Ancient Greek Foodstuffs

In Greek dining during the Classical Period (c. 500 – 323 BC), food was divided into two broad categories. Sitos was the grain–the bread, porridge or maza that formed the basis of the meal. In hard times sitos could be a meal on its own; in the play Eirēnē (“Peace”), Aristophanes describes a prisoner as “eating nothing but barley”, a Greek equivalent of our phrase “bread and water.” But most of the time, you would want your sitos with something tastier to go with it. This is where the other broad food category, opson, comes in. Opson is often translated into English as “relish“, but it covers a broad range of dishes, from vegetables and cheese to fish and meat. Containing ingredients that were more costly and less common overall, opson dishes were cherished and celebrated.

Because it was considered the more pleasurable part of any meal, opson was the subject of some anxiety among ancient Greek moralists, who coined the term opsophagia to describe the vice of those who took too much opson with their sitos. Although any kind of complement to the staple, even salt, could be categorized as opson, the term was also commonly used to refer to the most esteemed kind of relish: fish. Hence a diminutive of opson, opsarion (ὀψάριον), provides the modern Greek word for fish: psari (ψάρι), and the term opsophagos, literally 'opson-eater', is almost always used by classical authors to refer to men who are fanatical about seafood, e.g. Philoxenus of Leucas.

The central focus of Greek personal morality on self-control made opsophagia a matter of concern for moralists and satirists in the classical period. The complicated semantics of the word opson and its derivatives made the word a matter of concern for Atticists during the Second Sophistic.

Bread

Cereals formed the staple diet. The two main grains were wheat (σῖτος sitos) and barley. Wheat grains were softened by soaking, then either reduced into gruel, or ground into flour (ἀλείατα aleiata) and kneaded and formed into loaves (ἄρτος artos) or flatbreads, either plain or mixed with cheese or honey. Leavening was known; the Greeks later used an alkali (νίτρον nitron) or wine yeast as leavening agent. Dough loaves were baked at home in a clay oven (ἰπνός ipnos) set on legs. A simpler method consisted in putting lighted coals on the floor and covering the heap with a dome-shaped cover (πνιγεὐς pnigeus); when it was hot enough, the coals were swept aside, dough loaves were placed on the warm floor, the cover was put back in place and the coals were gathered on the side of the cover. The stone oven did not appear until the Roman period. Solon, an Athenian lawmaker of the 6th century BCE, prescribed that leavened bread be reserved for feast days. By the end of the 5th century BC, leavened bread was sold at the market, though it was expensive.

Barley was easier to produce but more difficult to make bread from. It provided a nourishing but very heavy bread. Because of this it was often roasted before milling, producing a coarse flour (ἄλφιτα alphita) which was used to make μᾶζα maza, the basic Greek dish. In Peace, Aristophanes employs the expression ἔσθειν κριθὰς μόνας, literally "to eat only barley", with a meaning equivalent to the English "diet of bread and water". Many recipes for maza are known; it could be served cooked or raw, as a broth, or made into dumplings or flatbreads. Like wheat breads, it could also be augmented with cheese or honey.

Bread was made with help of a conventional baking process. The two most widely used ingredients for these bread recipes were:

• Wheat
• Barley

Wheat

The Greeks could grow emmer wheat and barley, but those didn't make great bread. It is thought 90% of cereal production was barley. Barley and emmer could be used for soups, stews, and porridges. Bread was often barley cakes or flat bread. Barley cakes were called "maza." The Romans called the Greeks "barley eaters." Greece wasn't a great place to grow durum wheat, which is higher in gluten and better for bread making. It was imported. Consequently, wheat flour was very late to come along as a food item.

Barley:  Health Food Grain of the Greeks

The ancient Greeks considered barley to be the healthiest grain, although they used a wide variety of other whole grains, including wheat, rye and millet.  Because of its soft, soothing emollient nature, being completely devoid of any roughness or astringency, Hippocrates prescribed barley gruel, or ptisan, of various consistencies, to those on fasts or cleansing diets, or to those convalescing from debilitating disease.

Traditional recipes for Greek country style bread usually include a sizable portion of barley flour, along with wheat and rye flour. Barley was also baked into rusks, which are hard, dry rectangular biscuits, similar to zweiback bread, that are eaten along with other food.

The ancient Greeks also had a drink called Kykeon (see below), which was like a quick liquid meal, somewhat like a nutritional shake or smoothie would be today. Its base was a soupy barley gruel, not unlike ptisan, to which a number of other things, such as herbs, greens, vegetables, or even medicines could be added.  In short, the barley gruel would serve as a vehicle for many other things; the Greeks would quickly quaff it down and be on their way.

Kykeon - The Greeks drank kykeon (κυκεών, from κυκάω kykaō, "to shake, to mix"), which was both a beverage and a meal. It was a barley gruel, to which water and herbs were added. In the Iliad, the beverage also contained grated goat cheese. In the Odyssey, Circe adds honey and a magic potion to it. In the Homeric Hymn to Demeter, the goddess refuses red wine but accepts a kykeon made of water, flour, and pennyroyal. Used as a ritual beverage in the Eleusinian Mysteries, it was also a popular beverage, especially in the countryside: Theophrastus, in his Characters, describes a boorish peasant as having drunk much kykeon and inconveniencing the Assembly with his bad breath. It also had a reputation as a good digestive, and as such, in Peace, Hermes recommends it to the main character who has eaten too much dried fruit.

Modern medical research has shown barley to have a number of nutritional benefits.  It is rich in a certain type of soluble fiber called beta glucan that lowers blood cholesterol and reduces the risk for coronary heart disease; it also helps diabetics lower and manage their blood sugar levels.  Other valuable nutrients that barley has in abundance are niacin (B3), thiamine (B1), selenium, iron, magnesium, zinc, phosphorous and copper. 

Vegetables

The cereals were often served accompanied by what was generically referred to as ὄψον opson, "relish". The word initially meant anything prepared on the fire, and, by extension, anything which accompanied bread. In the classical period it came to refer to fruit and vegetables: cabbage, onions, lentils, sweet peas, chickpeas, broad beans, garden peas, grass peas, etc. They were eaten as a soup, boiled or mashed (ἔτνος etnos), seasoned with olive oil, vinegar, herbs or γάρον gáron, a fish sauce similar to Vietnamese nước mắm. According to Aristophanes, mashed beans were a favourite dish of Heracles, always represented as a glutton in comedies. Poor families ate oak acorns (βάλανοι balanoi). Raw or preserved olives were a common appetizer.

In the cities, fresh vegetables were expensive: the poorer city dwellers had to make do with dried vegetables. Lentil soup (φακῆ phakē) was the workman's typical dish. Cheese, garlic and onions were the soldier's traditional fare. In Peace, the smell of onions typically represents soldiers; the chorus, celebrating the end of war, sings Oh! joy, joy! no more helmet, no more cheese nor onions! Bitter vetch was considered a famine food.

We often tend to believe that ancient Greece, being mostly mountainous regions and barren islands, would have a very less choice of vegetables. However, the ancient food recipes were highly innovative and made use of a huge range of vegetables

Legumes

Even though there was sparse presence of legume plants in these regions, ancient food recipes made very good use of all the available legumes. Literature and scholarly writing indicated that the legumes cultivated in Greco-Roman areas were:

• chickpeas (Cicer arietinumI L.)
• fava beans (Vicia faba L.)
• lentils (Lens culinaris Medikus)
• peas (Pisum sativum L.), lupins (Lupin spp.)
• cowpea (Vigna unguicolata) (see for instance L. Iunius Moderatus Columella, De Re Rustica 2.7.1.2).

The cowpea was certainly present in Italy since the Greco-Roman times as also evidenced in the De re coquinaria.

Lupin, lupine or lupini beans. The yellow, flat, round beans somewhat resemble lima beans and have a sweet, nutty flavor and firm, hearty texture. Originally, all lupini beans were very bitter and required extensive soaking to remove the bitterness and make them safe to eat due to their toxicity. More recent varieties — classified as “sweet” — are less bitter and require less soaking. Lupini beans originated in the Middle East and date back before Ancient Rome.

Fruits & Nuts

Fruits, fresh or dried, and nuts, were eaten as dessert. Important fruits were figs, raisins and pomegranates. Dried figs were also eaten as an appetizer or when drinking wine. In the latter case, they were often accompanied by grilled chestnuts, chick peas, and beechnuts.

As mentioned above, their food also consisted of different types of fruit. Greece being a Mediterranean region, had a very good variety of fruit production and also cultivation.

We know that the ancient Greeks loved to eat mashed dried figs mixed with honey and nuts with cups of strong sweet wine... Traditionally they are washed with seawater and dried on the ground in the hot sun. Dates, rich in energy-giving sugar, were regarded by many ancient cultures as sacred. They dry perfectly in the desert sun and can be eaten fresh, fried, or ground into meal to make cakes. The Romans also loved to eat chewy dried foods. They grew to many varieties that Lucius Columella, the first-century author of De Re Rustica, declared they were too numerous to catalog

The earliest kind of jam making...dates back to pre-Roman times, when fruit pulp was mixed with honey and spices and dried in the sun. In the first century AD, Greeks made a preserve, using their abundant crops of quinces, by stuffing pieces of peeled and pipped raw fruit tightly into jars filled with honey. After a year the fruit became soft as wine-honey'. This Greek quince preserve was called melomeli' (apple: melo, in honey: meli). The Romans later reversed the words into melimela' and improved the preserve by cooking the fruit in the honey with pepper and spices and sealing the jars to make them airtight. Quinces had a high pectin content so that when cooked, preserves made with them would have had a very solid texture. Pectin is a vital ingredient for successful jelly and jam making.

Quince - Oribasius gives this from Galen (129 ce, Pergamum - c. 216) or quince:

Take out the seeds, pour in honey, completely cover the fruit with flour dough and then put it in the coals until the dough is burned: then take off the dough, the fruit is entirely cooked and it has absorbed all the honey.

Rutilius Taurus Aemilianus Palladius, also known as Palladius Rutilius Taurus Aemilianus or most often just as Palladius, was an ancient writer who wrote in Latin, and is dated variously to the later 4th century or first half of the 5th century AD. He is principally known for his book on agriculture, Opus agriculturae, sometimes known as De re rustica. Palladius offers a rather spicy recipe for quince jelly (which, in its milder form, is known as cotignac in France) or, alternately, a kind of spicy, sweet-and-sour quince syrup:

Peel ripe quince, cut them into very fine slices, and discard the hard parts at the center. Then boil these fruits in honey until reduced by half, sprinkling them with fine pepper during the cooking. Other recipe: Mix together two sexters of quince juice, one and a half of vinegar and two of honey; boil this mixture until it is as thick as pure honey; add to it two ounces of ground pepper and ginger.

Quinces were used in a variety of preparations (often with honey), such as jams, conserves, syrup, or fermented into a wine. When packed in honey, the resulting preserve was known as mêlomeli (μηλόμελι, ‘apple/quince honey’). The first-century botanist Dioscorides said that it was prepared by deseeding quinces and then fully immersing them in honey; after a year, the mixture becomes smooth and resembles wine mixed with honey.

Meat

The consumption of fish and meat varied in accordance with the wealth and location of the household; in the country, hunting (primarily trapping) allowed for consumption of birds and hares. Peasants also had farmyards to provide them with chickens and geese. Slightly wealthier landowners could raise goats, pigs, or sheep. In the city, meat was expensive except for pork. In Aristophanes' day a piglet cost three drachmas, which was three days wages for a public servant. Sausages were common both for the poor and the rich.

In the 8th century BCE Hesiod describes the ideal country feast in Works and Days:

"But at that time let me have a shady rock and Bibline wine, a clot of curds and milk of drained goats with the flesh of a heifer fed in the woods, that has never calved, and of firstling kids; then also let me drink bright wine…"

Meat is much less prominent in texts of the 5th century BCE onwards than in the earliest poetry, but this may be a matter of genre rather than real evidence of changes in farming and food customs. The eating of fresh meat was accompanied by a religious ritual in which the gods' share (fat and bones) was burnt while the human share (meat) was grilled and distributed to the participants; there was however a lively trade in cooked and salted meats, which demanded no ritual.

Spartans primarily ate pork stew, the "black broth (μέλας ζωμός melas zōmos). According to Plutarch, it was "so much valued that the elderly men fed only upon that, leaving what flesh there was to the younger". It was famous amongst the Greeks. "Naturally Spartans are the bravest men in the world", joked a Sybarite, "anyone in his senses would rather die ten thousand times than take his share of such a sorry diet". It was made with pork, salt, vinegar and blood. The dish was served with maza, figs and cheese sometimes supplemented with game and fish. The 2nd–3rd century author Aelian, claims that Spartan cooks were prohibited from cooking anything other than meat.

Meat also formed a very important part of their diet, and was often produced by hunting the animals instead of slaughtering them.

Fish

In the Greek islands and on the coast, fresh fish and seafood (squid, octopus, and shellfish) were common. They were eaten locally but more often transported inland. Sardines and anchovies were regular fare for the citizens of Athens. They were sometimes sold fresh, but more frequently salted. A stele of the late 3rd century BCE from the small Boeotian city of Akraiphia, on Lake Copais, provides us with a list of fish prices. The cheapest was skaren (probably parrotfish) whereas northern bluefin tuna was three times as expensive. Common salt water fish were yellowfin tuna, red mullet, ray, swordfish or sturgeon, a delicacy which was eaten salted. Lake Copais itself was famous in all Greece for its eels, celebrated by the hero of The Acharnians. Other fresh water fish were pike-fish, carp and the less appreciated catfish.

As Greece was principally a coastal region, marine animals became an important part of the diet of the Greek people.

Eggs and dairy products

Greeks bred quails and hens, partly for their eggs. Some authors also praise pheasant eggs and Egyptian Goose eggs, which were presumably rather rare. Whites, yolks and whole eggs were also used as ingredients in the preparation of dishes. Eggs were cooked soft- or hard-boiled as hors d'œuvre or dessert. Eggs were boiled (“pnikta” or “hemipagea”), and fried with milk and cheese as a “oothrion”, meaning omelette.

Country dwellers drank milk (γάλα gala), but it was seldom used in cooking. Butter (βούτυρον bouturon) was known but seldom used either: Greeks saw it as a culinary trait of the Thracians of the northern Aegean coast, whom the Middle Comic poet Anaxandrides dubbed "butter eaters". Yet Greeks enjoyed other dairy products. Πυριατή Pyriatē, was a kind of thick milk, commonly mistaken as yogurt. Most of all, goat's and ewe's cheese (τυρός) tyros) was a staple food. Fresh and hard cheese were sold in different shops; the former cost about two thirds of the latter's price. The ancient Greeks ate the following variety of cheeses: the soft cheese of Sicily (“trofalis”), cream cheese (“chloros tyros”), soft cheese of goat’s milk (“tromalikos tyros”), spicy cheese with fig juice (“pias”), crushed cheese with pepper (“koptos tyros”).

Cheese was eaten alone or with honey or vegetables. It was also used as an ingredient in the preparation of many dishes, including fish dishes. The only extant recipe by the Sicilian cook Mithaecus runs: "Tainia: gut, discard the head, rinse and fillet; add cheese and olive oil". However, the addition of cheese seems to have been a controversial matter; Archestratus warns his readers that Syracusan cooks spoil good fish by adding cheese.

Herbs and Spices

The food recipes were seasoned with many different herbs and spices.

• Pepper
• Dill
• Salt
• Thyme
• Saffron
• Coriander
• Mint
• Oregano

Honey: Food of the Gods

Greece and other Balkan countries like Romania have always been famous for their honey and honeybee products, like pollen, beeswax, royal jelly and propolis.  The ancient Greeks claim to have originated beekeeping and honey production, but this seems dubious, as the ancient Egyptians were using honey for food and medicine long before the Greeks.

The solemn and prominent part honey played in the history of Greece is conclusively proven by its mythology. Ambrosia, the food, and nectar, the drink of the gods, were made of honey. The Iliad (XI. 630) refers to honey as the food of kings. The honey of Mt. Hymettus was a daily food of Athens. This mountain was covered with odoriferous wild flowers, principally thyme, and the air was scented with the fragrance of the blooms. The bees were partial to these hills. (It is singular that the population of ancient Greece, a maritime country par excellence, as fond as they were of honey, utterly neglected sea-food. Homer in the Iliad never mentions fish; in the Odyssey, Menelaus complains that he and his men were so hungry that they were compelled to eat fish.)

Ancient Attica, with its area of forty square miles, recorded twenty thousand hives during the time of Pericles (429 B.C.). All ancient Greek authors praised the medicinal and nutrimental value of Attic honey, "the crowning dish of all feasts." The oldest ruins in the rural districts of Greece are buildings which originally housed the hives. These stone edifices were built high, to outwit the cunning of the bears, arch enemies of bees and bosom friends of honey.

Honey is one of the basic ingredients in Greek cuisine, is used in breads, cakes and confections, and is recognized as a cornerstone of good nutrition.  In Greece, the best honey comes from the blossoms of Thyme, Lavender, Rosemary, Linden and Orange.

Hippocrates praised both the nutritional and therapeutic value of honey, and used it both as food and as medicine.  It is used in making Oxymel [a mixture of honey, water, and vinegar, boiled to a syrup, sometimes mixed with herbs or spices], as well as medicinal syrups, pills and jams, or electuaries.

Exotic Foods

Africa was the source of wheat and other products such as perfumed oils considered exotic. Wheat grew so well in Africa that it was considered one of Rome's three 'granaries.' North African snails were unrivaled in size and succulence. Several domesticated foods familiar in the classical world had originally come from here, namely the melon and guinea fowl.

Alexander the Great, was a king of Macedon, a state in northern ancient Greece. By the age of thirty, he had created one of the largest empires of the ancient world, stretching from the Ionian Sea to the Himalayas. He was undefeated in battle, and is considered one of history's most successful commanders. Born in Pella in 356 BC, Alexander was tutored by Aristotle until the age of 16. Alexander's legacy includes the cultural diffusion his conquests engendered. He founded some twenty cities that bore his name, most notably Alexandria, Egypt. Alexander's settlement of Greek colonists and the resulting spread of Greek culture in the east resulted in a new Hellenistic civilization, aspects of which were still evident in the traditions of the Byzantine Empire in the mid-15th century.

As the result of his compaigns, asafoetida became known to the Mediterranean world, and several edible plants that were previously unknown were recorded for the first time in The History of Plants compiled by Theophrastus, successor to Aristotle. These plants include citron, pistachio and peach.

"The ancient Greeks knew of rice. In fact, Theophrastus mentions it in his 300 B.C. work, Enquiry into Plants, but 18 centuries elapsed before rice became a part of the Greek table. Greeks began cooking with rice in the 15th and 16th centuries. As for the provenance of the grain itself, it is known with relative accuracy that the grain first grew in Persia. And it is in fact there that the first written mention of a dish similar to dolmades appears, in the diaries of a symposiast at one of the banquets of King Khusrow II at the start of the 7th century. There in short is the long and winding history of one of our favorite foods. We might claim it as our own, as every one of our neighbors does, but the dolma followed its own fateful path through history and time. It is a dish that belongs both to everyone and, alas, to no one." ---http://www.gourmed.gr/

Drink

The most widespread drink was water. Fetching water was a daily task for women. Though wells were common, spring water was preferred: it was recognized as nutritious because it caused plants and trees to grow, and also as a desirable beverage. Pindar called spring water "as agreeable as honey". The Greeks would describe water as robust, heavy or light, dry, acidic, pungent, wine-like, etc. One of the comic poet Antiphanes's characters claimed that he could recognize Attic water by taste alone. Athenaeus states that a number of philosophers had a reputation for drinking nothing but water, a habit combined with a vegetarian diet (cf. below). Milk, usually goats' milk, was not consumed. It was considered barbaric.

The usual drinking vessel was the skyphos, made out of wood, terra cotta, or metal. Critias also mentions the kothon, a Spartan goblet which had the military advantage of hiding the colour of the water from view and trapping mud in its edge. They also used a drinking vessel called a kylix (a shallow footed bowl), and for banquets the kantharos (a deep cup with handles) or the rhyton, a drinking horn often moulded into the form of a human or animal head.

Wine

The Greeks are thought to have made red as well as rosé and white wines. As at the present time, many qualities of production were to be found, from common table wine to vintage qualities. The best wines, in general opinion, came from Thásos, Lesbos and Chios. Cretan wine came to prominence later. A secondary wine made from water and pomace (the residue from squeezed grapes), mixed with lees, was made by country people for their own use. The Greeks sometimes sweetened their wine with honey and made medicinal wines by adding thyme, pennyroyal and other herbs. By the first century, if not before, they were familiar with wine flavoured with pine resin (modern retsina). Aelian also mentions a wine mixed with perfume. Cooked wine was known, as well as a sweet wine from Thásos, similar to port wine.

Wine was generally cut with water. The drinking of akraton or "unmixed wine", though known to be practised by northern barbarians and the Macedonians, was thought likely to lead to madness and death. Wine was mixed in a krater, from which the slaves would fill the drinker's kylix with an oinochoe (jugs). Wine was also used as a generic medication, being taken to have medicinal virtue. Aelian mentions that the wine from Heraia in Arcadia rendered men foolish but women fertile; conversely, Achaean wine was thought to induce abortion. Outside of these therapeutic uses, Greek society did not approve of women drinking wine; according to Aelian, a Massalian law prohibited this and restricted women to drinking water. Sparta was the only city where women routinely drank wine.

Wine reserved for local use was kept in skins. That destined for sale was poured into πίθοι pithoi, (large terra cotta jugs). From here they were decanted into amphoras sealed with pitch for retail sale. Vintage wines carried stamps from the producers and/or city magistrates who guaranteed their origin. This is one of the first instances of indicating the geographical or qualitative provenance of a product, and is the basis of the modern appellations d'origine contrôlées certification.

The maximum alcohol level that can be attained through fermentation is 16 percent and no technique practiced in ancient times made it possible to increase the alcohol level of wine above what was attained in fermentation.

Greek Thoughts on Food

Food played an important part in the Greek mode of thought. Classicist John Wilkins notes that "in the Odyssey for example, good men are distinguished from bad and Greeks from foreigners partly in terms of how and what they ate. Herodotus identified people partly in terms of food and eating".

Up to the 3rd century BCE, the frugality imposed by the physical and climatic conditions of the country was held as virtuous. The Greeks did not ignore the pleasures of eating, but valued simplicity. The rural writer Hesiod, as cited above, spoke of his "flesh of a heifer fed in the woods, that has never calved, and of firstling kids" as being the perfect closing to a day. Nonetheless, Chrysippus is quoted as saying that the best meal was a free one.

Culinary and gastronomical research was rejected as a sign of oriental flabbiness: the Persian Empire was considered decadent due to their luxurious taste, which manifested itself in their cuisine. The Greek authors took pleasure in describing the table of the Achaemenid Great King and his court: Herodotus, Clearchus of Soli, Strabo and Ctesias were unanimous in their descriptions.

In contrast, Greeks as a whole stressed the austerity of their own diet. Plutarch tells how the king of Pontus, eager to try the Spartan "black gruel", bought a Laconian cook; "but had no sooner tasted it than he found it extremely bad, which the cook observing, told him, "Sir, to make this broth relish, you should have bathed yourself first in the river Evrotas". According to Polyaenus, on discovering the dining hall of the Persian royal palace, Alexander the Great mocked their taste and blamed it for their defeat. Pausanias, on discovering the dining habits of the Persian commander Mardonius, equally ridiculed the Persians, "who having so much, came to rob the Greeks of their miserable living".

In consequence of this cult of frugality, and the diminished regard for cuisine it inspired, the kitchen long remained the domain of women, free or enslaved. In the classical period, however, culinary specialists began to enter the written record. Both Aelian and Athenaeus mention the thousand cooks who accompanied Smindyride of Sybaris on his voyage to Athens at the time of Cleisthenes, if only disapprovingly. Plato in Gorgias, mentions "Thearion the cook, Mithaecus the author of a treatise on Sicilian cooking, and Sarambos the wine merchant; three eminent connoisseurs of cake, kitchen and wine." Some chefs also wrote treatises on cuisine.

Over time, more and more Greeks presented themselves as gourmets. From the Hellenistic (from the death of Alexander in 323 B.C. until 31 B.C.) to the Roman period (under the Roman Empire, from 31 BC to 180 AD), the Greeks — at least the rich — no longer appeared to be any more austere than others. The cultivated guests of the feast hosted by Athenaeus in the 2nd or 3rd century devoted a large part of their conversation to wine and gastronomy. They discussed the merits of various wines, vegetables, and meats, mentioning renowned dishes (stuffed cuttlefish, red tuna belly, prawns, lettuce watered with mead) and great cooks such as Soterides, chef to king Nicomedes I of Bithynia (who reigned from the 279 to 250 BCE). When his master was inland, he pined for anchovies; Soterides simulated them from carefully carved turnips, oiled, salted and sprinkled with poppy seeds. Suidas (an encyclopaedia from the Byzantine period) mistakenly attributes this exploit to the celebrated Roman gourmet Apicius (1st century BCE) — which may be taken as evidence that the Greeks had reached the same level as the Romans.

Specific diets

Vegetarianism

Orphicism and Pythagoreanism, two common ancient Greek religions, suggested a different way of life, based on a concept of purity and thus purification (κάθαρσις katharsis) — a form of asceticism in the original sense: ἄσκησις askēsis initially signifies a ritual, then a specific way of life. Vegetarianism was a central element of Orphicism and of several variants of Pythagoreanism.

Empedocles (5th century BCE) justified vegetarianism by a belief in the transmigration of souls: who could guarantee that an animal about to be slaughtered did not house the soul of a human being? However, it can be observed that Empedocles also included plants in this transmigration, thus the same logic should have applied to eating them. Vegetarianism was also a consequence of a dislike for killing: "For Orpheus taught us rights and to refrain from killing".

The information from Pythagoras (6th century BCE) is more difficult to define. The Comedic authors such as Aristophon and Alexis described Pythagoreans as strictly vegetarian, with some of them living on bread and water alone. Other traditions contented themselves with prohibiting the consumption of certain vegetables, such as the broad bean, or of sacred animals such as the white cock or selected animal parts.

It follows that vegetarianism and the idea of ascetic purity were closely associated, and often accompanied by sexual abstinence. In On the eating of flesh, Plutarch (1st–2nd century) elaborated on the barbarism of blood-spilling; inverting the usual terms of debate, he asked the meat-eater to justify his choice.

The Neoplatonic Porphyrius (3rd century) associates in On Abstinence vegetarianism with the Cretan mystery cults, and gives a census of past vegetarians, starting with the semi-mythical Epimenides. For him, the origin of vegetarianism was Demeter's gift of wheat to Triptolemus so that he could teach agriculture to humanity. His three commandments were: "Honour your parents", "Honour the gods with fruit", and 'Spare the animals".

Athlete diets

Aelian claims that the first athlete to submit to a formal diet was Ikkos of Tarentum, a victor in the Olympic pentathlon (perhaps in 444 BC). However, Olympic wrestling champion (62nd through 66th Olympiads) Milo of Croton was already said to eat twenty pounds of meat and twenty pounds of bread and to drink eight quarts of wine each day. Before his time, athletes were said to practise ξηροφαγία xērophagía (from ξηρός xēros, "dry"), a diet based on dry foods such as dried figs, fresh cheese and bread. Pythagoras (either the philosopher or a gymnastics master of the same name) was the first to direct athletes to eat meat.

Trainers later enforced some standard diet rules: to be an Olympic victor, "you have to eat according to regulations, keep away from desserts (…); you must not drink cold water nor can you have a drink of wine whenever you want". It seems this diet was primarily based on meat, for Galen (ca. 180 AD) accused athletes of his day of "always gorging themselved on flesh and blood". Pausanias also refers to a "meat diet".

Bibliography

Athenaeus. The Deipnosophists. Edited and translated by C. B. Gulick. 7 vols. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1927–1941.

Dalby, Andrew. Siren Feasts: A History of Food and Gastronomy in Greece. London and New York: Routledge, 1996.

Dalby, Andrew, and Sally Grainger. The Classical Cookbook. London and Los Angeles: British Museum Press/John Paul Getty Museum Press, 1996.

Davidson, James. Courtesans and Fishcakes: The Consuming Passions of Classical Athens. London: Harper Collins, 1997.

Garnsey, Peter. Food and Society in Classical Antiquity. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1999. Valuable study guide, important on food shortages and food of the poor.

Murray, Oswyn, ed. Sympotica: A Symposium on the Symposion. Oxford.: Oxford University Press, 1990.

Olson, S. Douglas, and Alexander Sens. Archestratos of Gela; Greek Culture and Cuisine in the Fourth Century B.C.E.: Text, Translation and Commentary. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000.

Slater, William J., ed. Dining in a Classical Context. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1991.

Wilkins, John, et al., eds. Food in Antiquity. Exeter, U.K.: Exeter University Press, 1995