There is not the least room to suppose the ancients were at all acquainted with this little table utensil, now so necessary to our own comfort and convenience, to say nothing of our ideas of cleanliness. Pliny, who enumerated most things natural, physical, philosophical, and economical, makes no mention of them; nor does it occur in any other writer of antiquity; neither does Pollux speak of it in the very full catalogue which he has given of things necessary for a table.
Neither the Greeks or Romans had any name in the least applicable to its use, either direct or by inference, where it can be asserted that such an instrument was intended. The ancients had, it is true, in Greece, their creagra. In Rome, their furca, fuscina, furcilla, &c.: the Grecian instrument somewhat resembled a rake of an ordinary construction, and calculated for the purpose of taking meat out of a boiling pot, constructed in the shape of a hook, or rather the bent fingers of the hand.
With reference to the Roman names, the first two were undoubtedly applied to instruments which approached nearer to our furnace and hay forks.—The trident of Neptune is also called fuscina. The furcilla was large enough to be employed as a weapon of defence. The present Latin name for a fork, fusinula, is not to be found in any of the old Latin writers.
It is the opinion, we understand, of a learned Italian writer, that the ancient Romans used the instruments they called ligulæ, instead of forks. Now those instruments had some distant resemblance to our teaspoons. Hence we must conclude that they and our ancestors used no forks, because, had they had anything answering the purpose, even in effect, it must undoubtedly have had a name.
In the East, we understand it was, and still is, customary to dress their victuals until they become so tender as to be easily pulled in pieces. We are told by modern travellers, that if an animal be dressed before it has lost its natural warmth, it becomes tender and very savoury. This is the Oriental custom, and has been so from the most remote antiquity.
Fortunately, all articles of food were cut up in small pieces before they were served up at table; the necessity for which practice will appear, when we remember they usually took their meals in a recumbent posture upon beds. Originally, persons of rank kept an officer for the purpose of cutting the meat, who used a knife, the only one placed at table, which, in opulent families, had an ivory handle, and was ornamented with silver.
The bread was never cut at table; it needed it not, being usually baked thin, somewhat resembling the Passover cake of the Jews; this is not understood, however, to have been universal.
The Chinese use no forks; however, to supply them, they have small sticks of ivory, often of very fine workmanship, inlaid with silver and gold, which each guest employs to pick up the bits of meat, it being previously cut small. The invention of forks was not known till about two centuries ago in Europe, where people eat the same as they do now in Turkey.
In the New Testament we read of putting hands into the dish. Homer, as well as Ovid, mention the same custom.
In the quotation from the sacred writings, we observe that the guests had, it is presumed, no instrument to help themselves out of the common dish which contained the repast; for, upon the question being put of who was to betray the Saviour, the answer was given in the following quotation, “It is one of the twelve that dippeth with me in the dish.”