Storing Produce and Staging Dinner Parties: Fruit-Galleries and Genre in Varro’s De re rustica 1

This article explores the genre and ideological agenda of Varro’s De re rustica by examining the textual representation of oporothecae (“fruit-galleries”). As structures in which fruit could be stored and dinner parties held, the oporothecae not only serve to evaluate and satirize the rural practices of contemporary Roman elites but also programmatically epitomize the tension generated by De re rustica’s synthesis of the technical treatise, philosophical dialogue, and satire.