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Siren feasts: food and gastronomy in Greece from earlist times to the Byzantine Empire PDF

337 Pages·1995·10.003 MB·English
by  DalbyAndrew
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Preview Siren feasts: food and gastronomy in Greece from earlist times to the Byzantine Empire

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) Copyrighted Material 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) Copyrighted Material 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 Copyrighted Material Copyrighted Material 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 Copyrighted Material Copyrighted Material 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 Copyrighted Material

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