Sheep and goats were prepared for table precisely in the same way with oxen, and so likewise were pigs, save that they were not divested of their skins. ‘Cracklings’ were already appreciated. Roast pork appears, in the Iliad, only on the hospitable board of Achilles; but is less exclusively apportioned in the Odyssey. A brace of sucking-pigs were instantly killed and cooked by Eumæus, the swineherd of Odysseus, on the arrival of his disguised master. Yet he was very far from estimating at their true value the tender merits of the dish celebrated by Elia as perfectly ‘satisfactory to the criticalness of the censorious palate,’ actually apologising for it as ‘servants’ fare,’ wholly unacceptable to the haughty Suitors, for whose profuse entertainment a full-grown porker had to be daily sacrificed. Each man, however, despatched his pig, and was shortly ready for more. And so captivated was Eumæus, by the time his four underlings returned from the fields for supper, with his outwardly sorry guest, that, enlarging the bounds of his liberality, he ordered the slaughter of a noble hog, whose adipose perfections had been ripening during full five years of life. His cooking was promptly executed, and one share having been set aside for the local nymphs, the six men fell to, and left only such scraps as served for an early breakfast next morning. The performance would have been creditable in modern Somaliland.
Every Homeric hero was an accomplished butcher, and no despicable cook. Both offices were, indeed, too closely connected with religious ritual to have any note of degradation attached to them. Thus, animals were habitually understood to be ‘sacrificed,’ not killed in the purely carnal sense, and the preparation of their flesh for table was formalised as part of the ceremony of worship. The Suitors were marked out as a reckless and impious crew by discarding all sacerdotal functions from their meal-time operations; yet they reserved to themselves, as if it belonged to their superior station, the pleasing duty of cutting the throats of the beasts they were about to devour, passing with the least possible delay from the shambles to the banqueting-hall.
Homeric culinary art perhaps really covered a wider range than is attributed to it in the Poems, where it is designedly represented under a quasi-ritualistic aspect. Although meat, for instance, so far as can be learned from direct statement, was invariably roast or grilled, it by no means follows that it was never eaten boiled or stewed. The contrary inference is indeed fairly warranted by the frequent conjunction of pots, water, and fire; and was thought by Athenæus to derive support from the use as a missile, aimed at Odysseus in unprovoked savagery by Ctesippus, one of the Suitors, of an ox’s foot, which happened to be lying conveniently at hand in a bread-basket.[[242]] For who, asked the gastronomical sophist, ever thought of roasting an ox’s foot?[[243]] The casual display, too, in a simile of the Iliad, of a caldron of boiling lard,[[244]] assures us that some kind of frying process was familiar to the poet.
[242]. Odyssey, xx. 299.
[243]. Potter, Archæologia Græca, vol. ii. p. 360.
[244]. Iliad, xxi. 362.
Among the few secondary articles of diet specified by him was a sausage-like composition, of so irredeemably coarse a character, that ‘ears polite’ cannot fail to be offended at its literal description. It consisted, to speak plainly, of the stomach or intestines of a goat, stuffed with blood and fat, and kept revolving before a hot fire until thoroughly done. The Suitors, of noble lineage though they were, occasionally supped off this seductive viand, which may, nevertheless, be concluded to have engaged chiefly plebeian patronage.
No quality of game is known to have been rejected through prejudice or superstition by the Homeric Greeks. But even venison ranked in the second line after beef, mutton, and pork. It was sheer hunger that made the ‘sequestered stag’ brought down by Odysseus in Ææa a real godsend to his disconsolate crew; and hunger again reduced them, in the island of Thrinakie, to the necessity of supporting life with fish and birds, both kinds of prey equally being taken by means of baited hooks.[[245]] But they set about their capture only when the exhaustion of the ship’s store of flour and wine warned them to bestir themselves; and the regimen their ingenuity provided was so distasteful, and fell so little short, in their opinion and sensations, of absolute starvation, that the fatal temptation to seek criminal relief at the expense of the oxen of the Sun, proved irresistible. They succumbed to it, and perished.
[245]. Odyssey, xii. 332.
Small birds were, however, beyond doubt habitually eaten by the poor. The snaring of pigeons and fieldfares is alluded to in the Odyssey,[[246]] and was practised, we may be sure, in the interests of the appetite. Nor can we suppose that Penelope and the ‘divine Helen’ entirely abstained from tasting the geese reared by them, although curiosity and amusement may have been the chief motives for the care bestowed upon them. Poultry of other kinds, as we have seen in another chapter, there was none. But hares must have been used for food, since, like roebucks and wild goats, they were hunted with dogs,[[247]] certainly not for the mere sake of sport. As regards boars, the case stands somewhat differently. For their destructiveness imposed their slaughter as a necessity. The subsequent consumption of their flesh is left to conjecture. The remains of the Calydonian brute seem to have been contended for rather through arrogance than through appetite, Meleager and the sons of Thestius standing forth as the champions of antagonistic claims to the trophies of the chace. That the boar sacrificed in attestation of the oath of Agamemnon in the Nineteenth Iliad was afterwards flung by Talthybius far into the sea to be ‘food for fishes,’ is without significance on the point of edibility. Victims thus immolated never furnished the material for feasts; they belonged to the subterranean powers, and fell under the shadow of their inauspicious influence.