[718]. Athen. x. 41.
[719]. Athen. x. 56.
CHAPTER V.
ENTERTAINMENTS.
Having now gone rapidly through the materials of which Grecian repasts consisted, it will next be necessary to describe the manner in which all these good things were disposed of, first to maintain the energy of the frame, and secondly, for mere pleasure and pastime. Locke, with many other modern philosophers, erroneously supposes the Greeks of remote antiquity to have been so abstemious as to content themselves with one meal per diem. But experience appears to have led all mankind on this point to much the same conclusion; viz., that health and comfort require men to eat at least thrice in the day,[[720]] which accordingly was the practice of the ancient Greeks, though Philemon and others enumerate four repasts. Our own ancestors, before the introduction of tea and coffee, appear to have been very well content with beer or ale for their morning’s meal, so that we could not pity the Greeks even though it should be found that they had nothing better[[721]] than hot rolls, muffins, or crumpets, with strawberries, grapes, pears, and a flask of Chian or Falernian. But they soon found the necessity of some warm beverage; and though it does not appear how it was prepared, they had a substitute for tea,[[722]] in use at Athens, in Eubœa, in Crete, and, no doubt, in all other parts of Greece. This meal, of whatever it consisted, was called acratisma, or ariston, and eaten at break of day.[[723]] Homer’s heroes, whose business was fighting, just snatched a hasty meal, and hurried to the field; but at Athens, where people had other employments, they breakfasted early, to allow themselves ample time for despatching their affairs in the city, if they had any, and afterwards at their neighbouring farms or villas.[[724]] The second repast, deipnon, or dinner, seems to have been eaten about eleven or twelve o’clock: the hesperisma,[[725]] equivalent to our tea, late in the afternoon, and the dorpon, or supper, the last thing in the evening. But of these meals two only were serious affairs, and the hesperisma was often dispensed with altogether. In fact, Athenæus, a great authority on this subject, considers it perfectly absurd to suppose, that the frugal ancients could have thought of eating so often as three times in one day.[[726]]
As the greater includes the less, instead of confining ourselves to the ordinary daily dinner of a Greek, we shall in preference describe their grand entertainments, introducing remarks on the former by the way. These repasts were divided into three classes, the public dinner, the pic-nic, and the marriage feast. The last, so far as it had any peculiar features, has been described among the circumstances attending matrimony. We have, therefore, for the present, to do with two only; and, as the Greek contrived to throw much of his ingenuity into all matters connected with feasting and merry-making, the discussion of this part of our subject should savour strongly of mirth and jollity.
The grand dinner,[[727]] which they called eilapinè, was generally given at the expense of an individual, and its sumptuousness knew no limit but the means of the host. Other kinds of feasts there were at which all the members of a tribe, a borough, or a fraternity, were entertained, not to speak for the present of the common tables of the Cretans, Spartans, or Prytanes of Athens. We now confine ourselves to those jovial assemblages of private citizens whose object in meeting was not so much the dinner, though that was not overlooked, as the elevation of animal spirits and flow of soul produced by the union of a thousand different circumstances.
When a rich man desired to see his friends around him at his board, he delivered to his deipnocletor[[728]] a domestic kept for this purpose, a tablet, or as we should say, a card, whereon the names of the persons to be invited, with the day and hour fixed upon for the banquet, were inscribed. With brothers and other very near relations this ceremony was thought unnecessary.[[729]] They came without invitation. So likewise did another class of men, who, living at large upon the public and lighting unbidden upon any sport to which they were attracted by the savour of a good dinner, were denominated[[730]] Flies, and occasionally Shades or Parasites. There was at one time a law at Athens, which a good deal nonplussed these gentlemen. It was decreed, that not more than thirty persons should meet at a marriage feast, and a wealthy citizen, desirous of “going the whole hog,” had invited the full complement. An honest Fly, however, who respected no law that interfered with his stomach, contrived to introduce himself, and took his station at the lower end of the table. Presently the magistrate appointed for the purpose, entered, and espying his man at a glance, began counting the guests, commencing on the other side and ending with the parasite. “Friend,” said he, “you must retire. I find there is one person more than the law allows.” “It is quite a mistake, sir,” replied the Fly, “as you will find if you will have the goodness to count again, beginning on this side.”[[731]] Among the Egyptians, who shrouded all their poetry in hieroglyphics, a fly was the emblem of impudence, which necessarily formed the principal qualification of a Parasite, and in Hume’s[[732]] opinion is no bad possession to any man who would make his way in the world.
Archbishop Potter,[[733]] in his account of Grecian entertainments, observes, upon the authority of Cicero and Cornelius Nepos, that women were never invited with the men.[[734]] But in this, as has been shown in the proper place, he was misled by those learned Romans; for, in many cities and colonies of Greece, no banquet was given at which they were not present. Even at Athens, where women of character thought it unbecoming to mingle in the convivial revelries of the men,[[735]] in which wine constantly overleaps the boundaries of decorum, their place was supplied by hetairæ, whose polished manners, ready wit, and enlarged and enlightened understandings, recommended them to their companions, and caused the laxity of their morals to be forgotten.[[736]] To proceed, however, with our feast: it will readily be supposed, that gentlemen invited out to dinner were careful to apparel themselves elegantly, to shave clean, and arrange their beards and moustachios after the most approved fashion of the day. Even Socrates, who cared as little as most people for external appearances, bathed, put on a pair of new shoes, brushed his chlamys, and otherwise spruced himself up when going to sup at Agathon’s with Phædros, Aristophanes, Eryximachos, and other exquisites. Even in Homeric times the bath was among the preliminaries to dinner, and guests arriving from a distance were attended through all the operations of the toilette by female slaves.[[737]] But this general ablution was not considered sufficient. On sitting down to table water was again presented to every guest in silver[[738]] lavers or ewers of gold. And since they ate with their fingers, as still is the practice in the Levant, it was moreover customary to wash the hands between every course,[[739]] and wipe them,[[740]] in remoter ages, with soft bread, which was thrown to the dogs, and in aftertimes with napkins. The Arcadians, however, about whose mountains all the old superstitions of Hellas clung like bats, found a very different use for the cakes with which they wiped their fingers. They supposed them to acquire some mystic powers by the operation, and preserved them as a charm against ghosts.[[741]]
But we are proceeding too fast, for the guests are scarcely within doors, and our imagination has jumped to the conclusion. To return then. Immediately on entering, and when the host had welcomed and shaken hands with all, such gentlemen as possessed beards[[742]] had them perfumed over burning censers of frankincense, as ladies have their tresses on visiting a Turkish harem. The hands, too, after each lavation, were scented.[[743]] Before sitting down to table, and while the cooks were peppering the soup, frying the fish, or giving the roast-meat another turn, politeness required the guests to take a stroll[[744]] in the picture-gallery and admire the exquisite taste of their entertainer in articles of virtu.[[745]] Here while the scent of the savoury viands found its way through every apartment, and set the bowels of the hungry parasites croaking, the rogues who had lunched well at home leisurely discussed the merits of Zeuxis or Parrhasios, of Pheidias or Polygnotos, or opened wide their eyes at the microscopic creations of that Spartan artist whose chisel produced a chariot and four that could be hidden under the wing of a fly. At length, however, the connoisseurs were interrupted in their learned disquisitions by the entrance of Xanthos, Davos, or Lydos, with the welcome intelligence that dinner was on the table.