When did people start eating sitting at tables, as opposed to laying on their side like the ancient Greeks and Romans did?
Yeah, good question, why did we fix something that wasn’t broken?
The Greeks and Romans would lie to eat in their homes or at parties, but they also had restaurants (mostly outdoor street food) which would utilize tables on which to dine.
Wasn’t it also mostly nobles and patricians who reclined to eat? Your average peasant probably didn’t have much room for a plush recliner.
Is it really the case that it was ever normal way for people, even nobles and patricians, to eat lying down? Lying down may be OK for snacking, especially if you have slaves to feed you stuff, but it strikes me that it could never be a convenient or comfortable pose in which to eat a full meal. I am not saying that it never happened, but my guess is that the image of the rich Roman reclining and being fed by slaves was originally spread as a propaganda image of Roman patrician decadence (spread by Christians, maybe, or Roman populists or republicans) that has become so well known that people have mistaken it for a portrait of everyday normality.
In much of the world, it’s still pretty normal to eat sitting on the floor, usually on a mat of some sort.
Lying down? From what I have seen, people who eat on the floor are normally sitting cross-legged or squatting.
Not lying down. From a practical standpoint, I doubt that was ever all that popular.
when they got tired of people throwing nuts and fruit up their toga.