Although the Ancient Roman aristocracy certainly showed off their social status with elaborate banquets, they did not actually purge themselves in rooms called “Vomitoria.” This misconception arose from some 19th- and 20th- century writers, who claimed that a Vomitorium was where Romans deliberately threw up their food so they could keep eating. In fact, the Roman word Vomitorium didn’t appear until the fifth century CE, when a writer named Macrobius used it to refer to the exit/entrance to an amphitheater- These places funneled people as though they were spewing — like vomit, but a completely different context.
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