Introduction

Eating food is a natural function (Galen, Natural Faculties 1.1), which, like growth to adulthood, is shared with plants and animals. Food provides essential nutriment, without which the body dies. This key need accompanies others which all human beings face, such as the need for clothes and shelter. These needs interact with social and psychological forces to shape human cultures. Mediterranean cultures, for example the Jews, Greeks and Romans, imagined their mythical origins at the point where human beings were separated from the gods and recognized their need for nourishment that would henceforth be met by agriculture. The myths of Eden and Prometheus accounted for what went before (unlimited food and no women) and for the hierarchy newly established in those ancient cultures between gods (at the top), human beings in the middle, and animals at the bottom (Detienne and Vernant 1989). These (and other) distinctions between gods, human beings, and animals were fundamental to ancient thought. Fire (for cooking, sacrifice, and technology) and the hard labor of agriculture were at the heart of the new order. Ancient texts from Hesiod to Galen stress the deficit between food production and consumption. Adequate provision, always a key concern for city authorities, more often failed in rural areas, particularly in the spring. This is a constant refrain in Galen’s review of nutrition (Garnsey 1999, Sallares 1991, Gallant 1991).

Many cultures of the ancient Mediterranean shared myths and technologies of food production, but social practice and religious belief distinguished one from another. Eating customs distinguished neighboring peoples in ancient ethnography. Herodotus says that the Persians celebrated birthdays and liked cakes, while the Egyptians kneaded bread with their feet. Poseidonios identifies the Celts as eaters of meat, who drank wine (if they belonged to the elite) and disliked olive oil (Athen. 4.151e-2d, cf. chap. 26.5 above). Timaios reports naked slave-girls at Etruscan feasts and Nicolaos of Damascus armed warriors at Roman meals (Athen. 4.153d-4a).

A Companion to Ancient History Edited by Andrew Erskine © 2009 Blackwell Publishing Ltd. ISBN: 978-1-405-13150-6

These cultural snapshots taken from outside intrigue, but give a very partial picture of the society under scrutiny. Much remains unsaid. This chapter faces the same problem. What assumptions does a modern reader bring to the topic? How do we interrogate the ancient sources? How do we fill in the gaps? Some are enormous. Galen in the late second century ad wrote a treatise on nutrition, On the Powers of Foods, which provides an invaluable social commentary ranging (unusually) over all classes of free citizen. But he says almost nothing about the female half of the population, even though he insists that the property of any given food must be considered alongside the particular constitution of the individual (and women in Hippocratic thought had very different natures from men). Athenaeus, another major commentator of the same period on ancient foods and eating practices, has more to say about women, but almost all of it about entertainers at men’s drinking parties. Sources driven by political ideology are more anxious to tell us that women in the Roman republic and in Miletos did not drink wine, than how they cooked their food, organized food preparation by their slaves (if they had any), and fed their families.

Modern studies raise important questions about women. There are many more such questions. Once a modern reader has established what the Greeks and Romans ate (see Garnsey 1999, Dalby 1996, 2003), how the centers of population were supplied (see Garnsey 1988), and whether the rich really did exist on dormice and exotic birds, as testified in the pages of Petronius and the Historia Augusta (some did), big differences between ancient and modern emerge. The eating of the elite captures the headlines and sets the pace for change and innovation, but it is the eating culture of all classes that shapes the society. In the modern West, the majority of the population is separated from the point of agricultural production. This was much less the case in antiquity, with consequent implications for the slaughtering of animals and possible abstinence from the premier food, meat. Massive provision of food by supermarkets has led to looser ties with the seasons of the year, and with local and regional foods. Again, the ancient experience was different. Human beings were more subject to regional and seasonal influences, particularly if they belonged to the majority who lacked the resources of the elites and did not live in the major cities.

Peasants, Galen tells us, sent their best produce to town, reserving for themselves the lesser cereals and pulses. Food shortages were less likely in cities, but were always a potential threat to order if supplies were threatened. (Thucydides notes the danger to order once war removes the ready supply of daily needs, 3.82.2.) Meanwhile, for the minority who controlled the resources of courts and cities, a different threat loomed, namely the danger of excess, of the luxurious indulging of desire. It is this aspect which dominates much ancient literature on the subject, and to which we shall return. It might seem, in what follows, that the elites enjoyed all good things at their tables, while the food supply of the rural peasant was precarious and can only be viewed in negative terms. Such a conclusion is probably misleading, for small farmers enjoyed good harvests as well as bad. Furthermore, small farmers often diversified their crops as a strategy against crop failure. This increased the range of foods available, as did the storage of surplus. Milk was stored as cheese, pork as ham, and grapes as wine. Such preservation of surpluses to meet future shortages was a survival strategy, which, as a by-product, produced strong and desirable tastes that might be enjoyed or sold. Wine and preserved fish were important traded items. Food was also built into their social and religious life. Special foods (sometimes meat) were eaten to mark feast days and key points in the life cycle, and food was shared through family networks. Hospitality (xenia) extended to strangers is attested in all periods and classes: the first element was to offer food. Food, in short, marked a person’s identity, however rich or poor.

Cities, particularly those on the coast, enjoyed access to outside influence through trade and international networks. These generated strong ideological debate over the neglect of traditional values and the inflated enthusiasm for foreign imports on the one hand, and celebration of the variety available on the other. Appeals to simple ways now abandoned characterize Greco-Roman literature and history: see Juvenal Satire 11 and Purcell (2005b) for Rome. In Athens, the Acharnians of Aristophanes ambivalently portrays both the virtues of traditional farming and the desirability of imports. Food played an important role within this debate about town-based luxury. Two important aspects require discussion. The first is the desire among the powerful to express their competitive success through display to peers and the patronage of dependents. This led to fine tableware, increased meat consumption, and a taste for new and exotic foods. The second is the continual arrival of new foods over millennia, usually from Asia (birds, fruits, vegetables, and spices), but also from Africa (birds) and western Europe (rabbits). Asian influences on the ancient Mediterranean were enormous. In the prehistoric period, it is likely that new varieties and techniques came into the Mediterranean from the fertile crescent in Mesopotamia. The cultivated vine and olive, for example, seem to have been introduced westwards by the Greeks and Phoenicians (see e. g. Luce 2000). New animals arrived, including the chicken and the pheasant. The style of dining changed radically with the introduction of reclining rather than sitting at table, a practice apparently imported from the Assyrians and Persians. The Persians showed how a centralized court could harness innovation and draw in new resources. The march of Alexander to India opened opportunities to expand existing trade routes for spices and precious goods (on armies and their dissemination of food in general see Davies 1971). The Hellenistic kingdoms, particularly those based in Alexandria and Pergamon, brought new forms of courtly life, which, together with Macedon itself, provided models for imperial dining in Rome. This process helped to transform the courtly dining of the Persian king in the sixth and fifth centuries bc (see Herakleides of Cumae in Athen. 4.145a-6a) into a format that was acceptable to Rome. The Roman emperor could now project grandeur on certain occasions if he wished - Asian birds on gold and silver plate; he could import special non-luxurious foods, such as Tiberius’s German parsnips; or he could snack alone, as Suetonius reports of Augustus. The emperor, like his richer subjects, had access to all the varieties of the known world. These imports could be exotic imports like cloves and pepper; specialties from imperial lands such as French ham and cheese, or fine regional products such as the olive oil of Venafrum in Campania.

Some of these influences affected only the rich, though others were diffused to much of the population. They generated not only new items in the diet but also food-oriented literary and historical works, accounts of exotic travels {periploi), and technical treatises in medicine, pharmacology (by Dioscorides and Galen), and the preparation of recipes (by Archestratos of Gela). Many of these commentaries were not merely descriptive, but also brought moral and cultural evaluation of change, often, as we shall see, with a strong emphasis on simplicity and tradition.