 expensive Roman cookery".
Pepper was so valuable that it was often used as collateral or even currency. The taste for pepper (or the appreciation of its monetary value) was passed on to those who would see Rome fall. It is said that Alaric the Visigoth and Attila the Hun each demanded from Rome a ransom of more than a ton of pepper when they besieged the city in 5th century. After the fall of Rome, others took over the middle legs of the spice trade, first the Persians and then the Arabs; Innes Miller cites the account of Cosmas Indicopleustes, who travelled east to India, as proof that "pepper was still being exported from India in the sixth century".
By the end of the Dark Ages, the central portions of the spice trade were firmly under Islamic control. Once into the Mediterranean, the trade was largely monopolised by Italian powers, especially Venice and Genoa. The rise of these city-states was funded in large part by the spice trade.
- Pliny the Elder, The Natural History
- Alan Davidson. The Wilder Shores of Gastronomy. Ten Speed Press, 2002.
- Andrew Dalby. Dangerous Tastes. University of California Press, 2002.
- Fitzgerald. Ramses II. Compass Point Books, 2008.
- Jack Turner. Spice. Vintage, 2005.
- James Innes Miller. The Spice Trade of the Roman Empire, 29 B.C. to A.D. 641,. Clarendon Press, 1969.
2000 BCEPepper is widely used in Indian cooking.