66 LCM18. 5 (May 1993) Wilkins on Food John Wilkins (Exeter): ECM 18.5 (May 1993), 66-74 The significance of food and eating in Greek Comedy A version of this paper was read at the Classical Association Conference at Warwick in 1991. 1 have benefitted from comments made there, and am particularly grateful to Professor Marilyn Skinner, Food plays an important part in the surviving plays of Aristophanes and in the hundreds of fragments preserved from lost plays by him and other comic poets of the fifth and fourth centuries B. C., The fourth century fragments are unrepresentative in this respect, since a major source for the ‘comic fragments is the Deipnosophistae of Athenaus of Naucratis, in which diners quote extracts, relevant to their meal from comedies and other authors. It is not possible to evaluate fully the place of food in fourth-century comedy, but its influence may have been large. This paper secks to trace the way in which food and eating came to be associated with, and increasingly important in ‘comedy. It is prompted by a statement on comic food by D. F. Sutton in ‘Aristophanes and the transition to Middle Comedy’, LCM 15. 6 Jun. 1990), 889 n. 19: “The endless discussion of food in Middle Comedy fragments, which doubtless strikes most modern readers as tedious and obsessive, if not downright disgusting, reflects (al new hedonism, But it probably also reflects a factor that was absent in the fifth century, the threat of famine that hovered over Athens during the fourth century’. Sutton’s puritanism is expressed with admirable frankness; it has led him, however, to a serious misunderstanding of the place of food in Greek culture, and in Greek comedy in particular. It is not immediately obvious that there is anything new in the fourth century food fragments: in many ways they resemble fragments of Epicharmus written a century earlier in a different city and different dramatic tradition. I begin with fragments from three lost comedies {quoted by Athenacus: the first, from Epicharmus, is Dorian comedy, performed in Syracuse, probably early in the fifth century. A god speaks. In the second, by Pherecrates, a woman reports on. food which she saw on a recent visit to the Underworld, possibly with the silver miners of LLaurium. The last fragment is one of the earliest references in Europe to a cookery book. The recipes are for aphrodisiacs. The play is Attic, written in the 390s by the comic poet Plato. 1. Epicharmus, The Marriage of Hebe, fr. 42 Kaibel yee 8€ ravroband xoyyika Aendéas, danébous, xpapi¢ous, xuvfdous, ™mddva, Krévia, Baddvous, moppipas, Gorpe.a cusuenixdra, rd bucket dv dv xaderd, xarapayhuey 6 eiuapéa, pias dvaplras re xdpucds re Kai oxipttpua, re yhnéa wev ev? énéotew, éumayiuer 8° dea, rots Te wakpoyoyyihous ounfas: d wélawd Te dynos, Anep oyxoimpav raoiv éorwadna Odrepar ¢ ydiar Kdyxot Te Kdyadlribes, ral xaxobéxyol re xnbavor, ras dvbpopacr(Sas adores dvfpunoi xalovd, dués &¢ detkas rot bec. He brings in shellfish of every kind, limpets, lobsters (2), crabs (2), owl-fish (2), sea-squitts, . . . barnacles, purple shells, oysters tightly shut — to open them is really difficult; to eat them pretty easy — mussels, sea-snails, trumpet-shells, the ‘sword-hydra’ shell — they are Sweet to cat but sharp when preserved — and the ong rounded razor shell; and the black shell whose gathering brings children their income. On the other side are land snails and sand snails which are poorly regarded and cheap and which all, ‘men call man-avoiders but we gods call whites.Wilkins on Food LCM 18.5 (May 1993) 67 2. Pherecrates, The Miners, fr. 108. 1-11 Kock mhobrue 8 éxetv’ fu ndvra oosnedypueva, ey ndaw dyabois mdvra tpSnov elpyaopéva® rorayol ev dédpns Kal wéhavos Capsod wréox bid Tav crevumav ToNgoduyobvTes: Eppeov adratow pvorlhac, kat vacrav rpidn, Sor etuaph ye xabroudrny riv évbcow xupetv Nerapdv KaTd 700 Adpuyyos Trois: vexpois. dooxa 88 al Céovres dMdvruv Tou rape rois rorayois alGovt’ extxur’ div’ borpdxiv. kal way maphy Teudyn uev eGov raraxmvoparion ravrobapoow ebnpem. All these things were mingled with wealth and worked with blessings in every way. Rivers full of porridge and black broth flowed bubbling through the channels with crusts for mopping up thrown in, and pieces of cheesy cake. So the morsels of food went easily, automatically even and nicely oiled down the throats of the dead. There were puddings in pig’s bladders and sizzling slices of black pudding were scattered by the rivers like shells. And there ‘were roasted slices of meat nicely turned out in various rich sauces, 3. Plato, Phaon, fr. 173. 1-11 Kock A dye & b6dS ev rhe “pula Tour bieldelv Bothouar 76 BiBMov mpds tuavrév. B fori 8, dvTiBohd o¢, robro Ti A duoktvou Kauri ris ddapreata. B énlbcifov aimiv rs tor’. A dxoue 5, Apkouat ex PoXBoio, redevrfow 5 éni Givvov. B eri Otvvov; otxobv Tis Teheuris: mold xpdrioror évravéi rerdysaa rd€eus. A BoMfos wev onobiat baydoas xaraxéouan Bevoas ds melorous bidrpuyu’ 78 yap Sluas duepos dpBot ral Ta6e wer 6) Taira: Gaddoons 8 és ree? dvey. . . ‘Speaker A: Here in this lonely spot I want to go through this book on my own. ‘Speaker B: I'd like to know what itis ‘A: It’'sa new cookery book by Philoxenus. B: Show me what it's like. A. Listen. ‘I will begin with the bulb and end at the tunny’ B: At the tunny? In that case its best to station it there at the rear. A: ‘Smother the bulbs in ashes, moisten with a sauce, and eat as many as you can. For they get a man erect. So much for that. I turn now to the children of the sca’. ‘The Marriage of Hebe describes a wedding feast where gods are eating not ambrosia but seafood. The Miners describes food appropriate for the living, in Hades, in one of a number of comic ‘passages in the fifth century which describe food presenting itself automatically for consumption. Phaon concerns Aphrodite and her mortal love Phaon. All three passages combine a list of foods with some kind of special treatment, all predate Middle Comedy. We may well wonder what it was about automatic food which led seven poets in the fifth century to compose a passage on the theme (including the extract from Pherecrates’ Miners: a similar passage appeared in Persians, also probably by Pherecrates). The similarity of these passages quoted by Athenaeus is instructive: variation on a food theme was important in Old Comedy and was not seen as tedious. 1 The most accessible discussions of these passages are: H. C. Baldry, ‘The Idlers’ Paradise’, GER 22 (1953), 496; D.F-Sutton, Self and Society im Aristophanes, Washington D.C. 1980, pp. 55-68,68 LCM 18. 5 (May 1993) Wilkins on Food In most cultures food has many associations. This is certainly true of ancient Greece, and ‘was readily exploitable in the witty and versatile genre of comedy. We may take, for example, a natural product, figs, ofa. They are, according to Athenaeus (74d),, the first natural product. He has a large entry on the fruit and known varieties (740). But figs are also associated with sycophancy (74c), with the male and female reproductive organs (Ar. Peace 1345f.), in dried form with dessert (Athenacus 652b) and with the diet of the poor (Athenaeus 60b-c, Alexis fr. 162), with the ritual expulsion of the #apuarés (Hipponax fr.5 West), and with various medical effects: they are not, for example, to be eaten at midday (cf. Ar. Proagon fr. 479 KA). (Or take a class of foods, such as aphrodisiacs. Under this category come, for example, sea food and iris/hyacinth bulbs (sea food in Epicharmus’ Marriage of Hebe , above; sea food and bulbs in Plaro’s Phaon, above). Aphrodisiacs are a likely topic for comedy, for they combine comic ‘elements of eating and sexual potency, and have an ambivalent quality somewhere between science and magic? ‘We may take a class of people, the poor for example: Alexis fr. 162K forw dup wor wruxés, xdyas oats, xal Guydrnp Kai mais ués’, 218° i xpnorh, new ol _ndvtes. rovruw ol rpets Beimotuer, 660 6 abrols ovyxowoouer dirs: wuxpas, d65ryous 8 adipous Spnvotuer, éndv unSév Exuer, xpaua 8 dotraw fyi Bray vera dxptv. ra eon 8 hie xf atvragis 00 Bloov éorw reiayos, Wpuos, Adxavew, yornas, xpos, Adéupos, énrés, BoNiis, rérrig, épeBuvtos, dxpds, 76 re Geopav’s wnTpcuov uo. eddie’ loxds, Spuylas eipruara outs. My husband is a beggar and I am an old woman and we have a daughter and a young son and this fine git! too, five of us in all ‘Three of us can have dinner and the other two share a tiny bit of their barley bread. We utter discordant laments when we have nothing, and our skin goes pale because we are underfed. The units and total of our livelihood is a bean, a lupin seed, a green vegetable, .. .a turnip, some bird seed, vetch, a beech-nut, an iris bulb, a cicada, a chickpea, a wild pear, and that divinely revealed delight we associate with our mothers, a dried fig, discovered on a Phrygian fig tree ‘These foods are not exclusively associated with the poor, but occur regularly in comic passages on their diet We may take the importance of food in trade, the import and export of goods and the association of certain foods with certain cities. Compare Hermippus fr. 63.1-7 K (writen in parody of epic): 2 For scientific references to aphrodisiacs, seve. g Aristotle] Problems 9543, Orisbasius, Syn. 1.38, Diphilus of Siphnois (ap. Athenacus 6b).