PATERNUM·
Horace, Odes II.16
The table is the first institution
Before the school, the market and the state, there was a table. We start there because everything else was built on it.
Before there was a school, a market or a state, there was a table. Every household had one. It was where food was shared, where the old spoke and the young listened, where news was weighed and quarrels were settled before bed.
Horace, writing about the good life, describes a small table and a salt cellar that belonged to the father. The object mattered because it had been used before. It carried the family’s habits from one generation to the next without anyone having to explain them.