The consumption of meat was limited, and normally linked to sacrifice. The most commonly sacrificed animal was the pig, the most prestigious, cattle. Goats and sheep were also eaten. The rich ate larger animals and more often, with particular emphasis on hunted animals such as wild boar. They also ate a wide range of birds, the chicken one among many. Poorer people ate smaller birds and animals. Of fish, shoaling fish such as sardines and anchovies went to the poorer citizens, more solitary fish that were difficult to catch, such as turbot, bream, and sea bass, to the richer. In other words, differences in class and wealth were marked by bigger, better, and tastier versions of what the majority ate, served on vessels made of precious metals rather than wood and ceramics. The rich table offered vintage and imported wines, the poor homemade, the rich imported salt fish, the poor consumed their own produce.
Food was normally eaten within the family group, for which we have some limited evidence. Most descriptions are of special occasions such as weddings, with other brief references to breakfasts and lunches taken with family or friends. We know much more about the formal meals, the Greek deipnon and symposium and the Roman cena or convivium, of which many descriptions survive. On the Greek occasion, emphasis was given to the wine-drinking by taking out the small tables on which the reclining diners had eaten, and by invoking the gods and starting the drinking again. The dessert course was eaten during the symposium, and there had been some drinking during the deipnon, but a clear division was established by ritual toasts. With the symposium came a series of cultural events and entertainments, music and recitation (O. Murray 1990b, Lissarrague 1990). This was the creative time of the evening, with elaborate rituals surrounding the mixing of wine with water. It was a time devoted to Dionysos and set apart from normal family life in other ways through the exclusion of women of status (but not female “companions” or hetaerae) and through a rule of equality between all male participants who drank equally and were in theory of equal status. At the Roman cena, food and drink were less strictly separated, women of status were present (though often in fewer numbers than the men), and a hierarchy was visibly displayed through the seating order and sometimes through tableware and the foods served. These differences are important and often rehearsed, as they were in antiquity, but we should emphasize the wide variety of occasions on which people ate together and the vast numbers of cities and communities in which these occasions took place in Italy, the Greek mainland, and throughout the Mediterranean world. Many variations of standard practice are likely once the Roman rule of the Greek east was well established, and local practices are also factored in. To take a very literary example, the diners in Athenaeus’s Deipnosophistae (The Philosophers at Dinner) are Greeks and Romans dining in Rome. They speak Greek and have Greek entertainments, but they drink wine from the start, they appear to be equal under the guidance of a symposiarch, and no women (of status or as entertainers) are present. Similarly, at feasts offered by Roman officials in Asia Minor, we should not expect strict Roman practice on every occasion.
These occasions were formal meals, which the most wealthy citizens enjoyed regularly, others perhaps only on major occasions such as weddings, and poorer citizens rarely, if at all. There were other forms of communal dining, which took place in local groups organized according to political, religious, commercial, and other affiliations. These are widely attested in Greek and Latin inscriptions, which set out the regulations and show how dining associations were part of the social infrastructure (Schmitt-Pantel 1992, Donahue 2005). Dining with peers and associates often took place at local level, as did some civic festivals, which complemented major religious
Occasions.
Food consumption was closely linked to systems of state control, private patronage, and a combination of the two. In most cities, state festivals were organized by the city authorities to honor the city’s gods and integrate the citizens. At the Athenian Panathenaia and Dionysia festivals, alongside processions and rituals for Athena and Dionysos, dances, contests and military displays, cattle were slaughtered in large numbers and distributed to the participating officials and all the participating citizens. For many, this was an opportunity (a relatively infrequent opportunity) to eat beef at the city’s expense (a vast expense). Honoring the god in sacrifice, the affirmation of identity, and the pleasure of drinking wine and eating chewy beef were all enjoyed together. The festivals in a democratic city had a different political emphasis from festivals in cities such as Sparta, Ephesos, or Rome. But the communal eating with the god after a procession to express political identity is comparable. These examples may be compared with the procession of Ptolemy Philadelphos, as reported by Kallixenos of Rhodes (Athen. 5.196-203e). The vast procession wound its way through Alexandria, honoring Dionysos and the Ptolemies. Clear divisions for eating were imposed between royal guests and others (soldiers, visitors, and artisans). The Ptolemaic procession, focusing on the royal couple and their parents, had clearly adapted the elements from the city-state to a new purpose. It is not clear whether all citizens will benefit from the royal largesse of meat. This is patronage writ large. On a smaller scale, festivals and meals were available in many cities of Greece and Asia Minor in Hellenistic and Roman times, sponsored by eminent citizens who wanted to commemorate themselves as benefactors with a sacrifice, a feast, or a free drink (Schmitt-Pantel 1992).
Such patronage was not greatly different from the practice of the Roman emperors, who gave games to the people and also gifts of food according to rank. The emperors were working within the Roman patronage system in which powerful senators and the wealthy supported their clients with meals and other benefits. This hierarchical system was reflected in the organization of Roman mealtimes, as mentioned above. It should not be thought, however, that the support of the poor by the rich was absent in Greek cities. In addition to individual benefactions to the populace (such as Kimon’s opening his orchards), rich citizens from the Odyssey onwards supported retainers in return for entertainment. Athenaeus 6 provides rich comic and historical evidence, which includes a generic description of a poor diner in Syracuse (from a comedy of Epicharmos, early fifth century bc), the rich patron Kallias in Athens (fifth century bc), and the relationship in the fourth century between Greek politicians and Philip II of Macedon. Patronage through gifts of meals (alongside other gifts) existed widely in the Greek world, albeit more ambivalently than in the Roman. Greek equality at table was sometimes extremely theoretical.
If we want to know the full variety of opportunities for dining and eating (for men but also for women in numerous designated festivals), we should factor in many different levels of wealth. Between the extremes of the emperor and the peasant whose food might run out in the spring there were many strata of society, with different abilities to control their resources. The inns, bars, and shops selling hot and cold foods in Greek and Italian towns (Athens, Pompeii, and Herculaneum offer many examples) are frequently dismissed as lower-class places by authors such as Juvenal, but for the majority of the population they offered a regular or occasional venue for eating. They sold takeaway food and drink for town dwellers, the majority of whom lacked dedicated kitchens. Only the largest homes had dedicated dining space, though some of those had numerous dining rooms. Much dining, and indeed cooking, took place outside (Fisher 2000, Wilkins and Hill 2006). Interior space for most was dedicated to food storage.
World History
