So many modern things turn out to be much older than we realize. Did the ancient romans have coffee?
I recently studied about the history of coffee, because I was interested in the origins of Turkish Coffee.
There are legends that coffee originated from Ethiopia, but the earliest evidence of coffee appears in the 15th century in Yemen. Sufi monasteries in Yemen used coffee to aid them in spiritual meditation when they chanted the name of Allah. Al-Jaziri's manuscript traces the spread of coffee from Yemen to Mecca and Medina in 1414. Spreading further to Cairo, Damascus from the Yemeni Port of Mocha and eventually Constantinople by 1554 during the reign of the Ottomans. During the 16th century, coffee spread further into Europe starting with Malta. In Italy during the second half of the 16th century, by the time the Roman Empire was long gone, coffee arrived through commercial routes of the Mediterranean Sea. A Venetian botanist Prospero Alpini imported coffee from Egypt into the Republic of Venice in 1580, where soon coffee shops started opening. By the year of 1763 Venice had more than 200 coffee shops, where coffee became the drink of the intellectuals and of social gatherings.
In short, the Romans didn't drink coffee.
Sources:
Al-Jaziri Manuscript, translated partially by Antoine Galland.
The World of Caffeine - Weinberg Bennett Alan, Bealer Bonnie K.
All About Coffee - William Harison
Nope! Coffee wasn’t even mentioned in Europe until the renaissance, per /u/bobbleheader