Classical Food and Literature from Archaic Greece to the Early Roman Empire Gail Pittaway Introduction This chapter will consider the themes of hospitality, conviviality and the impact of unsociability which recur as tropes throughout key ancient texts, from Greek Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey through to Roman Virgil’s Aeneid, and on to Petronius’s Satyricon, a range of over nine centuries (from 800 BCE to 200 CE). While it is common today to consider any text from the ancient world as ‘literature’ so rare and treasured are they as artefacts, the focus herein will be upon those written in what have become considered conventional literary modes. Falling within this range come writers of epics, drama (both comedies and tragedies) and a wide range of poets and satirists, including Hesiod, Plato, Aristophanes, Ovid, Catullus and Athenaeus, but excluding non-fiction writers, historians and politicians such as Julius Caesar, Cicero and Tacitus, as a matter of necessity, in containing the time frame and range of sources. This chapter will first consider Greek literature and its discussion, and key representations, of food, and then proceed to consider food in Roman literature. Key themes of hospitality or commensality and contrasting extremes of inhospitality will become evident, alongside the elements of conviviality, which derive from ritual or worship, in these texts. Ancient Greek history is usually considered in three chronological periods: the Archaic, 100-500 BCE; the Classical 500–300 BCE; and, the Hellenistic 300 BCE–100 CE, which crosses over in timing with the rising power of Rome as an empire. Most of what is known about food in Ancient Greece is from the few fragments of literature and the pottery shards and pieces of wall art that remain. Fortunately, the Greeks were among the first civilisations to keep records and to discourse upon the events of their own civilisation through histories, scientific theories, anthologies, literary theory and criticism. For example, in the introduction to the translated version of Aristotle’s Ethics, Thomson writes that Aristotle caused his pupils [at the Lyceum] to excerpt from the Athenian archives the records kept there of all the dramas that had been performed at Athens – and there were hundreds of them – the dates of their performance, their titles and their authors. In this way he defined the science which we now call the history of literature. (1973, 20) To begin a definition, and selection, of such literature, it is appropriate to refer to Aristotle’s Poetics, wherein he claims that all literature derives from poetry, as the word poesis means ‘to make’. Therefore, he considers tragedy, comedy, mime, dialogues and prose in his treatise, Poetics, which is still the basis of understanding classical narrative today (Butcher, transl., Poetics, Part I, Part II, 1, 2). For the purposes of this discussion, only poetry, drama, dialogue or fictional or speculative prose will be considered as ‘literature’, while histories, scientific writing and philosophical works will not be included. All texts will also be quoted and discussed in translation and dated, using the conventions of BCE (Before the Common Era, 1000–0), and CE (the Common Era, 0–the present day). Although the recording of history began with these and other Mediterranean and Asian civilisations, this was still a very rudimentary art and the idiosyncrasies of the writers tend to dominate the kinds of details that were recorded. A case in point is The History of the Peloponnesian War (Warner 1982) by Thucydides, who, as an Athenian general, is not exactly an objective outsider. The selection for Greek and Roman literature to be discussed is arranged chronologically in order of each author’s life or works, which also connect thematically with the main concerns of food as fable, ritual, feast and fast in the Archaic and Classical periods. In the later periods, the Classical and Hellenistic, food imagery occurs in the conventions of love poetry, and this was taken up with alacrity by the Renaissance poets and other writers, almost a millennium later. Food as provisioning, and even nurture, occurs in some non-fiction writing, as in the Greek writer Hesiod who recorded the Works and Days of life in the countryside. Later, the Roman Virgil’s Georgics also gives advice about the countryside and farming in particular beekeeping (Grant 1958, 179). The Archaic period: food in the earliest Greek literature In the Greek Experience (1972), Bowra notes: Greece is a land of contrasts, but not of extremes. Olive oil takes the place of butter, preservatives and cooking fats. Fruit and vegetables can be grown in only a few fertile plains or in terraces ... fish is not nearly so common or various as in northern seas; meat is rare and more likely to be kid than beef or mutton. Yet the Greek larder has its compensations. Wine is abundant; in a land of many flowers honey provides an ample supply of sugar; the goat gives milk and cheese; the mountains have their hares and wild birds, the sea its mullets, lobsters and squids. (15) The earliest references to food in Greek literature come from Hesiod and Homer, who were writing in the 8th century BCE. Hesiod’s Works and Days is centrally concerned with the relation between justice and the ordering of agricultural life; acknowledging that the struggle for food is what determines life, and famine is a reality. However, “[w]hen the artichoke flowers and the chirruping cicada sitting on a tree, fills the air with the piercing song from under his wings…that’s when the goats are fattest and the wine at its best” (Wender, transl. Hesiod 1973, 77). Hesiod’s Theogeny, literally ‘birth of the gods’, is a less practical work, dealing with the interface between myth and history, and from which most of our first understanding of the Titans, Olympians and even earlier Greek deities derives. Here we find some of the first references to food as ritual, or the stories which form the source of rituals. Here, too we are presented with the most abject act of consumption, when Cronos devours his children, in order to ensure that none of them will rise up against him, as he had done against his own father, Uranos (38). Garnsey argues‘[i]n Greek myth food plays a role in defining a hierarchy of being: there is food for gods, food for men, and food for animals’ (1999, 6). For the Greeks, and subsequently the Romans, there were two great gods of earth to whom sacrifices were to be made and prayers offered, Demeter the goddess of the corn or harvest (in Latin, Ceres) and Dionysus (in Latin, Bacchus), the god of the vine. Demeter is celebrated in some of the earliest poetry, for example in the second Homeric Hymn of the 8C BCE. These poems are a series of hymns attributed to the time of Homer rather than the writer himself and perhaps form a collection or compilation of songs and chants by a variety of anonymous writers and composers (Hamilton 1992, 47). This hymn might have been sung at the threshing floor once the harvest was gathered: “May it be mine, beside Demeter’s altar, to dig the great winnowing fan through the heaps of corn while she stands smiling by with sheaves and poppies in her hand” (Hamilton 1992, 48). The worship of Demeter centred upon harvest festivals, probably involving the baking and eating of the first bread made from the new grain (Hamilton 1992, 48). But this evolved into a more secret worship culminating at Eleusis, where Demeter had taken shelter as she cast about the earth looking for her daughter Persephone, sometimes called ‘Kore’ or ‘the maiden’, who had been abducted by her uncle, Hades, the god of the underworld. Demeter was heartbroken to lose her daughter and searched for her for a year, neglecting her role as goddess of the harvest and sending a “year of barrenness upon the earth” (Grant 1962, 127, quoting from the Homeric Hymn of Demeter). In disguise as an ordinary human, she came to Eleusis and was taken in by the king and queen who gave her shelter and work and treated her well, but as a lowly person, by appointing her as nursemaid to their son. Here is one of the first instances of the need for hosts to care for their guests as they could be gods or goddesses in disguise; a theme which is developed fully by Homer. She refused food except for a mixture of barley-meal, water and mint, which she drank “as a sacrament” (Grant 1962, 128) while, neglecting her role as goddess of the harvest, she refused to let fruit to grow or any other foodstuffs to pierce the ground until she had seen her daughter again. Zeus intervened and sent Hermes (or Mercury) to bring the girl to Eleusis and to be reunited with her mother. However, Persephone had eaten pomegranate seed (in Ovid, seven seeds; Innes, transl. Ovid 1974, 128), the sacred fruit of the underworld, and so was bound to return to Hades. Eventually it was agreed that Persephone would come back for half of each year to be with her mother and at that time the earth would welcome her back with waving ears of corn and the awakening of new growth in spring. When she prepared to return to Hades, the earth would grieve and autumn would cause the leaves to fall or weep (Grant 1962, 130). This story is the explanation for the progression of seasons in Greek mythology and the basis for a mystery cult, which grew originally from Eleusis, worshipping the goddesses who had encountered and negotiated with death (Hamilton 1992, 50). A very different deity, Dionysus, was also worshipped at Eleusis. As god of the vine he has an affinity with the goddess of bread, as bread in the form of pancakes or flat bread was eaten at every meal, as was (for the wealthy) watered down wine (Dalby 2003, 11). Wine makes people merry and Dionysus was worshipped with appropriate toasts and joy, but it also causes destruction and unreasonable behaviours, and in earliest instances his followers, called Maenads or Bacchantes were women frenzied with wine. They rushed through the woods waving pinecone tipped wands, swept away in a fierce ecstasy. Nothing could stop them. They would tear to pieces any wild creature they met and devour the ‘bloody shreds of flesh’. (Hamilton 1992: 56-7) In some instances, the ‘wild’ beasts they shredded and devoured were human, as is captured in Euripides’ The Bacchae, in the killing of Pentheus of Thebes (Hamilton 1992, 59). However, the most significant worship of Dionysus in which most of the Greek world became involved, happened at the end of the harvest, beginning at first with the singing and dancing of thanksgiving on the threshing floor, which evolved into local competitions in song and dance, then grew into the vast Festival of Dionysus, or Dionysia, a national festival of worship through theatre. The worship or ceremony sacred to Dionysus became the performance of plays over two festivals – one in winter and another in spring, both lasting several days (McLeish 1972, 3). Aristotle deftly united these concepts of worship and release in his treatise Poetics by stressing the importance of ‘catharsis’ in the audience, of releasing or purging fear, awe and irrational influences through the observation of the great tragedies (Butcher, trans. Poetics 4). Food in Homer’s Epics Homer is the most significant early writer of Ancient Greece. The two epics which are attributed to him (there has been considerable debate about authorship) and which are set around the events of the Trojan War, form the basis of stories, plays, poems, novels and today day, films and television programs, both in content and in structure. Homer uses references to food for moral and narrative effect, especially in The Odyssey, where, apart from details about sacrificing beasts on altars, or in trenches to draw forth the shades of dead souls, there are many instances of feasting. The Iliad, so titled after the ancient name for Troy, Ilium, refers to incidents that happen chronologically earlier than those of The Odyssey, at the siege of Troy, whether it was written earlier or not. Although the content is largely about war and battle from the Greeks’ perspective around the siege of Troy, which they conducted for ten years, the long poem focuses upon Achilles the warrior, and the flaws and obsessions which made him a legend. However, there is food in ritual and feasting in this story, too. In fact, both epics feature themes of hospitality and conventions, even rituals of hosting and being hosted which drive the narrative; conventions which distinguish civilised characters from savages. The epics endorse the importance of guest- and host-friendship or Xenia in a heroic society. There are two rules of Xenia (Little 1979, 19). Paramount is the responsibility of the host to the guest; to be hospitable, to provide him or her with food, drink and water for cleansing or bathing, even gifts when they depart. The guest also has responsibilities to the host; to be courteous and respectful, to accept food and drink when offered, and to provide gifts, if that is possible. It was not considered polite for the host to ask personal questions of the guest until after they had offered them hospitality. Xenia was considered particularly important in ancient times when people thought gods mingled among them, such as in the story of Demeter. There was the risk of incurring the wrath of a god disguised as the stranger, if one offered poor hospitality. In fact, the Trojan War of Homer’s epics can be traced to a breach of Xenia committed by Paris, the young Prince of Troy. He not only fell in love with his host’s wife, when he visited King Menelaus and Queen Helen of Sparta, he seduced her then ran away with her to Troy. When her husband Menelaus called up an army with his brother Agamemnon to follow her to Troy and punish Paris, she became the “face that launched a thousand ships” (Marlowe Faustus XIII, l, 83). The Iliad portrays men who, although in battle, nonetheless observe the niceties of hospitality, or are implicitly judged for not doing so. In Book 9, after Agamemnon has stolen his favourite slave girl, Briseis, Achilles refuses to fight in the siege of Troy in protest. Agamemnon, realising that Achilles is vital to the Greeks’ success, sends Odysseus as his envoy to negotiate with Achilles who, acting as the host, invites his guest to his temporary home and requests that his cousin Patroklus mix them the strongest wine. He also provides meat for them to eat, in recognition of their high status (Wilkins and Nadeau 2015, 8). The men talk and exchange pleasantries before Odysseus gets to the business of representing Agamemnon’s offer to Achilles to resolve their conflict. In Book 24, the final book of The Iliad, Achilles allows King Priam of Troy to mourn over the body of his son, Hector (whom Achilles had slain), while still in the Greek camp and then insists that they share a meal in honour of the dead warrior. Achilles kills a white sheep which his men skin, cut up and roast over a spit and serve to Priam with bread and wine. Once Priam has retrieved the body back into the walled city of Troy, the nine-day funeral celebrations end with a civic feast. Nearly a millennium later, the writer Plutarch criticized Achilles for not being better prepared in his kitchen and having to butcher beasts for his guests after they had arrived (Plutarch, VII-703, qtd. by Fass 2003, 125). Garnsey notes that “[i]n Graeco–Roman society, food was a marker of ethnic and cultural difference” (1999, 6) a point which is particularly evident in the writing of Homer, where “Greeks were differentiated from barbarians, urban dweller from rustics, farmers from nomad and so on in terms of the food they ate, amongst other things” (6). One further aspect of life around the table in ancient times is the fact of slavery, with many of the feasts and banquets prepared in a domestic setting by unpaid servants (Haynes 2012, 32). In addition to offering services as cooks, servers and cup-bearers, these servants also reflect the characters in each tale in positive or negative lights, as commentators or recipients of the manners and personalities of their masters. Although “literature’s first women are those in Homer’s epic poems” (Haynes 2012, 44), in the Iliad, women are represented as either the causes of discord, as the characters of Helen and Briseis, or victims of war, as the wives of Priam and Hector. However, few women are more variously depicted in any ancient texts than in The Odyssey. This story of Achilles’ fellow Greek warrior, Odysseus, his wanderings and return to his family after the events of the Trojan War, has many more episodes of hospitality and food to add to the picture of the ancient table. In this epic, in particular, can be seen the further effects of Xenia in generating the narrative and informing character. After the nearly two decades since her husband left her and their island Ithaca for the Trojan War in support of his fellow Greek chieftains, Menelaus and Agamemnon, hopeful suitors have besieged Penelope, Odysseus’s wife, each seeking to marry the supposedly widowed queen. Manners have dictated that she offer them all hospitality. In Book 1, the goddess Athena visits Ithaca in disguise as Mentes, a warrior, and sees Penelope besieged by the suitors, who “were eating in front of the door, seated on hides of oxen they themselves had slaughtered, and playing draughts, while their squires were bringing in wine and water” (Rieu transl. 1972, 28). Telemachus, Penelope and Odysseus’ son, who has not seen his father since he was a baby, appears to be the only person to see the visitor. He immediately welcomes her/him, displaying not only his politeness and respect for conventions of guest friendship to strangers, but perhaps, too, because Homer wishes to indicate that he is the only person worthy of seeing a goddess in the first place. Later in the narrative, and in a parallel sequence and time frame to that of his father’s travels, Telemachus is so disgusted at the way his mother is made to feed and entertain the suitors, that he sets off on an odyssey of his own in search of his father. He goes first to visit King Nestor, and then on to Sparta, to visit the originator of the Trojan War according to this myth, King Menelaus and his now repentant wife, Helen. They greet him, serve him food and, once he has been fed and bathed, recount their knowledge of his father’s adventures. Almost every household in the Odyssey “is seen alongside Xenia” (Little 1977, 23). The best example of correct host-friendship occurs in the Odyssey when Odysseus escapes from the paradise of captivity, an over-indulgence of guest-friendship he has enjoyed in a dalliance with the sea nymph Calypso, and washes ashore on the island of King Alcinous and his daughter Nausicaa. The princess had been enjoying a picnic and washing garments by the riverside with her friends and servants when they were surprised by the sight of a stranger, emerging naked from the bushes. She takes the stranger to her home, a palace, and he is greeted, bathed, and offered food and drink and a banquet and only then do the hosts invite him to tell his story (Rieu 1972, 136). This post-prandial monologue becomes the flashback sequence that is the heart of the epic’s narrative, where Odysseus recounts several gastronomic adventures, many demonstrating the nature of his heroism; impetuous, wily and courageous. The first is with the Cicones (Book 8) where Odysseus and his men show their barbarism by raiding and looting, then “stayed there drinking much wine and killing great numbers of sheep and oxen on the sea shore” (Rieu 1972, 140) before the survivors called for reinforcements and fought the Greeks off. Next, they arrived at the land of the Lotus Eaters, whose fruit sedated and caused amnesia in its eaters (Book 9). The third and most famous episode reveals Odysseus’ and crew’s disgust at the appalling manners of their host, a one- eyed monster who offers them no hospitality at all but proceeds to eat the men one at a time. Odysseus recounts how he “had hopes of some friendly gifts” (145), however the Cyclops rejects this notion and violates the ritual of courtesy extended to strangers – the guests become the feast (153). Then they arrive at the island of Aeolus, where once again the men are seduced by the hospitality offered to them, as “All day long the atmosphere of the house is loaded with the savour of roasting meats till it groans again” (156). They depart from this feasting only to arrive in the land of the Laestragonians, where it eventually becomes apparent that their hosts are cannibals; ogres, not men. They threw vast rocks at us from the cliffs as though they had been mere stones, and I heard the horrid sound of the ships crunching up against one another, and the death cries of my men, as the Laestrygonians speared them like fishes and took them home to eat them (Butler, trans. The Odyssey, Book 10).