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]
-----
Footnote 515:
Cf. Plut. Quæst. Græc. 51.
Footnote 516:
Cf. Dion. Perieg. 1082.
Footnote 517:
These people were great eaters, and held none in estimation but those
who resembled them. Aristoph. Acharn. 74. sqq.
Footnote 518:
Ælian. Var. Hist. iii. 39. Perizonius in his note on this passage
observes, that ἄπιος and ἀχράς are but different names for the same
thing, both signifying “the pear,” the former term prevailing among
the Argives, the latter among the Tirynthians and Laconians. By the
other Greeks both words were used promiscuously, though ἄπιος was the
more common. This able commentator objects to the assertion of his
author, that the Hindoos lived on cane, since they also ate millet,
rice, &c. But Ælian could really have intended nothing more than that
the articles he enumerates were in common use among the nations spoken
of. Otherwise the whole must be regarded as a mere fable. The canes,
mentioned by Ælian, are those from which sugar has been from very
remote antiquity extracted.
Quique bibunt tenerâ dulces ab arundine succos.
Lucan. Pharsal. iii. 237.
-----
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]
-----
Footnote 519:
See Goguet, i. 160, seq.
Footnote 520:
Hist. of Greece, i. 9, note. Cf. Anab. ii. 3.
Footnote 521:
Plat. de Rep. t. vi. p. 85.
Footnote 522:
Cf. Polluc. i. 234.
Footnote 523:
Paus. viii. 1. 6. Pliny observes that the fruit of the fagus is sweet
“dulcissima omnium glans fagi.” Hist. Nat. xvii. 6. Cf. Lucian. Amor.
§ 33. Theophrast. Hist. Plant. iii. 8, 2. This Arcadian dainty is
still eaten in Spain. “In some parts (of Navarre) the mountains are
girt at their base by forests of chestnut trees or of the Spanish oak
called _encina_, whose acorn roasted, is as palatable as the
chestnut.” (A Campaign with Zumalacarregui, i. 40.) The same writer
observes, that the fruit of the ever-green arbutus, in shape like a
cherry, though insipid and intoxicating in its effects, is also eaten
by the omniverous Spaniards, p. 51. See also Laborde’s Itinerary of
Spain, iv. 80, and Capell Brooke’s Travels, ii. 72.
-----
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?
-----
Footnote 524:
See Bochart. Geog. Sac. i. 309.
-----
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.
-----
Footnote 525:
Cf. Plat. De Legg. vi. t. vii. p. 471.
-----
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]
-----
Footnote 526:
Problem. x. 56, 58.
Footnote 527:
Iliad. α. 496. β. 432, seq.
Footnote 528:
Iliad. ε. 196, et 341. The scholiast on this verse, observes that,
before the invention of mills, men used to eat the raw grain. (Cf. on
Iliad. α. 449, and Etym. Magn. v. οὐλόχυται, 641, 29.) But this is
merely an absurd conjecture; for they could, at least, have roasted
the young ear as in the East they still do, while it is full of juice,
and have eaten it thus with salt, when it is both pleasant and
nutritive. Besides, some means of reducing the grain to meal appears
to have been known almost from the beginning.
Footnote 529:
Iliad. λ. 629. Odyss. κ. 355. See, too, Theocrit. Eidyll. xxiv. 135,
sqq. Virgil. Æneid. i. 705.
-----
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.
-----
Footnote 530:
Deipnosoph. i. 15. Origine des Loix, ii. 306. “J’ai dit que la
simplicité faisoit le caractère distinctif de ses premiers âges. La
manière dont on se nourissoit alors en fait preuve. On ne voit
paroître ni sauce ni ragoût, ni même de gibier, dans la description
que l’Ecriture fait du repas donné par Abraham aux trois anges qui lui
apparurent dans la vallée de Membré. Ce Patriarche leur sert un veau
roti, ou, pour mieux dire, grillé; du lait de beurre, et du pain frais
cuit sous la cendre. Voilà tout le festin. Ce fait montre que les
repas alors étoient plus solides que délicats. Abraham avoit
certainement intention de traiter ses hôtes du mieux qu’il lui étoit
possible, et il faut observer que ce Patriarche possédoit de
très-grandes richesses en or, en argent, en troupeaux et en esclaves.
On peut donc regarder le repas qu’il donne aux trois anges, comme le
modèle d’un festin magnifique, et juger en conséquence quelle étoit de
son tems la manière de traiter splendidement.”
Footnote 531:
Comm. ad Æneid. i. 710.
-----
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]
-----
Footnote 532:
Feith, Antiq. Homer, iii. 1, 3.
Footnote 533:
Il. ω. 262.
Footnote 534:
Hieron adv. Jovian. ii. 75. a. Diosc. ap. Athen. ix. 17. Eustath. ad
Il. ω. p. 1481. 12. Schweigh, Animad. in Athen. t. vi. p. 96, seq.
-----
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.
-----
Footnote 535:
Od. ι. 185. κ. 180.
Footnote 536:
Iliad. ψ. 852, seq.
Footnote 537:
Προταριχεύειν. Herod. ii. 77, edit. Wessel.
Footnote 538:
Herod. i. 77, seq. ii. 15. ix. 80.
-----
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]
-----
Footnote 539:
Plato, among others, remarks that, in the military messes of his
heroes, Homer introduces neither fish nor boiled meat. De Rep. iii. t.
vi. p. 141.
Footnote 540:
Odyss. τ. 113.
Footnote 541:
Odyss. μ. 330. sqq.
Footnote 542:
Deipnosoph. i. 47.
Footnote 543:
Plut. Sympos. viii. 8.
Footnote 544:
Il. ι. 360.
Footnote 545:
Il. π. 407.
Footnote 546:
Od. χ. 364, sqq. Eustathius, however, on this passage observes, that
though nets are spoken of in the Iliad, (ε. 487,) this is the only
place where the poet distinctly mentions their being used in taking
fish.
Footnote 547:
Il. ο. 6.
Footnote 548:
Od. ι. 236, 246. Theoc. Eidyll. xi. 35.
Footnote 549:
Od. κ. 234, seq.
Footnote 550:
Il. λ. 623, sqq. This mixture called κυκεὼν, is more than once
mentioned by Plato—De Rep. iii. t. vi. p. 148.
-----
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 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.
-----
Footnote 551:
Cf. Hom. Il. λ. 629, seq.
Footnote 552:
Od. ω. 339.
Footnote 553:
Od. η. 115, sqq. Plut. Sympos. v. 8.
Footnote 554:
Od. λ. 587, sqq.
Footnote 555:
Ad Æneid. i. 727.
Footnote 556:
Il. ι. 214. In later times it was customary to bruise thyme small, and
mingle it with salt to give it a finer flavour. Aristoph. Acharn. 772.
Suid. v. θυμιτίδων ἁλῶν. t. i. p. 1336. b.
-----
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]
-----
Footnote 557:
Opera, t. vii. p. 80.
Footnote 558:
Sympos. v. 9.
Footnote 559:
Erasm. Adag. Chil. i. Cent. vi. Adag. 10.
Footnote 560:
Ἅλα λείχειν. Erasm. Adag. iii. vi. 33, or, as Persius expresses it,
“digito terebrare salinum.” Sat. v. 138.
Footnote 561:
Od. λ. 122.
Footnote 562:
Paus. i. 1. 12.
-----
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]
-----
Footnote 563:
Il. β. 824, seq.
Footnote 564:
Pind. Olymp. vi. 85.
Footnote 565:
Paradise Regained, iii. 288, seq.
Footnote 566:
Hist. Nat. xxxi. 21. “Parthorum reges,” says this writer, “ex Choaspe
et Eulæo tantum bibunt; et eæ quamvis in longinqua comitatur eos.”
Hence Tibullus has the following verses in his Panegyric of Messala,
iv. 1. 142:
“Nec quâ vel Nilus vel _regia lympha_ Choaspes
Profluit.”
Herod. i. 188. Æl. Var. Hist. xii. 40. Cf. Strabo. 1. xv. c. 3. t.
iii. p. 318.
Footnote 567:
Athen. xii. 9. Ἀγαθοκλῆς δ᾽, ἐν τρίτῳ Περὶ Κυζίκου, ἐν Πέρσαις φησὶν
εἶναι καὶ χρυσοῦν καλούμενον ὕδωρ. εἶναι δὲ τοῦτο λιβάδας ἑβδομήκοντα,
καὶ μηδὲνα πίνειν ἀπ’ αὐτοῦ ἢ μόνον βασιλέα, καὶ τὸν πρεσβύτατον αὐτοῦ
τῶν παίδων. τῶν δ᾽ ἄλλων ἐάν τις πίῃ, θάνατος ἡ ζημία.
-----
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]
-----
Footnote 568:
Iliad, ι. 702. τ. 161.
Footnote 569:
Athen. x. 33.
Footnote 570:
Od. ζ. 77, seq.
Footnote 571:
Iliad. ι. 487.
Footnote 572:
Montaigne, whom few things of this kind had escaped, reads _forty_,
and thinks that men might lawfully get drunk after that age. Essais,
ii. 2. t. iii. p. 278.
Footnote 573:
De Legg. ii. t. vii. p. 258, sqq.
-----
We shall now pass from the primitive aliments of the heroic times to
those almost infinite varieties of good things which the ingenuity of
later ages brought into use. The reader, not already familiar with the
gastronomic fragments of ancient literature, will probably be surprised
at the omniverous character of the Greeks, to whom nothing seems to have
come amiss, from the nettle-top to the peach, from the sow’s metra to
the most delicate bird, from the shark to the small semi-transparent
aphyæ, caught along the shores of Attica.[574] Through this ocean of
dainties we shall endeavour to make our way on the following
plan:—first, it will be our “hint to speak” of the more solid kinds of
food, as beef, mutton, pork, veal; we shall then make a transition to
the soups, fowls, and fish; next the fruit will claim our attention;
and, lastly, the several varieties of wines.
Footnote 574:
Ass’s flesh was commonly eaten by the Athenians. Poll. ix. 48, et
Comment. t. vi. p. 938, seq. Their neighbours the Persians, however,
enjoyed one dainty not known, I believe, to the Greeks; that is to
say, a camel, which, we are told, they sometimes roasted whole. Herod.
i. 123. Athen. iv. 6. In the opinion of Aristotle the flesh of this
animal was singularly good: ἔχει δὲ καὶ τὰ κρέα καὶ τὸ γάλα ἥδιστα
πάντων.—Hist. Anim. vi. 26. It was this passage, perhaps, that first
induced Heliogabalus to try a camel’s foot, which he appears
afterwards to have much affected. Lamprid. Vit. Anton. Heliogab. § 19.
Hist. Aug. Script. p. 195. The same emperor also tried the taste of an
ostrich, whose eggs anciently constituted an article of food among
certain nations of Africa. Lucian. de Dipsad. § 7.
-----
It has already been observed, that in the earliest ages men wholly
abstained from animal food.[575] Afterwards when they began to cast
“wolfish eyes” upon their mute companions on the globe, the hog is said
to have been the first creature whose character emboldened them to make
free with him. They saw it endued with less intelligence than other
animals; and, from its stupidity, inferred that it ought to be eaten,
its soul merely serving during life, as salt, to keep the flesh from
putrefying.[576] The determining reason, however, appears to have been,
that they could make no other use of him, since he would neither plough
like the ox, nor be saddled and mounted like the horse or ass, nor
become a pleasant companion, or guard the house, like the dog.
-----
Footnote 575:
Plato, De Legg. vi. t. vii. p. 471.
Footnote 576:
Cicero, De Natura Deorum, ii. 64. Dion. Chrysost. i. 280, cum not.
Reisk.
-----
It was long before men in any country slew the ox for food; his great
utility was his protection, and in some parts of the East the
well-meaning priesthood at length compassed him round with the armour of
superstition, which outlasted the occasion, and in India has come down
in nearly all its strength to our own day. It was otherwise in Greece.
There common sense quickly dissipated the illusion, which, while it was
necessary, had guarded the ox, and beef became the favourite food of its
hardy and active inhabitants, who likewise fed indiscriminately on
sheep, goats, deer, hares, and almost every other animal, wild or tame.
It has been seen that in remote ages fish did not constitute any great
part of the sustenance of the Greeks. But public opinion afterwards
underwent a very considerable change. From having been held in so little
estimation as to be left chiefly to the use of the poor, in the
historical ages it became their greatest luxury.[577] And there arose
among gourmands, those ancient St. Simonians, whose god was their belly,
a kind of enthusiastic rivalry as to who should be first in the morning
at the fish-market, and bear away, as in triumph, the largest Copaic
eels, the finest pair of soles, or the freshest _anthias_.[578] On this
subject, therefore, our details must be somewhat more elaborate than on
beef and mutton. And first, we shall take the reader along with us to
the market, whither it will be advisable that he carry as little money
as possible, since, according to the comic poets, your Athenian
fishmonger, not content with being a mere rogue, dealt a little also in
the assassin’s trade.[579]
-----
Footnote 577:
The Pythagoreans, however, must be excluded from this category since
they abstained from fish because they kept perpetual silence like
themselves.—Athen. vii. 80. Another and a better reason, perhaps, may
be discovered in a passage of Archestratos, who, observing that the
sea-dog is delicious eating, proceeds to dispose of the objection that
it feeds on human flesh, by saying, that all fish do the same. Id.
vii. 85. From this fact the Pythagoreans esteemed fish-eaters no
better than cannibals at second-hand.
Footnote 578:
Cf. Schol. Aristoph. Acharn. 525.
Footnote 579:
Amphis ap. Athen. vi. 5.
-----
The first thing which a rich gourmand inquired in the morning was, which
way the wind blew. If from the north, and there was anything like a sea,
he remained sullenly at home, for no fishing smacks could in that case
make the Peiræeus;[580] but if the wind sat in any other quarter, out he
went eagerly and stealthily with a slave and basket[581] at his heels,
casting about anxious looks to discover whether any other impassioned
fish-eater had got the start of him on his way to the Agora, who might
clear the stalls of the best anthias or thunny before he could reach the
spot.
-----
Footnote 580:
Athen. viii. 81. Cf. Xenoph. Hellen. v. i. 23.
Footnote 581:
This basket was usually of rushes, in form like a basin, and with a
handle passing over the top.—Antich. di Ercol. tav. 21. tom. i. p.
111.
-----
The unmoneyed rogue, however, whose ambitious taste soared to these
expensive dainties, approached the market with a rueful countenance.
Thus we find a poor fellow describing, in Antiphanes, his morning’s
pilgrimage in search of a pair of soles:
I once believed the Gorgons fabulous:
But in the agora quickly changed my creed,
And turned almost to stone, the pests beholding
Standing behind the fish stalls. Forced I am
To look another way when I accost them,
Lest if I saw the fish they ask so much for,
I should at once grow marble.[582]
-----
Footnote 582:
Athen. vi. 4.
-----
Amphis, another comic poet, supplies us with further details respecting
the hardships encountered by those who had to deal with fishmongers at
Athens. Much of his wit is, I fear, intransferable, depending in a great
measure on the vernacular clipping of Greek common in the market-place.
But the sense, at least, may perhaps be given:
“Ten thousand times more easy ’tis to gain
Admission to a haughty general’s tent,
And have discourse of him, than in the market
Audience to get of a cursed fishmonger.
If you draw near and say, How much, my friend,
Costs _this_ or _that_?—No answer. Deaf you think
The rogue must be, or stupid; for he heeds not
A syllable you say, but o’er his fish
Bends silently like Telephos (and with good reason,
For his whole race he knows are cut-throats all).
Another minding not, or else not hearing,
Pulls by the legs a polypus.[583] A third
With saucy carelessness replies, ‘Four oboli,
That’s just the price. For this no less than eight.
Take it or leave it!’”[584]
-----
Footnote 583:
Cf. Chandler, ii. 143. Plin. Hist. Nat. ix. 45, seq.
Footnote 584:
Athen. vi. 5.
-----
Alexis, too, that most comic of comic writers, seems to have imagined,
that the humour of his pieces would be incomplete without a spice of the
fishmonger. Commencing, like Amphis, with an allusion to the haughty
airs of military men, he glides into his subject as follows:—
However, this is still endurable.
But when a paltry fishfag will look big,
Cast down his eyes affectedly, or bend
His eyebrows upwards like a fullstrained bow,
I burst with rage. Demand what price he asks
For—say two mullets; and he answers straight
“Ten obols”—“Ten? That’s dear: will you take eight?”
“Yes, if one fish will serve you.”—“Friend, no jokes;
I am no subject for your mirth.”—“Pass on, Sir!
And buy elsewhere.”—Now tell me is not this
Bitterer than gall?[585]
-----
Footnote 585:
Athen. vi. 5.
-----
But if the reader should be disposed to infer from these testimonies
that the fishmongering race were saucy only at Athens, he will be in
danger of falling into error. Throughout the ancient world they were the
same, and we fear that should any poor devil from Grub-street, or the
_Quartier Latin_, presume to dispute respecting the price of salmon with
one of their cockney or Parisian descendants, he would meet with little
more politeness. At all events their manners had not improved in the
Eternal city,[586] for it is _a propos_ of the Roman fishfags that
Athenæus brings forward his examples of like insolence elsewhere. The
poet Diphilos would appear, like Archestratos, to have travelled in
search of good fish and civil fishmongers, but his labours were
fruitless; he might as well have peregrinated the world in the hope of
finding that island where soles are caught ready-fried in the sea. Such
at least is the tenour of his own complaint:
Troth, in my greener days I had some notion
That here at Athens only, rogues sold fish;
But everywhere, it seems, like wolf or fox,
The race is treacherous by nature found.
However, we have one scamp in the agora
Who beats all others hollow. On his head
A most portentous fell of hair nods thick
And shades his brow. Observing your surprise,
He has his reasons pat; it grows forsooth
To form, when shorn, an offering to some god!
But that’s a feint, ’tis but to hide the scars
Left by the branding iron upon his forehead.
But, passing that, you ask perchance the price
Of a sea-wolf—“Ten oboli”—very good.
You count the money. “Oh not those,” he cries,
“Æginetan I meant.” Still you comply.
But if you trust him with a larger piece,
And there be change to give; mark how the knave
Now counts in Attic coin, and thus achieves
A two-fold robbery in the same transaction![587]
-----
Footnote 586:
Deipnosoph. vi. 4.
Footnote 587:
Athen. vi. 6.
-----
Xenarchos paints a little scene of ingenious roguery with a comic
extravagance altogether Shakespearian, and incidentally throws light on
a curious law of Athens, enacted to protect the citizens against
stinking fish.[588] The power of invention, he observes—willing to kill
two birds with one stone—had totally deserted the poets in order to take
up with the fishmongers; for while the former merely hashed up old
ideas, the latter were always hitting upon new contrivances to poison
the Demos:
Commend me for invention to the rogue
Who sells fish in the agora. He knows
In fact there’s no mistaking,—that the law
Clearly and formally forbids the trick
Of reconciling stale fish to the nose
By constant watering. But if some poor wight
Detect him in the fact, forthwith he picks
A quarrel, and provokes his man to blows.
He wheels meanwhile about his fish, looks sharp
To catch the nick of time, reels, feigns a hurt:
And prostrate falls, just in the right position.
A friend placed there on purpose, snatches up
A pot of water, sprinkles a drop or two,
For form’s sake on his face, but by mistake,
As you must sure believe, pours all the rest
Full on the fish, so that almost you might
Consider them fresh caught.[589]
-----
Footnote 588:
The longer to preserve fish fresh, the Orientals sometimes cover them
with a coating of wax. Mullets, caught at Damietta, are sent, thus
preserved, throughout the Turkish Empire, as well as to different
parts of Europe. Pococke’s Description of the East.
Footnote 589:
Our readers will probably remember the good old Italian marchioness,
who having, perhaps, been cajoled, by the blarney of some Hibernian
peripatetic, into the purchase of a pair of strong-odoured soles,
recommended to our magistrates the adoption of an ordinance passed, as
she affirmed, by his grace of Tuscany. In that prince’s territories,
she assured their worships, the man who has fish to sell, must
transact business standing on one leg in a bucket of hot water, a
practice undoubtedly calculated to induce despatch and prevent
haggling. This Tuscan enactment might evidently have been adopted with
great advantage at Athens, where, however, legislation proceeded on
exactly the same principles, and attained in this point an almost
equal degree of perfection.
-----
By a law passed at the instance of the wealthy Aristonicos, himself no
doubt an ichthyophagos, the penalty of imprisonment was decreed against
all those who, having named a price for their fish, should take less, in
order that they might at once demand what was just and no more. In
consequence of this enactment, an old woman or a child might be sent to
the fish-market, without danger of being cheated. According to another
provision of this Golden Law, as it is termed by Alexis, fishmongers
were compelled to stand at their stalls and not to sit as had previously
been the custom. The comic poet, in the fulness of his charity,
expresses a hope that they might be all _suspended_ aloft on the
following year, by which means, he says, they would get a quicker sight
of their customers, and carry on their dealings with mankind from a
machine like the gods of tragedy.[590]
-----
Footnote 590:
Athen. vi. 8.
-----
In consequence no doubt of the perpetually increasing demand, fish was
extremely dear at Athens. Accordingly Diphilos, addressing himself to
Poseidon, who, as god of the sea, was god also of its inhabitants,
informs him that, could he but secure the tithe of fish, he would soon
become the wealthiest divinity in Olympos. Among those who distinguished
themselves in this business in the agora, and apparently became rich, it
is probable that many were metoiki, such as Hermæos, the Egyptian, and
Mikion, who, though his country is not mentioned, was probably not an
Athenian. In proportion as they grew opulent, the gourmands on whom they
preyed became poor, and doubtless there was too much truth in the satire
which represented men dissipating their whole fortunes in the
frying-pan. There were those also it seems who spent their evenings on
the highway, in order to furnish their daily table with such dainties.
For this fact we have the satisfactory testimony of Alexis in his
Heiress:
Mark you a fellow who, however scant
In all things else, hath still wherewith to purchase
Cod, eel, or anchovies, be sure i’ the dark
He lies about the road in wait for travellers.
If therefore you’ve been robbed o’ernight, just go
At peep of dawn to th’ agora and seize
The first athletic, ragged vagabond
Who cheapens eels of Mikion. He, be sure,
And none but he’s the thief: to prison with him![591]
-----
Footnote 591:
Athen. vi. 10. 12.
-----
They had at Corinth a pretty strict police regulation on this subject.
When any person was observed habitually to purchase fish, he was
interrogated by the authorities respecting his means. If found to be a
man of property they suffered him to do what he pleased with his own;
but, in the contrary event, he received a gentle hint that the state had
its eye upon him. The neglect of this admonition was followed, in the
first place, by a fine, and ultimately, if persevered in, by a
punishment equivalent to the treadmill.[592] These matters were in
Athens submitted to the cognizance of two or three magistrates, called
Opsonomoi, nominated by the Senate.[593] With respect to the purchase of
this class of viands, everywhere attended with peculiar difficulties, it
may be said, that the ancients had considerably the advantage of us;
since in Lynceus of Samos’s “Fish-buyer’s Manual,” they possessed a sure
guide through all the intricacies of bargaining in the agora.
-----
Footnote 592:
Diphilos apud Athen. vi. 12.
Footnote 593:
Athen. vi. 72.
-----
But before we proceed further with this part of our subject, we will
demand permission of Lynceus to hear what Hesiod has to say of saltfish,
on which Euthydemos, the Athenian, composed a separate treatise.
According to this poet, who boldly speaks of cities erected long after
his death, immense quantities of fish were salted on the Bosporos,
sometimes entire, as in modern times,[594] sometimes cut into gobbets of
a moderate size. Among these were the oxyrinchos whose taste proved
often fatal, the thunny, and the mackerel. The little city of Parion
furnished the best kolias (a kind of mackerel), and the Tarentine
merchants brought to Athens pickled orcynos from Cadiz, cut into small
triangular pieces, in jars.[595] Physicians, indeed, inveighed against
these relishes; but the gourmands would consult only their palates and
preferred a short life with pickled thunny to that of Saturn himself on
beef and mutton.
-----
Footnote 594:
Herod. iv. 53.
Footnote 595:
Athen. iii. 84.
-----
But the Hesiod of Euthydemos (a creation probably of his own) is but
very poor authority compared with Archestratos, who made the pilgrimage
of the world in search of good cheer, and afterwards, for the benefit of
posterity, treasured up his experience in a grand culinary epic. In his
opinion a slice of Sicilian thunny was a rare delicacy, while the
saperda, though brought from the Pontos Euxinos, he held as cheap as
those who boasted of it.[596] The scombros, by some supposed to be a
species of thunny, though others understand by it the common mackerel,
stood high in the estimation of this connoisseur. He directs that it be
left in salt three days, and eaten before it begins to melt into
brine.[597] In his estimation the horaion[598] of Byzantium was likewise
a great delicacy, which he advises the traveller, who might pass through
that city, to taste by all means. It seems to have been there what
macaroni is at Naples.
-----
Footnote 596:
Athen. iii. 85.
Footnote 597:
Athen. iii. 85. The Scomber Pelamys or mackerel of Pallas, caught in
the Black Sea, is pickled in casks and not eaten for a twelvemonth.
Travels in Southern Russia, iv. 242.
Footnote 598:
Poterant ὡραῖα nominari, ut _vere_ vel initio æstatis salita, quo
tempore minus pinguis totus piscis esset. Schweigh. Animadv. in Athen.
iii. 85. t. vii. 313. Cf. Plin. Nat. Hist. xxxii. 53. Gesner, De
Salsamentis.
-----
Alexis, in one of his comedies, introduces the Symposiarch of an Eranos
(president of a picnic) accounting with one of the subscribers who comes
to demand back his ring, and in the course of the dialogue, where
something like Falstaff’s tavern-bill is discussed, we find the prices
of several kinds of salt-fish. An omotarichos (shoulder piece of thunny)
is charged at five chalci; a dish of sea-mussels, seven chalci, of
sea-urchins, an obol, a slice of kybion, three obols, a conger eel, ten,
and another plate of broiled fish, a drachma. This comic writer[599]
rates the fish of the Nile very low, and he is quite right, for they are
generally muddy and ill-tasted, though the Copts, who have considerable
experience during Lent, contrive, by the application of much
Archestratic skill, to render some kinds of them palatable. Sophocles,
in a fragment of his lost drama of Phineus, speaks of salt-fish embalmed
like an Egyptian mummy.[600] Stock-fish, as I know to my cost, is still
a fashionable dish in the Mediterranean, especially on board ship, and
from a proverb preserved by Athenæus we find it was likewise in use
among the Athenians.[601]
-----
Footnote 599:
Ap. Athen. iii. 86. Cf. Herod. ii. 77.
Footnote 600:
Athen. iii. 86.
Footnote 601:
Deipnosoph. iii. 89.
-----
The passion of this refined people for salt-fish furnished them with an
occasion of showing their gratitude publicly. They bestowed the rights
of citizenship on the sons of Chæriphilos, a metoikos who first
introduced among them a knowledge of this sort of food.[602] A similar
feeling prompted the Dutch to erect a statue to G. Bukel, the man who
taught them to salt herrings.[603]
-----
Footnote 602:
Athen. iii. 90.
Footnote 603:
Goguet, Origine des Loix, i. 254.
-----
Without enumerating a tenth part of the other species eaten among the
Greeks, we pass to the shell-fish, of which they were likewise great
amateurs. Epicharmos, in his marriage of Hebe, supplies a curious list,
which, however, might be extended almost ad infinitum. Among these were
immense limpets, the buccinum, the cecibalos, the tethynakion, the
sea-acorn, the purple fish, oysters hard to open but easy to swallow,
mussels, sea-snails or periwinkles, skiphydria sweet to taste but
prickly to touch, large shelled razor-fish, the black conch, and the
amathitis. The conch was also called tellinè as the same poet in his
Muses observes. Alcæos wrote a song to the limpet beginning with
“Child of the rock and hoary sea.”[604]
-----
Footnote 604:
Athen. iii. 30, 31. Cf. Scheigh. Animadv. t. vii. p. 68, sqq.
-----
Boys used to make a sort of whistle of tortoise and mussel shells. These
mussels were usually broiled on the coals, and Aristophanes, very
ingenious in his similes, compares a gaping silly fellow to a mussel in
the act of being cooked.[605]
-----
Footnote 605:
Fragm. Babylon. 2. Brunck. Athen. iii. 33.
-----
Like the sepia, of which excellent pilaus are made at Alexandria, the
porphyra or purple fish was very good eating, and thickened the liquor
in which it was boiled.[606] There was a small delicate shell-fish
caught on the island of Pharos and adjacent coasts of Egypt, which they
called Aphrodite’s ear,[607] and there is still found on the same coast
near Canopos a diminutive and beautiful rose-coloured conch called
Venus’s nipple. On the same shore, about the rise of the Nile, that
species of mussel called tellinè was caught in great abundance, but the
best-tasted were said to be found in the river itself. A still finer
kind were in season about autumn in the vicinity of Ephesos. The
echinos, or sea-chestnut,[608] cooked with oxymel, parsley, and mint,
was esteemed good and wholesome eating. Those caught about Cephalonia,
Icaria, and Achaia were bitterish, those of Sicily laxative; the best
were the red and the quince coloured. A laughable anecdote is told of a
Spartan, who being invited to dine where sea-chestnuts were brought to
table, took one upon his plate, and not knowing how they were eaten put
it into his mouth, shell and all. Finding it exceedingly unmanageable,
he turned it about for some time, seeking slowly and cautiously to
discover the knack of eating it. But the rough and prickly shell still
resisting his efforts, his temper grew ruffled: crunching it fiercely he
exclaimed, “Detestable beast! Well! I will not let thee go now, after
having thus ground thee to pieces; but assuredly I will never touch thee
again.”
-----
Footnote 606:
Athen. iii. 30. During their long fasts the modern Greeks also eat the
cuttle-fish, snails, &c. Chandler, ii. 143.
Footnote 607:
Athen. iii. 35.
Footnote 608:
Athen. iii. 40. The taking of this fish at Sunium is thus described by
Chandler: “Meanwhile our sailors, except two or three who accompanied
us, stripped to their drawers to bathe, all of them swimming and
diving remarkably well; some running about on the sharp rocks with
their naked feet, as if devoid of feeling, and some examining the
bottom of the clear water for the Echinus or sea-chestnut, a species
of shell-fish common on this coast, and now in perfection, the moon
being nearly at the full.” Vol. ii. p. 8.
-----
Oysters were esteemed good when boiled with mallows, or monks’
rhubarb.[609] In general, however, the physicians of antiquity
considered them hard of digestion. But lest the shelled-fish should
usurp more space than is their due, we shall conclude with Archestratos’
list, in which he couples with each the name of the place where the best
were caught:
For mussels you must go to Ænos; oysters
You’ll find best at Abydos. Parion
Rejoices in its urchins; but if cockles
Gigantic and sweet-tasted you would eat,
A voyage must be made to Mitylene,
Or the Ambracian Gulf, where they abound
With many other dainties. At Messina,
Near to the Faro, are pelorian conchs,
Nor are those bad you find near Ephesos;
For Tethyan oysters, go to Chalcedon;
But for the Heralds,[610] may Zeus overwhelm them
Both in the sea and in the agora!
Aye, all except my old friend Agathon,
Who in the midst of Lesbian vineyards dwells.[611]
-----
Footnote 609:
Demet. Scep. ap. Athen. iii. 41.
Footnote 610:
The κήρυξ, ceryx, so called because the Heralds (κήρυκες) used its
shell instead of a trumpet, when making proclamation of any decree in
the agora.
Footnote 611:
Athen. iii. 44. Cf. Polluc. vi. 47. The ancients made the most of
their fish in every way. They were hawked about the streets in
rush-baskets, as with us.—Athen. vii. 72.
-----
We have already mentioned the magnificent eels of Lake Copais,[612] in
Bœotia, a longing for which appears to have been Aristophanes’s chief
motive for desiring an end to the Peloponnesian war. Next in excellence
were those caught in the river Strymon, and the Faro of Messina.[613]
The ellops, by some supposed to be the sword-fish,[614] was found in
greatest perfection near Syracuse; at least, in the opinion of
Archestratos; but Varro and Pliny give the preference to that of Rhodes,
and others to that of the Pamphylian sea.[615] The red mullet, the
hepsetos, the hepatos, the elacaten, the thunny, the hippouros, the
hippos, or sea-horse, found in perfection on the shores[616] of
Phœnicia, the ioulis, the kichlè, or sea-thrush, the sea-boar, the
citharos, the kordylos, the river cray-fish, the shark, which was eaten
when young, the mullet, the coracinos, the carp, the gudgeon, the
sea-cuckoo, the sea-wolf, the latos, the leobatos, or smooth ray, the
lamprey,[617] the myræna, the anchovy,[618] the black tail, the torpedo,
the mormyros, the orphos, the onos, the polypus, the crab, the
sea-perch, the physa, or sea-tench, the raphis, the sea-dog,[619] the
scaros, the sparos, the scorpios, the salpe, or stock-fish, the synodon,
the sauros, the scepinos, or halibut, the sciaina, the syagris, the
sphyræna, the sepia, the tœnia, the skate, the cuttle-fish, the hyca,
the phagros, the perca cabrilla, the chromis, the gilthead, the
trichidon, the thratta, and the turbot;[620] such is a list of the fish
in common use among the Greeks. The species it will be seen has not in
many cases been ascertained.
-----
Footnote 612:
Sch. Aristoph. Acharn. 845. Lysist. 36. There were in the fountain at
Arethusa, as we are told by the philosophical Plutarch, eels that
understood their own names.—Solert. Anim. § 23.
Footnote 613:
Archestratos gives the preference over all other eels to those caught
in the Faro of Messina. Athen. vii. 53. Very excellent and large eels
are taken in the lake of Korion, in Crete, according to the testimony
of Buondelmonte. Pashley, i. 72.
Footnote 614:
On the sword-fish fishery in the Strait of Messina, see Spallanzani’s
Travels in the Two Sicilies, vol. iv. p. 331, sqq.
Footnote 615:
Athen. vii. 57. Animadv. t. ix. p. 220.
Footnote 616:
The finest prawns were taken at Minturnæ, on the coast of Campania,
exceeding in size those of Smyrna, and the crabs (ἀστακοὶ) of
Alexandria.—Athen. i. 12.
Footnote 617:
See on Crassus’s lamprey. Plut. Solert. Animal. § 23.
Footnote 618:
Esteemed a delicacy cooked with leeks. Aristoph. Vesp. 494. Cf.
Acharn. 901. Av. 76.
Footnote 619:
See Spallanzani’s Travels in the Two Sicilies, vol. iv. p. 343, sqq.
Footnote 620:
Athen. vii. 16–39. Aristot. Hist. Anim. iv. 2–6. viii. 3, 4, 5, 16.
-----