Romantic myth would have us believe that the classical world was a paradise filled with people enjoying unlimited ecstasy until the Church came along and spoiled it all. Once the Church imposed restraints that made people feel guilty about their instincts, it was only at Carnival that they could abandon themselves and, disguised behind masks. Carnevale literally means good-bye to the flesh, since it is the last chance to eat meat before Lent, but it also refers to the gastronomic orgy of the wintertime . The Roman festivals that were the precursors of Carnival were full of such libertine moments . To hear about Carnival in Italy in the early Middle Ages , when wine and food flowed freely , when there were songs and dances and games of change set up on church altars , when masks guaranteed anonymity . The celebrations often ended in an orgy . All this abandon was an invocation of good luck for the seeds sleeping in the earth and for the children growing in their mothers ' wombs .

What we might call fat city , the Italians actually called fat week , la settimana grassa , with Gioved Grasso ( Maundy Thursday) and Domenica Grassa ( Fat Sunday ) and Marted Grasso , or Mardi Gras ( Shroves Tuesday ) , which is the last day of Carnival before the rigors of Lent set in . Bonfires still burn all over Italy on Marted Grasso , and a doll representing the King of Carnival is consumed in the flames . Sometimes Carnival itself is tried and condemned to the gallows or led to the pyre . Of the few wild, battle-filled Carnival celebration still left in Italy, the one in Ivrea is the most fascinating.

A lovely town in the green Canavese valley in the northernmost part of Piedmont, Ivrea sits at the entrace to Val d'Aosta. Today the valley is full of ski resorts, but two thousand years ago it guarded strategic mountain passes with castles.

All the events of the week wrap around three battles on Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday afternoon, in which oranges are thrown like the stones that medieval fighters once tossed in deadly games played out in city piazze. For three days the entire city becomes perfumed with oranges. Oranges are everywhere.

In classical times, people threw everything from flowers to fruit at masked paraders. There are Renaissance accounts of putti throwing oranges, and Brazilians pelted each other with the very same fruit during Carnival, so perhaps the tradition came to Italy from Spain. In fifteenth-century Palermo, people did battle with common oranges that were good only for making juice or polishing copper.

In Ivrea the oranges are said to replace the beans that the feudal lord distributed free to the poor once a year.

There are so nany dances, outdoor feasts, pageants, parades, and fireworks that much of Ivrea gives up sleeping altogether and grabs naps for and hour or two when it is possible.People dance in the streets, the piazze, and in the discos. Half the town jamps into bars and caffs to drink everything from rich hot chocolate to jolting grappas made in the nearby hills. A cake for three hundred disappears almost as soon as it is set on the table.Dinners include an annual feast give by the local confraternity of gourmets devoted to such traditional foods of Ivrea as zuppa canavesana.

In the Middle Ages confratenities distributed beans free to the poor; now the Miller's Daughter ladles them into bowls in the garlanded piazza. The last and fiercest battle of oranges is fought on Marted Grasso in the afternoon in piazze decorated in the colors and insignias of the defending squads.

A prcession walks from neighborhood to burn the scarli, as a single fifer plays a mournful tune that siglals the death of Carnival. Carnival in Italy is still a time when anyone who is hungry eats. Italians eat to exhibit power, to affirm themselves, to exorcise hunger and death. You can find light, fragile ribbons of fried dough veiled with vanilla-flavored powdered sugar everywhere.

Each city or region gives them a different name and scents them with a different liqueur; they are called chiacchere (gossips) in Milan; crostoli in Alto Adige, lattughe in Emilia Romagna; sfappe in the marches, and nastri delle suore (nuns'ribbons) in many other places. Almost every town and village serves frittelle, frittes sprinkled with povderet sugar. Frittelle are filled with raisin or cream in Venice, and castagnole (chestnuts) in Romagna and the Marches.

At Carnival people eat everything left in the larder, but they also dip into fresh sausages, and meat because tradition requires one eating mountains of meat and sausages, drinking rivers of wine, and ending every meal with frittelle, sweet pastries that were once fried in lard. (In these days of concern about cholesterol and waistlines, frittelle ar either fried in lighter oils or baked fat-free).

All this goes on while people are masked and costumed. Venice is famous for revels and ballsin the piazze, for it permitted masks to be worn and private parties to be held in palazzi while others did not. By the seventeenth century the Venetian celebration was full of private and public events. It was resplendent with parades of nobles dressed in gold and silver, floats carrying drunken bacchantes singing the praises of the god of wine.

Marted Grasso, Shrove Tuesday, is the last feast before Carnival's death.