware that crimes of the first magnitude are begun with peril and consummated with profit.
Suetonius, for his sake, is less sure about what happened or who did it:
That Claudius was poisoned is the general belief, but when it was done and by whom is disputed. Some say that it was his taster, the eunuch Halotus, as he was banqueting on the Citadel with the priests; others that at a family dinner Agrippina served the drug to him with her own hand in mushrooms, a dish of which he was extravagantly fond. Reports also differ as to what followed.
Many say that as soon as he swallowed the poison he became speechless, and after suffering excruciating pain all night, died just before dawn. Some say that he first fell into a stupor, then vomited up the whole contents of his overloaded stomach, and was given a second dose, perhaps in a gruel, under pretence that he must be refreshed with food after his exhaustion, or administered in a syringe, as if he were suffering from a surfeit and required relief by that form of evacuation as well.
Modern historians are divided on the death of Claudius. Some think he simply died of natural causes (he was 63 and sickly), others think that there was no foul play and he just mistakenly ate a toxic mushroom, while many believe the basic outlines of the story told by these three ancient historians.
The story of Claudius’ death raises a lot of questions, but I want to focus on just one: What must it have been like to be Halotus, the emperor’s food taster?
Halotus seems, at first glance, to have had an unenviable life. First, the accounts note that he was made a eunuch — a practice not unknown in ancient Rome but not as common as in some other ancient cultures. Then he got the job of royal food taster — praegustator — for the emperor of a society swimming with murder plots and intrigue. It was his job to sacrifice his life for the health of the emperor. This all sounds like bad luck for old Halotus.
Though we can’t know for sure whether he was involved, Nero didn’t seem bummed at all that Claudius had died — instead, he went around calling mushrooms “the food of the gods” (a sly crack about the deification of Roman emperors after their deaths). And he didn’t make a show of punishing Halotus, who, after all, had failed in his one job. Instead, Nero kept Halotus on staff, demonstrating either that the food taster had been in on the plot or that it at least didn’t matter that he had failed. Nero’s successor, Galba, promoted Halotus to a prominent position as a tax collector. It worked out quite nicely for this particular food taster.
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In some cases, the food tasters were also food servers or preparers, and the ritual of food tasting was really to keep the kitchen staff from poisoning the ruler (lest they poison themselves). Xenophon tells us that Cyrus, ruler of the Persians, had his cupbearers pour a bit of wine “into their left hand, and swallow it down — so that, if they should put poison in it, they may not profit by it.”
It makes sense that food tasters occupied pretty low-ranking positions. But many Roman food tasters, like Halotus, were able to move on to have bigger and better careers. They often got promoted to organize banquets or entertainments for the powerful people they served.
It’s unclear how useful people like Halotus even were. There were ways to poison someone despite the presence of food tasters. First, many poisons are slow-acting. A ruler would have waited only a few minutes after their food taster took a bite or sip to tuck into their dinner; they weren’t going to let their meal get cold. If the food taster started to go downhill hours or days later, as happens with many poisons, their suffering wouldn’t save the life of the poisoned ruler — it would only be a preview of what was to come. So food tasters may have been more for show than anything else.
You could also slip the poison in after the tasting. Claudius’ preferred heir, Britannicus, was poisoned soon after Claudius was, presumably because he was a potential rival to Nero. Tacitus tells us that 13-year-old Britannicus and his praegustator were served a beverage too hot to drink. The taster took a sip, but then Britannicus asked for some cold water to cool his beverage off. The taster didn’t recheck the drink; the poison was in the water.
Nero, who just happened to be present, played it cool while his half-brother died:
[The poison] so penetrated his entire frame that he lost alike voice and breath. There was a stir among the company; some, taken by surprise, ran hither and thither, while those whose discernment was keener, remained motionless, with their eyes fixed on Nero, who, as he still reclined in seeming unconsciousness, said that this was a common occurrence: from a periodical epilepsy, with which Britannicus had been afflicted from his earliest infancy, and that his sight and senses would gradually return.
You didn’t even necessarily have to poison food. As the walls closed in on Marc Antony and Cleopatra, the two lovebirds began to suspect each other of ill intentions. Antony started having servants sample all of his food before he ate it. Cleopatra, never one to pass up a twisted psychosexual game, poisoned some edible flowers, made a wreath of them, and laid them on Antony’s head.
Antony scattered some of the petals into his cup and got ready to drink. Cleopatra stopped him, called a prisoner in, had the poor man drink from Antony’s cup, and watched him die — I guess to prove that she could kill Antony at any time despite his precautions. What a fun couple!
By the medieval period, food tasting had become more professionalized. Moses Maimonides published helpful tips for kings using food tasters. He advised rulers to make sure that the taster takes a hearty bite; the king “should not eat from his food until the suspect first eats a fair quantity from it. He should not be satisfied with eating only a mouthful, as I have seen done by the cooks of kings in their presence.”
Historian Eleanor Herman tells us that food tasters in the Middle Ages were quite thorough. They were told to break the crusts of pies and eat the contents, test any beverages served at a banquet, wash their hands in a basin of water before their employers, and even kiss the napkins, utensils, and chair of the king to make sure there was no poison sprinkled anywhere.
Other rituals emerged to verify the safety of food. In Italy, pre-tasted food was presented on a “credenza,” which comes from the same root as “credibility” — the food placed there could be trusted. Even our ritual of clinking glasses together as part of a toast comes from the desire of medieval diners to make sure they could trust their dining companions by sloshing a little bit of their beverage into their neighbors’ cups.
Other monarchs preferred to use technology to “detect” poison. Some Renaissance-era Italians, terrified of being poisoned by Lucrezia Borgia, believed that delicate Venetian glass would shatter if exposed to poison. Others trusted in opal rings that would change color if the wearer was holding poisoned food. Some Chinese monarchs used silver chopsticks in the belief that poison would dull their shine.
If you’re eager to get into the exciting world of food tasting, you’ll be glad to know that the profession has persisted into the 20th and 21st centuries — but be warned: you will probably have to work for an extremely unpleasant employer.
Adolf Hitler employed a crew of 15 young women to try his food. One of them recalled, “The food was delicious, only the best vegetables, asparagus, bell peppers, everything you can imagine…. But this constant fear — we knew of all those poisoning rumors and could never enjoy the food. Every day we feared it was going to be our last meal.”
Saddam Hussein had a food taster (he exiled his son Uday for murdering him in 1988). Vladimir Putin, no stranger to poisoning plots, employs one, too.
But there may be less job security in the already rather insecure food-tasting profession these days. The Beijing Olympics used mice (which digest food, and therefore show symptoms, faster) to protect athletes, and Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the President of Turkey, simply has his food tested in a lab. Where’s the fun in that?
It’s a quintessential modern problem: technology is putting hardworking humans out of work. Now, in addition to being a deadly profession, food-tasting may be a dying one, as well.
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Originally published on Medium.