Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Alcock, Joan P. (Joan Pilsbury)
Food in the ancient world : / Joan P. Alcock.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-313-33003-4
1. Food habits—History. 2. Food—History. 3. Civilization, Ancient.
I. Title.
TX353.A47 2006
641.30093—dc22 2005026303
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data is available.
Copyright © 2006 by Joan P. Alcock
All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be
reproduced, by any process or technique, without the
express written consent of the publisher.
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 2005026303
ISBN: 0-313-33003-4
ISSN: 1542-8087
First published in 2006
Greenwood Press, 88 Post Road West, Westport, CT 06881
An imprint of Greenwood Publishing Group, Inc.
www. greenwood. com
Printed in the United States of America
@r
The paper used in this book complies with the
Permanent Paper Standard issued by the National
Information Standards Organization (Z39.48-1984).
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
The publisher has done its best to make sure the instructions and/or recipes in
this book are correct. However, users should apply judgment and experience when
preparing recipes, especially parents and teachers working with young people. The
publisher accepts no responsibility for the outcome of anv recipe included in this
volume.
For John Marshant,
an excellent friend and stimulating
colleague
FOOD IN THE ANCIENT WORLD
be more sparing. Even when traveling, a regime should be followed,
and here the advice seems to be sensible. The Greek physician Diodes
of Carystus in the fourth century B.C. advised that if undertaking
a long journey in summer, there should be a pause for lunch and a rest
after this. If this is impossible, only a little food and drink should be
taken, and the food should include some salt. In winter he advised
that there should be no break, and, rather curiously, indicated that no
food and drink should be taken. H e might have intended that it would
be as w7ell for a person to ignore breaks and refreshment to reach
the destination quickly before night set in and the cold weather
increased.
There were some sensible theories dictating a regime. Some foods
were prescribed to strengthen a stomach and stop it rumbling. These
included quinces, olives in brine, raisins, and mustard. To prevent
flatulence, chickpeas, beans, barley cake, lupines, fresh dates, figs, and
beer should be avoided. Simple meals should consist of bread, cheese,
and fruit. Attendance at a banquet or a rich meal was allowable,
providing this was not done too regularly.
How7 many people followed these theories is problematic. Most
poor people would have been more concerned about getting anything
to eat than regulating a diet, but wealthy people who were under the
control of a physician might have subjected themselves to a prescribed
regime. Women, for example, were believed to have a cold and wet
constitution. This could be corrected by prescribing hot and dry
foods, which are those that had little liquid and were not saturated
with spices. Women should avoid fish, fat, and anything from a new-
born animal. They were not to drink a great deal of wine, although a
little could be allowed. They were often denied meat, as this would
raise the quality of heat and thus their sexual allure.
Physicians, however, had realized correctly that women require less
food than men. Modern nutritionists have decreed that women need
2,000 calories per day while men require 2 , 5 0 0 - 4 , 0 0 0 , depending on
the degree of work they undertake. The ancient world, however, was
a patriarchal society, and so it was inevitable that women, of whatever
class, always got less food than men, unless they were in the more
wealthy ranks of society.
F O O D SUPPLY
Two groups of people in the ancient world might eat better-quality
meals with improved provision of food. The first was the army. Even
CONCEPTS OF DIET AND NUTRITION 231
in Egypt, where there was no organized commissariat, commanders
made sure that the men were fed before campaigns. The Spartans
ensured that their men relied on as little food as was required but
enough to keep them fit. The Greeks did allow foraging, but it was the
Roman army that had an excellent commissariat to supply food. The
second group were the people who lived in towns, who ate well except
in times of famine. Towns developed thriving and lively daily markets
supplied by traders and people bringing in food from the country,
who were only too eager to sell a cash crop. Some parts of Italy fol-
lowed a nine-day cycle for their markets; other parts of the empire
followed similar patterns. There were also occasional markets held as
part of fairs and festivals. The Greek agoras and Roman forums were
built specifically to be lively centers for buying and selling of all kinds
of goods and food. Some markets specialized in fish or meat. The
Forum Boarium and the Forum Holitorium in Rome were the centers
of a meat trade. The Greeks had markets on the quayside, so that
when a ship came in fresh fish were for sale. Urban dwellers could
obtain food easily and had the advantage of fresh fast food, bread,
cooked meats, and sauces. They could eat reasonably well, with an
increased variety of diet, or even more elaborate dishes if they had the
advantage of hiring one of the cooks who waited in the marketplace to
seek employment. They might even have a cook who knew some of
the sophisticated recipes gathered in Apicius's book.
Food was a priority. If supplies were scarce, people would eat what-
ever they could; quantity, not quality, was the criterion. When food
became more plentiful, consumer choice and discrimination were pos-
sible. In the towns and at culling and harvest time in the countryside,
the problem might not be lack of food but a surplus. The gorging of
food and indulgence in wine could result in liver complaints, heart
attacks, and obesity. A rich diet, especially if laced with liquamen,
caused bad breath. Worse could occur. Juvenal told the story of one
woman who, arriving late for a dinner party in Rome, slakes her thirst
with "a couple of pints before dinner to create a raging appetite; then
she brings it all up again and souses the floor with the washings of her
insides."1
Self-indulgence and gluttony were both attributed to the Romans,
not least because of Seneca's contemptuous and rather unfair com-
ment that "from every quarter the Romans gather together every
known and unknown thing to tickle a fastidious palate; the food
wiiich their stomachs by weakened indulgence can scarcely retain is
fetched from the farthest oceans. They vomit that they might eat;
232 FOOD IN THE ANCIENT WORLD
they eat that they may vomit. They do not deign even to digest the
feasts for wiiich they ransack the wiiole earth." 2 The Greeks also
w7arned against shameless consumption of food, although it might
be difficult to distinguish between gluttonous consumption of food
and drink and gastronomic extravagance. Moralizing against both
came from critics such as Seneca and Cicero. A warning against glut-
tony came from the Roman poet Persius, where a patient ignored
the advice of his doctor: "Bloated with food and queasy of stomach
he goes to bathe with sulphurous belching issuing from his throat.
But as he drinks his wine a shivering fit comes over him and knocks
the hot glass from his hands; his bared teeth chatter, the savoury
morsels drop from his slack lips. Then follow7 the trumpet and the
candles and last the dear deceased, laid out on a high bier, and
smeared with greasy unguents, sticks out his stiff heels towards the
door." 3
Examples of obesity occur in Egyptian mummies, probably a conse-
quence of eating too much fat, honey, and sweet cakes and excessive
drinking. Mummies of Pharaohs Amenhotep III and Ramses III have
large folds of skin on them, indicating that they were very fat. This
may have been due as much to inflammation of the gallbladder as to
overeating. Queen Hatshepsut is depicted on the wall of her temple at
Deir el-Bahari as being grossly overweight. That obesity was not con-
fined to the wealthy is shown by a wall relief of the Middle Kingdom
where a grossly overweight harpist strains to reach the strings of the
harp as he plays before Prince Aid.
People also become accustomed to types of food. Galen describes
traveling near Pergamum when he was a young man. One day he
came across some peasants who had already eaten their supper. Now
the women were going to make bread. One woman put some wheat
and water in a pot to boil, and then added some salt. Some of the
mixture was scooped out and given to Galen and his companions to
eat. This they felt they had to do partly out of courtesy for this hos-
pitality and because they were hungry. When they had eaten they felt
"it w7as as heavy as mud in their stomachs," and the whole of the next
day they had very bad indigestion, no appetite, and were full of wind.
"We also had blackouts before our eyes as nothing of what we had
eaten could be evacuated," and this, he added, "is the only way by
which indigestion can be relieved." The effect on Galen's stomach
would be equivalent to eating newly baked bread, which, washed
down with water, tends to swell. The peasants were more used to eat-
ing this simple fare than people who ate a greater variety of food.4
