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]

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]

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?

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.

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]

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.

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]

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.

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]

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, recallsrecalls 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.

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]

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:—