This book is dedicated to my wife, Jo. Many books are dedicated to wives and husbands in gratitude for their moral support and tolerant encouragement through the many long, dark hours of intellectual torment and self-doubt involved in the writing process. Although it is certainly true that not every Greek author gives me much pleasure to read (Aristotle, Aelius Aristides, and all of the Philostrati spring readily to mind), and most ancient commentaries on classical authors are by and large as tedious as they are difficult, nevertheless, the compilation of this book has been hugely enjoyable. My wife may have a slightly different perspective, judging by the substantial number of items she culled Scylla-like from various drafts.
I have of course acquiesced in the culling. Even so, I rather wish that Greek rhetorical strategies were still in vogue, for then I could resort to the crafty trick of paraleipsis (“[the pretense of] leaving things to the side”) and lament that there is no room to speculate, for example, why the Cyclops Polyphemus was a one-eyed monster, given that his father was Poseidon and his mother was a sea nymph (Aristotle frg. 172), whether it is more likely that there is an even number of stars or an odd number (Plutarch Table Talk 741c), why its Greek name, στρουθοκάμηλος (strouthokamelos), suggests that the ostrich is a cross between a sparrow and a camel (Galen Properties of Foodstuffs 6.702), or whether the Greeks ever devised a more wonderfully vigorous term of insult than κατωμόχανος (katomochanos): “with an ass so flabby you could sling it over your shoulder” (Hipponax frg. 28).
A CABINET OF GREEK CURIOSITIES
I
FOOD AND DRINK
Aristotle said that human life is like a cucumber—bitter at both ends
(Gnomologium Vaticanum 143).
I am told that, to prevent the stomachs of red mullet from bursting during the cooking process, really skillful chefs kiss them on the lips (Aelian On Animals 10.7). Cooking mullet was a serious art: Seneca fulminates against gourmets who would not trouble to sit with a dying father, brother, or friend, but avidly watch a mullet’s death throes, as it is killed right there in the dining room to ensure freshness (Natural Questions 3.17).
Galen (On the Powers of Foods 6.664) notes some unusual types of food:
Some people serve bear, and also lion and leopard, though these are much worse than bear.
Many people also eat panther meat—indeed, some doctors recommend it.
Plump young puppies, especially if they have been castrated, are a popular food in many countries.
Hunters serve fox meat in the fall, when the foxes have grown fat on grapes.
One way to tell a good cheese from a bad one is by belching: a good cheese gradually loses its distinctive characteristics, whereas a bad one does not. Since a bad cheese does not readily change, it is harder to digest (Galen On the Powers of Foods 6.699).
A graffito from Olympia.
People have sometimes felt ashamed at slaughtering land animals, which make pitiful cries and in so many cases have lived with them and shared their food supply. Sea creatures, on the other hand, are entirely different and exist in a quite alien environment. It is as if they were born and lived in some other world. Neither their appearance, nor their voice, nor any service they do for us argues against our eating them. We do not feel any affection for them. The world where we live is like Hades to sea creatures (Plutarch Table Talk 669d).
If, as they say, even plants have a soul, what sort of life will we have if we neither kill animals nor chop down plants? (Porphyry On Abstinence from Killing Animals 1.18).
An orator from Sidon was talking with two friends. One of his friends said it was not right to slaughter sheep, since they provide us with milk and wool, and the other one said it was not right to slaughter cows, since they provide us with milk and plow our fields. The orator said it was not right to kill pigs either, since they give us their liver, their udder, and their kidneys to eat (Philogelos Joke Book 129).
Pythagoras was not only one of the most influential pre-Socratic philosophers, but also a vigorous advocate of vegetarianism:
Pythagoras ordered his followers not to eat beans, because they cause flatulence.
He maintained that abstaining from beans ensures that such visions as appear to us in sleep are gentle and not disturbing.
Aristotle says that Pythagoras prohibited the eating of beans because they are testicle-shaped, or because they look like the gates of the Underworld, or because they are used to register votes in oligarchical regimes.
Pythagoras was murdered by his political opponents, who were able to catch him only because he insisted on running around a field of beans rather than trample the crop.
(Diogenes Laertius Lives of the Philosophers 8.24, 8.34, 8.39)
If you put a bean into a new pot and cover it with manure for forty days, you will find it has been transformed, and looks like a human being with flesh on his body. That is why the poet says, “Eating beans is the same as eating one’s parents’ heads” [Orphic Fragments 291] (John the Lydian On the Months 4.42).
Empedocles of Acragas was a follower of Pythagoras and abstained from animal food. When he was victorious in the Olympic Games, he fashioned an ox out of frankincense, myrrh, and other expensive perfumes, and shared it out among those who had come to the festival (Suda s.v. Athenaeus).
A man from Cyme [where people were proverbially stupid] was selling honey. A customer sampled it and said that it was excellent. “Yes,” agreed the man from Cyme, “if a mouse hadn’t fallen into it, I wouldn’t be selling it” (Philogelos Joke Book 173).
To attack luxury and remove the desire for wealth, Lycurgus introduced his third and finest decree: the Spartans should have their meals together in groups, all eating the same strictly regulated foods, rather than dining at home, lounging on expensive couches at expensive tables, fattened in the dark by slaves and cooks, just like gluttonous animals, inviting ruin, both physical and moral, and giving themselves up to every craving and excess that requires a lot of sleep, hot baths, lots of idle time, and high daily maintenance (Plutarch Life of Lycurgus 10).
An ear of barley, with a mouse on the leaf.
Athletic trainers always say that intellectual conversation at dinner spoils the food and makes the head heavy (Plutarch Advice on Preserving One’s Health 133b).
The sophists Anchimolus and Moschus lived healthily on a diet of figs and water, but their sweat was so pungent that everyone avoided them at the public baths…. A Theban athlete grew exceptionally strong on a diet of goat’s meat, but was laughed at because his sweat was very foul smelling (Athenaeus Wise Men at Dinner 44c, 402c).
Milon of Croton used to eat twenty pounds of meat and an equal amount of bread, along with two gallons of wine. At Olympia he lifted a four-year-old bull onto his shoulders and carried it around the stadium, and then he butchered it and ate it all by himself in one day (Athenaeus Wise Men at Dinner 413e).
Milon of Croton and Titormus of Aetolia had a competition, to see who could eat a whole ox first (Athenaeus Wise Men at Dinner 412f).
Zeno of Citium, the founder of Stoicism, said that the dead ought to be given to the living as food, rather than be thrown onto a funeral pyre (Zeno frg. 253).
Smindyrides of Sybaris is said to have been so decadent that, when he went to Sicyon as a suitor for the tyrant’s daughter, he took with him one thousand chefs, one thousand bird catchers, and one thousand fishermen (Aelian Miscellaneous History 12.24; for Smindyrides, see also p. 249).
Philoxenus of Cythera once prayed to have a throat that was five feet long, “so that,” he said, “I can swallow for as long a time as possible, and enjoy everything I eat at one and the same time” (Machon Anecdotes 10).
It is said that Philoxenus and Gnathon the Sicilian were so keen on delicacies that they used to blow their noses over the dainty morsels to put off the other diners and so be the only ones to gorge themselves on the food that was served (Plutarch Whether “Live in Obscurity” Is a Good Precept 1128b).
A glutton ac
customed his hand to heat by dipping it into the hot water at the baths, and he did the same for his mouth by gargling with hot water. It was said moreover that he used to bribe the cooks to serve the food especially hot. The purpose of all this was that he alone could enjoy the food while no one else was able to follow his example (Athenaeus Wise Men at Dinner 5e).
A person with no social graces will describe, right in the middle of a meal, how he was cleaned out top and bottom by drinking hellebore, and how the bile in his feces was blacker than the soup served for dinner (Theophrastus Characters 20).
THE CAKE STALL
Alcibiades sent Socrates a large and beautifully prepared cake. Xanthippe, Socrates’s wife, was very annoyed, regarding the cake as a provocative gift from a beloved to his lover, so she threw it out of the basket it came in and trampled on it. Socrates laughed and said, “Then you won’t be getting a piece of it either” (Aelian Miscellaneous History 11.12).
King Philip of Macedon was once invited to dinner out in the countryside. His host, who had expected him to come with just a few followers and had prepared for dinner accordingly, was alarmed to see him arrive with a large retinue. Philip saw the problem and sent word discreetly to each of his companions to leave room for cake. In expectation of more to come, they ate sparingly, and so there was enough for everyone (Plutarch Advice on Preserving One’s Health 123f).
Dreaming about cakes made without cheese is a good omen, but cheesecakes signify deceit and trickery (Artemidorus Interpretation of Dreams 1.72).
Anything sacrificed to the Nymphs in the temple of Asclepius must be sacrificed on the altars. It is forbidden to throw cakes or anything else [i.e., any other offering] into the temple springs (Lois Sacrées des Cités Grecques 152).
Top pastry-cooks devise every conceivable variety of cake, each one distinctive not only in its ingredients but also in the way it is made and in its shape, so as to have a seductive appeal both to taste and to sight…. They ingeniously invent countless confections to make life luxurious, decadent, and not worth living (Philo of Alexandria On Drunkenness 213). Filo pastry derives its name not from Philo, but from φύλλον (phyllon), “leaf.”
In the third book of his commentary on the poems of Alcman, Sosibius says that there is a type of cake called a cribane that is breast-shaped (Athenaeus Wise Men at Dinner 115a).
WINE
As today, some regions had a reputation for producing particularly good wine, the best being thought to come from Greece and Campania, the region south of Rome. However, the general quality of wine, which was regularly mixed with water, even seawater, or with honey and occasionally perfume, seems questionable. Whereas the classical Greek word for wine, οἶνος (oinos), is related to the Latin vinum and the English wine, the modern Greek word, κρασί (krasi), means literally “the thing mixed,” reflecting the old custom.
Why do those who drink diluted wine suffer worse hangovers than those who drink undiluted wine? Is it because diluted wine, being lighter, penetrates further into the body and is consequently harder to drain out? Or is it because it is not possible to drink so much undiluted wine, and those who try to do so are more prone to throw it up? (Ps.-Aristotle Problems 871a).
Just as we call the mixture “wine” even though there is more water in it than wine, so we should say that the marital property and the house belong to the husband, even if it is the wife who contributes the larger share (Plutarch Advice on Marriage 140f).
As part of his plan to escape from the Cyclops’s cave, Odysseus made him drunk with neat wine; wine was normally diluted with twenty parts water (Homer Odyssey 9.209). Homeric heroes were partial to wine with goat’s cheese grated into it, along with a sprinkling of barley (Iliad 11.638). Bronze cheese graters have been found in the graves of several 9th-century B.C. warriors on the island of Euboea.
On the island of Cos, large amounts of seawater are added to wine, a custom that arose when a slave stole some wine and added seawater to top up the jar (Pliny Natural History 14.78).
Since leopards are so partial to wine, hunters in the Libyan desert catch them by mixing twenty jars of sweet eleven-year-old wine with water from a spring, and then concealing themselves under goatskins or their nets. The leopards are attracted to the spring both by their thirst and by the aroma of the wine. At first they leap about like a troupe of dancers, but gradually they feel sleepy and lie sprawled on the ground (Oppian Hunting with Dogs 4.320ff.).
Filling her bucket with wine and milk, Chloe had a drink to share with Daphnis (Longus Daphnis and Chloe 1.23).
When mice fall into the wine vat they cause an unpleasant smell, so put a flat board into the vat, so that any mouse that falls in can run up it (Farm Work 6.1).
Odysseus escapes from the Cyclops’s cave, slung under his ram.
If you throw warm bread or an iron ring into the vat, it will draw off the poison with which the wine has been tainted by any venomous creature (Farm Work 7.27).
Those who get into the vat to tread the grapes should have scrupulously clean feet. They should neither eat nor drink in the vat, nor should they get in and out frequently. If they must get out, they should not go off barefoot. They should wear clothes, including undergarments, because of the sweat generated (Farm Work 6.11).
Some people who want to trick buyers soak an empty cup in fine old wine with a very appealing bouquet. This quality lingers in it for a long time and gives the impression that it comes from the wine poured into it subsequently. And so they deceive those who taste it. Some wine merchants are even more unscrupulous and lay out cheese and nuts in the winery to persuade customers to eat them, thus confusing their sense of taste. (I record this, not as something we should do, but to ensure we are not duped) (Farm Work 7.7).
Those who are addicted to wine grow old before their time, and many such people become prematurely bald or gray haired (Plutarch Table Talk 652f).
In order to counter the headaches caused by drinking too much wine, Dionysus is said to have tied a band around his head…. They say that this is the origin of the custom whereby kings wear a crown [διάδημα (diadema, literally “a thing tied around”)] (Diodorus Siculus The Library 4.4).
Why does the semen of drunkards tend not to be productive? Is it because the elements that make up the body have become moist? For moist seeds are not productive, unlike those that are firm and solid (Ps.-Aristotle Problems 871a).
Why do women very seldom get drunk? Aristotle suggests that those who drink fast, absorbing large amounts at one go, rarely get drunk, since the wine does not stay long in their system, being forced through by the pressure of such large draughts. Observation shows that women generally drink this way (Plutarch Table Talk 650a).
Those who get drunk on wine fall on their faces, whereas those who have drunk beer lie flat on their backs. Wine causes headaches, whereas beer stupefies (Aristotle frg. 106).
Mendaean is the wine that the gods themselves piss on their soft couches (Hermippus frg. 82, in a catalog eulogizing vintage wines).
Why is it that tipsy people behave badly, rather than those who are very drunk? Is it because they have not drunk so little as to be like sober people, nor so much as to become helpless? Sober people exercise good judgment, and very drunk people make no attempt to do so. Those who are tipsy, because they are not entirely drunk, do try to exercise judgment, but they do it badly and are quick either to despise people or to suppose that they themselves are being sneered at (Ps.-Aristotle Problems 871a).
SYMPOSIA
(Where men get tight with loose women.)
Herodotus’s “agonies for the eyes” as a description of beautiful women is open to criticism, but in mitigation one may note that those whom he represents using the expression are barbarians, and drunk (Ps.-Longinus On the Sublime 4.4). At Histories 5.18, Herodotus describes the Persian ambassadors being entertained at the Macedonian court as complaining that it would be better to have no women at the dinner than that they should only be allowed to look at them. Plutarch re
ports that Alexander the Great used the same phrase to describe Persian women (Life of Alexander 21).
The parasite Chaerophon came uninvited to a wedding party and reclined at the far end of a couch. When the women regulators counted the guests and told him to run away, since there was one person present in excess of the legal maximum of thirty, he replied, “Count again, but start with me this time” (Athenaeus Wise Men at Dinner 245a). The women regulators [γυναικονόμοι, gynaeconomoi] were officials who oversaw public order, with authority to intrude even into private gatherings.
Numerous trick drinking cups have survived. Some have a very shallow bowl and appear more capacious than they actually are (when the host is stingy); some have a secret inner section from which the cup is surreptitiously replenished (as the thirsty host drinks); and some have a hole in the bottom, apparently so designed that the unwary drinker is drenched when a plug attached to a string is pulled out.
A Cabinet Of Greek Curiosities Page 2