[514]. Aristoph. Acharn. 34. Cooks’ tables were made of wicker-work or olive-wood. Etym. Mag. 298. 36, seq.
CHAPTER III.
FOOD OF HOMERIC TIMES—MEAT, FISH, ETC.
Having described the implements with which a Greek meal was prepared, let us next inquire of what materials it consisted, and how it was eaten. There will be no occasion in pursuing this investigation to adhere to any very strict method. It will probably be sufficient to make a few broad divisions and a flexible outline which we can fill up as the materials fall in our way.
What the original inhabitants of Hellas ate might no doubt be satisfactorily inferred from the accounts we possess of nations still existing in the same state of civilisation. But it is nevertheless curious to examine their traditions relating to the subject. Ælian, who has preserved many notices of remote antiquity, gives a list of various kinds of food, which, as he would appear to think, constituted the chief, if not the whole, sustenance of several ancient nations. The Arcadians lived, he says, upon acorns; the Argives upon pears, the Athenians upon figs;[[515]] the wild pear-tree furnished the Tirynthians with their favourite food; a sort of cane was the chief dainty of the Indians; of the Karamanians[[516]] the date; millet of the Mæotæ and Sauromatæ; while the Persians[[517]] delighted chiefly in cardamums and pistachio nuts.[[518]]
The tradition that while some degree of civilisation already existed in the East, many tribes of Hellas still subsisted upon acorns, has given rise to much curious disquisition. It is abundantly clear, however, that the fruit of our English oak is not what is meant; for, upon this, no one who has made the experiment will for one moment imagine that man could subsist; but every kind of production comprehended by the Greeks under the term “acorn,” (βάλανος). Gerard, an old English botanist, enumerates chestnuts among acorns, and Xenophon calls dates “the acorns of the palm-tree.” The mast, however, of a tree common in Greece, would, as Mitford thinks, afford a not unwholesome nourishment, though he is quite right in supposing that it could not have been a favourite food in more civilised times.[[519]] While upon the subject of acorns, this ingenious and able writer appears disposed to make somewhat merry with a certain project of Socrates. If we rightly comprehend him, which very possibly we do not, he means to accuse the philosopher of reducing the citizens of his airy republic to very short commons indeed,[[520]] nothing but a little beech-mast, and a few myrtle-berries. This borders strongly on the notion of the comic writer, who describes the Athenians as living on air and hope. But though abstemious enough, Socrates was not so unreasonable as to require even his Utopians to fight and philosophise upon a diet so scanty. Before he comes to the mast and the myrtle-berries, we find him enumerating wheaten and barley bread, salt, olives, cheese, and truffles, together with pulse and all such herbs as the fields spontaneously produce. For a dessert he would indulge them with figs, chickpeas, and beans, myrtle-berries, and beech-mast, or chestnuts roasted in the fire. Plato was aware how the luxurious wits of his time would turn up their noses at such primitive diet, and therefore brings in Glaucon inquiring,—“If you were founding a polity of swine, what other food would you provide for them?”[[521]] Pausanias remarks, however, that acorns long continued to be a common article of food in Arcadia,[[522]] but only those of the fagus.[[523]]
If we may credit some writers the ancient inhabitants of Hellas made use of food much more revolting than acorns, having been, in fact, cannibals who devoured each other. There, no doubt, existed among the Greeks of later times traditions of a state of society in which human flesh was eaten by certain fierce and lawless individuals, such as Polyphemos, but nothing in their literature can authorise us to infer that the practice was ever general. Superstition seems on very extraordinary occasions to have impelled them into the guilt of human sacrifice, when the officiating priests, and, perhaps, some few others, probably tasted of the entrails, and Galen had conversed with individuals who had been led by mere curiosity to sup on man’s flesh, and found its flavour to resemble that of tender beef.[[524]] But instances of this kind prove nothing; for how often does it not happen that mariners are even now driven by distressful circumstances to slaughter and eat their companions at sea! And yet shall we on this account pass for anthropophagi with posterity?
The Greeks, however, were not content with one set of traditions, or upon the whole inclined to give currency to the most gloomy. On the contrary, their poets casting backward the light of their imagination, and kindling up the landscapes of the far past, called up the vision of the golden age, when neither the domestic hearth[[525]] nor the altars of the gods were stained with blood, and the fruits of the field,—milk, honey, cheese, and butter sufficed to sustain life. But we must escape from these shadowy times, and come down to the age of beef and mutton.
Food is, with great precision, divided by Aristotle into moist and dry, that is, into meat and drink.[[526]] A classification, the credit of which, as Feith contends, belongs to Homer.[[527]] In this poet, bread (σίτος), the principal article of provision, is made indiscriminately both from wheat and barley, though the latter grain is thought to have been first in use.[[528]] Herodotus found, in the matter of bread, a peculiar taste among the Egyptians; barley and wheat they despised, though in no country are finer produced than in Egypt; giving, very strangely, the preference to the olyra, by some supposed to be the spelt, but more probably Syrian dhourra, ears of which I observed sculptured on the interior of the pronaos of Leto’s temple at Esneh. Bread, in the Homeric age, was brought to table in a reed basket, the use of silver bread-baskets, or trays, not having been then, as Donatus thinks, introduced. But in this the learned commentator is mistaken; or, if they had no silver trays, at least they had them of brass and gold, to match their tables of massive silver.[[529]]
Next to bread, flesh, in the heroic ages, was the greatest stay-stomach, particularly beef, kid, mutton, and pork. They had not, however, as yet discovered many ways of cooking it. Nearly all their culinary ingenuity reduced itself in fact to roasting and boiling, a circumstance which led Athenæus,[[530]] and the president Goguet to look back with great pity and concern on these unhappy ages when even princes, generally gourmands, were deprived of the supreme felicity of dining on ragouts, soups, and boiled brains. Servius,[[531]] too, and Varro are inclined to participate in this feeling of commiseration, and the latter observes, that among their own ancestors people were originally compelled to dine on roast meat, though in the course of time the arts of boiling and soup-making were introduced.[[532]] With regard to Homer’s heroes, however, our sympathies are somewhat relieved by finding, that learned men have overrated the extent of their misfortunes. They were not altogether ignorant of the art of boiling, as Athenæus himself admits, where he mentions the boiled shin of beef which one of the drunken suitors flung at Odysseus’s head.