Siren Feasts: A History of Food and Gastronomy in Greece

337 Pages·1996·10.113 MB·English

by  Andrew Dalby

SIREN FEASTS
Cheese, wine, honey and olive oil - four of Greece's most familiar contri
butions to culinary culture - were already well known four thousand years
ago. Remains of beehives and of cheeses have been found under the vol
canic ash of the Santorini eruption of 1627 BC. Over the millennia, Greek
food has diversified and absorbed neighbouring traditions, yet retained its
own distinctive character.
Siren Feasts is the first scholarly social history of food and gastronomy
in Greece. It traces this unbroken tradition of fine food and wine from
classical times, through Rome and medieval Europe, to what we eat and
drink today. The focus is on the Classical, Hellenistic and Roman periods.
Andrew Dalby shows how an understanding of the food and gastronomy
of ancient Greece provides a useful background to reading Greek comedy
and lyric poetry. His innovative study also includes discussion of the first
specialist writers on food, such as Archestratus and Philoxenus.
Siren Feasts is comprehensively illustrated, and source material is quoted
in English throughout. It is invaluable and engaging reading for all students
and teachers of Greek history, and anyone who is interested in the gastro
nomic tradition of Greece.
Andrew Dalby trained as a classicist and linguist and is now Librarian of
the London Goodenough Trust for Overseas Graduates. He is the winner
of the 1996 Sophie Coe Prize in Food History.
Copyrighted Material
Frontispiece Heracles as a dinner guest of Eurytius of Oechalia and his four sons.
Heracles is a suitor for their sister Iole, who serves him. The young Iphitus
gazes at Heracles (right), whose marriage request he alone favours. In a later
encounter, unaware of Iphitus' support, Heracles will kill him. The tragedy is
told in a single icon. Corinthian krater in the Louvre, no. E635 (see also Figures
18 and 21)
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SIREN FEASTS
A history of food and gastronomy in Greece
Andrew Dalby
I
London and New York
Copyrighted Material
First published 1996
by Routledge
11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE
Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001
First published in paperback 1997
© 1996 Andrew Dalby
Phototypeset in Garamond by Intype, London
Printed and bound in Great Britain by
Biddies Ltd, Guildford & King's Lynn
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or
reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic,
mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter
invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any
information storage or retrieval system, without permission in
writing from the publishers.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the Library of Congress
ISBN 0-415-11620-1 (hbk)
ISBN 0-415-15657-2 (pbk)
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To the Greek climate we owe the development of Taste.
J. J. Winckelmann, Gedanken iiber die Nachahmung
der griechischen Gierke in der Malerei
und Bildhauerkunst, 1755
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CONTENTS
List of figures ix
Preface xi
Acknowledgements xv
1 THE WAY THESE PEOPLE SACRIFICE 1
Part I The prehistoric Aegean
2 THE GARDENS OF ALCINOUS 33
Part II Food and gastronomy of the classical Aegean
3 DIVINE INVENTIONS 57
4 IN THE FEASTS OF THE LYDIANS 93
5 SICILIAN TABLES 113
Part HI Food and gastronomy of the post-classical Aegean
6 LEMONS OF THE HESPERIDES 133
7 STRYMONIAN EELS 152
8 THE IMPERIAL SYNTHESIS 168
Part IV The Byzantine and later Aegean
9 BISCUITS FROM BYZANTIUM 187
Notes 212
Bibliography 267
Index of ancient and medieval sources 287
Greek index 297
General index 310
vii
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FIGURES
Frontispiece Heracles as dinner guest of Eurytius of Oechalia and
his four sons ii
1 A waitress is slapped by a diner as she spills wine over him 8
2 Classical funerary relief depicting (as often) the dead man reclining
at a meal, attended by his household 16
3 After the symposion a reveller captures a musician 19
4 Kdpparis: the caper bush, whose pickled buds were Phryne's
earliest stock-in-trade 26
5 Satyr and woman, from a sixth-century BC vase found at Istria, an
early Greek colony on the Black Sea coast 30
6 Threshing lentils: Alonnisos, about 1970 41
7 Two wild fruits of the Aegean region: (a) krdnon, cornel (cornelian
cherry); (b) lotos or pah'ouros, hackberry (nettle wood) 44
8 Sykon and sykalis: fig and blackcap ('fig-pecker') redrawn from a
Roman wall-painting from Boscotrecase, Campania 54
9 Attagds: the francolin, observed on Samos in the eighteenth
century, but said now to have disappeared from Greece 64
10 Glaukos, a prized fish but not firmly identified 69
11 Orphos: the grouper or merou, modern Greek rojos, Turkish orfoz 70
12 Skdros: parrot wrasse was one of the gourmet treats of the Roman
Empire, though less sought after at other times 71
13 Kheme leid or simply leid 73
14 Tethyon: not an oyster - not even in the Iliad - but a sea-squirt, a
delicacy still appreciated in Provence: an ancient recipe is supplied
by Xenocrates 74
15 Two greens: (a) adrdphaxys, orach; and (b), nowadays much more
commonly used, spinach (modern Greek spandkia) 84
16 A silphium plant, the traditional type of Cyrene, here paired with
the horseman sometimes seen on the gold coins of the city 87
17 Magydaris, the plant that so closely resembled silphium,
flourishing on Rhodes 88
ix
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