The flesh of young animals was not habitually eaten in those early ages, so that in denominating them public devourers of kids and lambs, Priam accuses his sons of scandalous luxury.[[533]] In fact, with the design of preventing a scarcity of animal food, a law was enacted at Athens prohibiting the slaughter of an unshorn lamb, and from the same motive the Emperor Valens forbade the use of veal.[[534]]
But there was nothing beyond the difficulty of catching it, to prevent the Homeric heroes from making free with game, such as venison, and the flesh of the wild goat;[[535]] and from a passage in the Iliad, Feith infers, that even birds were not spared.[[536]] We trust, however, that they feathered and cooked them, and did not devour them au naturel, as certain Hindùs do their sheep, wool and all. The Egyptians had a very peculiar taste in ornithophagy, and actually ate some kinds of birds quite raw, as they likewise did several species of fish; and this not in those early ages when Isis and Osiris had not reclaimed the bogs of the Nile, but in times quite modern, when Herodotus travelled in their country, and heard their vain priests lay claim to having civilised Hellas. Both birds and fish, indeed, underwent a certain sort of preparation. Of the latter some were dried in the sun, others preserved in pickle, and the same process was applied to ducks, quails, and many other species of birds, after which they were eaten raw. We recommend the practice to our gourmands, and have no doubt they would find a pickled owl or jackdaw, devoured in the Egyptian style, altogether as wholesome as diseased goose’s liver. It must not, however, be dissembled, that many critics, concerned for the gastronomic reputation of the Egyptians, contend that, by the word which we translate “to pickle,”[[537]] Herodotus must have meant some kind of cookery; to which Wesseling replies, that, without designing to impugn the taste of those gentlemen, he must yet refuse to accept of their interpretation, since by observing that they roasted or boiled all other species of birds and fish, such as were sacred excepted, the historian evidently intends to say, that these were eaten raw. The learned editor might have added, that Herodotus uses the same term in treating of the process of embalming,[[538]] and we nowhere learn that the mummies were cooked before they were deposited in the tombs.
But to return to the Homeric warriors; it seems extremely[[539]] probable, notwithstanding the opinions of several writers of great authority, both ancient and modern, that the demi-gods, and heroes before Troy, admitted that effeminate dainty called fish to their warlike tables. At all events the common people understood the value of this kind of food,[[540]] and it may safely be inferred that their betters, never slow in appropriating delicacies to their own use, soon perceived that fish is no bad eating. Hunger would at least reconcile them to the flavour of broiled salmon, as we find by the example of Odysseus’s companions, who devoured both fish and fowl.[[541]] This is acknowledged by Athenæus;[[542]] but Plutarch contends, that they could have been driven to it only by extreme necessity. At all other times he imagines they temperately abstained from food of so exciting a kind,[[543]] though Homer describes the Hellespont as abounding in fish,[[544]] and more than once alludes to the practice of drawing it thence with hook and line.[[545]] Thus we find that angling can trace back its pedigree to the heroic ages; and the disciple of the rod as he trudges with Izaak in his pocket through bog and mire in search of a good bite, may solace his imagination with reminiscences of Troy and the Hellespont. But the good people of those days did not wholly rely for a supply of fish on this very tedious and inefficient process; they had discovered the use of nets, which Homer describes the fisherman casting on the sea shore.[[546]] Though the poet, however, had omitted all allusion to this kind of food, its use might, nevertheless, have been confidently inferred, as may that of milk, common to all nations, though Homer mentions it only, I believe, in the case of the Hippomolgians,[[547]] and the cannibal Polyphemus, who understood also the luxury of cheese.[[548]] Circe, too, who being a goddess may be supposed to have been a connoisseur in dainties, presents her paramour Odysseus with a curious mixture, consisting of cheese, honey, flour, and wine,[[549]] very savoury, no doubt, and by old Nestor considered of salutary nature, since Hecamedè, at his order, prepares a plentiful supply of it for the wounded Machaon. Along with this posset, garlic was eaten as a relish.[[550]]
Fruits and potherbs, as may be supposed, were already in use.[[551]] Garlic we have mentioned above; and Odysseus, after all his wars and wanderings, recalls[recalls] to mind with a quite natural pleasure the apple and pear trees which his father, Laertes, had given him when a boy.[[552]] Alcinoös possessed a fine orchard, where, though the process of grafting is supposed to have been then unknown, we find a variety of beautiful fruits, as pears, apples, pomegranates, delicious figs, olives, and grapes; and in his kitchen-garden were all kinds of vegetables.[[553]] And the shadowy boughs of a similar orchard, covered with golden fruit, wave over Tantalos in Hades, but are blown back by the wind whenever the wretched old sinner stretches forth his hand towards them.[[554]] From this circumstance Athenæus, with much ingenuity, infers that fruit was actually in use before the Trojan war! Apples seem then, as now, to have constituted a favourite portion of the dessert, though among the Homeric warriors they seem sometimes to have formed a principal part of the meal; for Servius[[555]] describes the primitive repasts as consisting of two courses, of which the first was animal food, and apples the second.
Salt was in great use in the Homeric age, and by the poet sometimes called divine.[[556]] Plato, also, in the Timæos,[[557]] speaks of salt as a thing acceptable to the gods, an expression which Plutarch quotes with manifest approbation in a passage where he grows quite eloquent in praise of this article, which he denominates the condiment of condiments, adding, that of some it was numbered among the Graces.[[558]] By the most ancient Greeks salt was, for this reason, always spoken of in conjunction with the table, as in the old proverb, where men were advised “never to pass by salt or a table,” that is, not to neglect a good dinner.[[559]] Poor men, who probably had no other seasoning for their food, were contemptuously denominated “salt-lickers.”[[560]] But, in Homer’s time, there existed certain Hellenic tribes who had not yet arrived at a knowledge of this luxury; among whom, accordingly, even the most aristocratic personages were compelled to go without salt to their porridge.[[561]] The poet has, indeed, omitted to mention their names; but Pausanias supposes him to have alluded to the more inland clans of Epeirots, many of which had not yet, in those ages, acquired a knowledge of salt, or even of the sea.[[562]]
It appears to be agreed on all hands, that the primitive races of men were mere water-drinkers. Accordingly they had neither poets nor inn-keepers, nor excisemen,—three classes of persons who never flourish but where wine, or at least beer, is found. Homer more than once alludes to this vicious habit of the old world, where, with a sly insinuation of contempt,—for he was himself partial to the blood-red wine,—he tells us that this or that nation drank, like so many oxen or crocodiles, of the waters of such or such a river. Thus, when enumerating the allies of Ilion, he describes the Zeleians as those who sipped the black waters of the Æsepos.[[563]] Pindar, too, in the hope of obtaining a reputation for sobriety, says, he was accustomed to drink the waters of Thebes, which, in his opinion, were very delicious,[[564]] though Hippocrates would unquestionably have been of a totally different way of thinking. The Persian, and afterwards the Parthian kings, appear in many cases to have entertained a temperate predilection for the water of certain streams, of which Milton has given eternal celebrity to one:—
“Choaspes, amber stream,
The drink of none but kings.”[[565]]
But evidently through mistake; for though historians pretend that the Parthian monarchs would drink of no water save that of the Choaspes, to which Pliny[[566]] adds the Eulæus, it is by no means said that they enjoyed a monopoly of those streams. Perhaps our great poet confounded the Choaspes with those Golden Waters which, in Athenæus, are said to have been wholly reserved for the use of the king and his eldest son.[[567]]
Wine, however, was invented very early in the history of the world; and the virtue of sobriety was born along with it; for, until then, it had been no merit to be sober. With whomsoever its use began, wine was well known to Homer’s heroes, one of whom speaks of it, in conjunction with bread, as the chief root of man’s strength and vigour.[[568]] Yet the warriors of those ages by no means exhibited that selfish parsimony which led the Romans to debar their matrons the use of wine.[[569]] In Homer we find women, even while very young, permitted the enjoyment of it: for example, Nausicaa and her companions, who, in setting forth on their washing excursion, are furnished by the queen herself with a plentiful supply of provisions, and a skin of wine.[[570]] Boys, likewise, in the heroic ages, met with similar indulgence; for Phœnix is represented permitting Achilles to join him in his potations before the little urchin knew how to drink without spilling it over himself.[[571]] This practice, however, is very properly condemned by Plato, who considered that no person under eighteen should be allowed to taste of wine, and even then but sparingly.[[572]] After thirty, more discretion might, he thought, be granted them; though he recommended sobriety at all times, save, perhaps, on the anniversary festival of Dionysos, and certain other divinities, when a merry bowl was judged in keeping with the other ceremonies of the day.[[573]]