Food and Hospitality in Greece and Rome

Ancient Greece

Greek mythology is an excellent ‘lens’ through which to understand how the Greeks viewed food and agriculture.

Relationships between the gods, and between gods and humans, were used to explain natural phenomena, including access to food.

For example, according to Greek myth, Prometheus — an equivalent of Adam within the Greek mythological world — stole fire from heaven and brought humans the necessity of farming. The vengeful Zeus ‘hid’ the seed in the ground, and only through agriculture could it be turned into edible plants. Agriculture thus became a punishment imposed upon humanity, with a grain-based diet replacing divine nectar, a kind of ‘Eden’. Demeter was one of Zeus’s wives and the goddess responsible for harvests and agriculture.

Another example is the myth of the Abduction of Persephone, which explains the changing seasons and nature’s cycle of fertility. Persephone was one of the daughters of Demeter and Zeus. Hades abducted her into the underworld after obtaining permission from her father, Zeus, to marry her. Demeter searched endlessly, consumed by loss and grief. The seasons stopped: living things ceased to grow and began to die. When the earth stood on the brink of the destruction of all life, Zeus sent Hermes to the underworld to bring Persephone back. Hades agreed to release her if she had eaten nothing in his realm, but Persephone had eaten several pomegranate seeds. Zeus had to find a compromise between Demeter and Hades. He arranged for Persephone to spend four months with Hades as queen — one for each pomegranate seed eaten — and to return to her mother for the other eight months. Demeter continued to ‘allow the crops to die’ while Persephone was with Hades.

The Greeks believed that gods could walk among humans in disguise. Any guest had to be treated as potentially a disguised deity. A person was therefore obliged to show hospitality to a stranger, a xenos, who might turn out to be a god in disguise. Zeus is sometimes called Zeus Xenios in his role as protector of travellers. He embodied the religious duty of hospitality towards strangers.

The concept of hospitality, called xenia, obliged host and guest to respect one another. The host had to welcome the guest, provide food and drink and, where necessary, an opportunity to wash. In return, the guest had to be polite and avoid becoming a burden. Although the origins of hospitality traditions were connected with the divine, xenia gradually became ordinary practice and was firmly embedded in Greek customs and etiquette throughout a long stretch of their history. Xenia is therefore a Greek concept that beautifully connects food, art and hospitality. The rituals of hospitality also involved gifts for guests. We see the continuation of this tradition in Roman times: offerings, or xenia, in the form of baskets of food were depicted on dining-room walls in Pompeian villas and elsewhere in the Roman Empire.

[Illustration page in the source PDF: a scene of hospitality on an Ancient Greek vase; the English caption reads Hospitality scene on an Ancient Greek Vase.]

Another important tradition of food and everyday life: drinking wine

Wine was widespread in the ancient world. It was probably brownish and oxidised, given the uncontrolled methods of fermentation and the various ‘breathing’ vessels — clay, wood, leather — in which it was stored or transported. We do not know exactly how that wine tasted, but sources suggest that it was diluted with water and flavoured with spices and honey. The Greeks mixed wine with water in different proportions, depending on the evening’s guests and how intoxicated they wanted, or were able, to become.

Wine was drunk after the meal at a gathering called a symposium. At these ‘drinking parties’, particularly in the sixth and fifth centuries BC, participants played kottabos: the aim was to throw wine lees at a target in the centre of the room. Such scenes are depicted on red-figure vases of the time.

In Ancient Greek literature, poets such as Homer wrote extensively about wine. References to kottabos among writers of the Roman and Alexandrian periods show that the fashion had faded. It is almost entirely unknown in Latin literature.

A kottabos player. Interior painting of an Attic red-figure kylix, around 510 BC. Greece.

Food in Ancient Rome

Roman cuisine has come down to us mainly through archaeology and cookbooks, rather than through art.

Bread was the most important food for all social classes in Ancient Rome. The Romans raised pigs, sheep, goats and cattle. They grew pulses — chickpeas, peas, beans — and vegetables — broccoli, cabbage, kale, kohlrabi, onions, garlic, asparagus, leeks and artichokes. Important agricultural writers, such as Cato, provide the clearest picture of Roman food. He was a censor, an honorary position for a former public official, and the first to write history in Latin. His recipe for sweet cakes, known as placenta, for example, was an early version of ‘lasagne’, without tomatoes, of course.

It is important to distinguish the Roman Republic from the Roman Empire:

• The Roman Republic was the period between 509 BC and 27 BC, including the time when Cato wrote about food, during which the states within the Republic retained sovereignty.

• The Empire, which emerged later, was governed by a single authority. During this period, more ingredients arrived from across the empire, and new culinary habits and cooking methods were adopted. As the Empire grew, the dietary differences between rich and poor became greater. The structure of a meal in Rome was not very far removed from that of modern Italy.

• An aperitif was served at the start of the meal, such as mulsum, a warm spiced wine.

• Delicacies might include patina, a baked mixture ‘like a casserole/pudding’, containing meat, chicken or fish, herbs, olive oil, nuts and wine.

• A sweet version might also be served, made with pears, eggs, honey and spices.

• Main dishes: beef, mutton, lamb, game, poultry, seafood and pork.

• The use of spices — cumin, coriander, saffron, cinnamon, pepper — was a marker of wealth. Garum, a fermented fish sauce, was added to many dishes.

Roman cuisine has come down to us mainly through archaeology and cookbooks, rather than through art.

Pompeii is the most informative archaeological site for understanding how the Romans lived before the city was buried beneath volcanic ash from Vesuvius in AD 79. It was there, for example, that we learnt about food outlets with recessed openings in their counters for displaying dishes, shown in the photograph on the right.

The Romans were highly conscious of class distinctions, and the wealthy ate differently from the poor. A Roman entrepreneur held feasts for business associates at his villa. Villas stood near estates producing grains, pulses, vegetables and dairy products. The table carried fruit, particularly grapes, apples, pomegranates and, when obtainable, figs, together with nuts and honey.

Guests were received in the triclinium, the formal dining room. The walls of these rooms were painted with images of food, tableware and tables. Many such examples have been found at Pompeii. A common feature of Roman food mosaics is that artists ‘built up’ the scene to create an image of wealth, abundance and luxury. Many objects are usually shown close together, as though everything has been piled into a single ‘display’. This food was a mixture of local products and goods brought from distant lands. Interestingly, Roman frescoes and mosaics show meals and feasts, but almost never kitchens.

Feasts were reserved for the elite. In Rome, women could sit with men in the triclinium, unlike at the Ancient Greek symposium, which admitted only men. Unlike the Greeks, the Romans drank with their food. At a feast, slaves ladled wine from a krater, a large mixing vessel, into a skyphos, a drinking vessel with two handles, after which the wine was diluted with water. When entertaining, the villa’s owner usually served wine from his own vineyards. If he could afford wine from more prestigious places, however, such as Falernian wine from Latium and Campania, it made a stronger impression. In the later Empire, wealth was so abundant that luxurious eating sometimes got out of control, until the Empire began to weaken economically after approximately AD 300.

The Roman recipe book De re coquinaria vividly shows what the Roman elite ate, both in Italy and in the provinces. The recipes are believed to have been recorded by the Roman gourmet Marcus Gavius Apicius, who lived around the first century AD. The recipes sometimes appear ‘wild’, but when prepared they prove delicate and tasty. This does not, of course, apply to recipes calling for the most exotic ingredients, such as parrot brains or flamingo tongues.

Apicius may have described elite dishes with complex sauces, but the food of the poor was by no means dull. They used parsley, thyme, coriander, basil, sage, rosemary, lovage — a plant whose appearance and taste resemble a mixture of celery and parsley — fennel, rue — a shrub with a slightly bitter taste — coriander and other wild herbs. Anise, mustard, fennel and coriander were inexpensive. Most Romans ate grains and pulses. Both wheat and spelt were used for bread, which was baked on the hearth. Rome’s poor did not always have cooking facilities, so they bought street food: sausages, bread, cooked pulses and vegetables from stalls.

Ancient Rome: fruit and bread

Fruit. The remarkable depictions of food in frescoes and mosaics in Roman villas show early traditions of naturalism. In these paintings, we see the fruits of the empire — apples, pears, quinces, pomegranates, cherries, cornelian cherries and strawberry-tree fruit — as well as pigeons, doves and songbirds.

Image captions:

• Quinces and plums in a glass bowl. Villa of Poppaea, Pompeii, approximately 90–25 BC.

• A basket of figs. Villa of Poppaea, Pompeii.

First century AD, Villa of Livia at Prima Porta, near Rome.

Bread. Charred examples of whole loaves of this bread were found at Pompeii. This wall painting from a Pompeian bakery depicts typical Roman bread. Image captions:

• Bread being sold at a market stall. Roman fresco from the property of Julia Felix, before AD 79, Pompeii.

• A charred loaf of Ancient Roman bread from Pompeii.

Ancient Rome: fresh fish and other delicacies

Mosaics in Pompeii show that fresh fish was highly prized at the time.

Fresh fish was expensive. People mainly ate salted fish. Migratory fish, such as tuna, were spotted from watchtowers and driven into traps for slaughter, rather like the modern mattanza in Sicily. The catch was then salted and sent to different parts of Italy.

Fish mosaic from Pompeii, first century AD.

Other ‘specialities’ included pigs’ trotters, wombs, vulvas and udders. Sausage-making was considered a demanding craft. According to the Roman cookbook De re coquinaria, the best sausages were made in Lucania in the south.

Ancient Rome: ‘luxury vegetables’

Succulent cultivated asparagus shoots were a delicacy for the wealthy.

In his encyclopaedic Naturalis Historia — Natural History — Pliny the Elder wrote about the thick asparagus stalks from Ravenna. The fertile valley of the River Po was ideal for growing asparagus.

A still life in a second-century mosaic: fish, poultry, dates and asparagus. Villa Marancia near Rome.

Painting of asparagus and ricotta from the House of the Vettii, Casa dei Vettii, Pompeii.

This painting of ricotta and asparagus on a windowsill or ledge conveys a simple ‘rustic charm’, while the shepherd’s crook suggests that the food has just been brought in fresh. The woven reed baskets are the ancestors of the plastic baskets in which fresh ricotta is sold today.

Images are sometimes misinterpreted, and the resulting misinformation then survives for years because it is simply repeated.

For example, the artichoke was unknown to the Graeco-Roman world. It is an ‘exotic’ vegetable that has been used as a decorative motif throughout history.

Artichokes were most likely domesticated during the Arab presence in Sicily, approximately in the ninth to eleventh centuries.

Some mosaics most probably depict a cardoon rather than an artichoke. A cardoon resembles an artichoke, but it is a thistle in the Asteraceae family, a relative of the sunflower, and only the inner white stalks are considered edible.

Detail of a Roman mosaic from Utica, Tunisia, depicting a cardoon.

A painting comprising two still-life panels, including dead game birds and a glass bowl filled with fruit. It is now in the Archaeological Museum of Naples.

Paintings with a ‘veil/covering’ are interpreted as xenia: ‘bags/baskets of food gifts’ for guests on arrival or departure. This continues the Greek tradition of hospitality.

Unlike the Greeks, however, the Romans wanted to impress their guests and used such images as signs of status.

Some interpret these paintings as symbols of wealth. Others think they are offerings to household gods. Others again suggest that Pompeii’s urban residents missed ‘rural’ life and fresh produce and therefore commissioned such subjects for their villas.

We cannot fully understand the intention behind these paintings without knowing the beliefs and obligations of the artists and their patrons.

Overall, the artists emphasised realism and effectively stood at the origins of still life. Yet in some xenia, the range of fruit is spread so widely across the seasons that it clearly does not represent reality — chestnuts beside cherries and grapes, for example. We shall see similar seasonal ‘inconsistencies’ in Renaissance painting, for example in Vincenzo Campi’s The Fruit Seller, around 1580.