Imagine a world where a simple condiment was once more coveted than gold. This is the history of black pepper: a spice whose storied past is even more piquant than its flavour profile.

Black pepper is the sun-ripened berry of a climbing vine, native to India's Malabar Coast — where dark fruits are hand-harvested, dried in the sun, and transformed into heat made manifest.

Picture the spice traders in Rome's bustling markets, weighing out peppercorns like precious stones. These wrinkled black berries commanded prices that made senators wince and emperors recalculate military budgets. "Black gold," they called it — and meant it literally.

Watch Pliny the Elder pace his study, calculating Rome's obsession with this particular addiction. "No small ships" sailed east for pepper, he complained, watching imperial treasury drain for what he saw as luxury run ruinous.

Follow those peppercorns into Roman bathhouses, where attendants would burn them with incense to cleanse air and awaken bodies gone soft from too much wine and politics. The scent — dry, woody, sharp enough to cut through marble-thick humidity — became synonymous with vitality itself.

Galen understood what modern aromatherapists know to be true: pepper doesn't just season, it stimulates. Steeped in oil, it warmed joints stiff from campaign living, revived circulation sluggish from Senate meetings, stirred senses dulled by routine conquest. Prescribed for everything from indigestion to lethargy — the universal remedy for bodies that had forgotten how to feel alive.

Roman generals would rub peppercorn oil into skin before battle, understanding that some heat comes from within. The scent announced vitality, virility, the kind of fortitude that built empires one uncomfortable decision at a time.

In DENARII, black pepper cuts through frankincense's sacred dryness like sparks from brazier coals. Not overpowering — never crude — but unmistakably alive. The snap of kindling in quiet rooms, the flicker that reminds you fire still burns beneath carefully controlled surfaces. The scent of an extinguished candle that lingers long after the flame dies.