No More Learning

1969.
Palmer, George Herbert (tr. ). The Odyssey: Homer. New York, 1962.
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15. AFTER A LONG DAY OF MARCHING OR FIGHTING, WHAT DID THE HOMERIC HEROES EAT?
INTRODUCTION
Athenaeus's lengthy book on dinner conversations offers an account about the menu options for the Greek epic heroes who fought in the Trojan War, and also some of the foods men- tioned in the Odyssey.
KEEP IN MIND AS YOU READ
1. Athenaeus's (fl. ca. 200 CE) Deipnosophistae (Sophists at Dinner) is a vast compen- dium of all kinds of information that one might reasonably expect to be discussed over the dinner table by knowledgeable and clever dinner guests. The work is di- vided into 15 books, all organized as dialogues; 14 guests are present, with the host, Athenaeus, bringing the total number of diners to 15. The translator of the docu- ment, Charles Gulick, aptly notes: "Greek conviviality was not incompatible with more or less sober discussions, and to make a banquet the scene and setting of philo- sophical discourse seemed natural. Plato's Symposium, Xenophon's Symposium, [and] Lucian's Symposium . . . testify to the popularity in ancient times . . . of this lit- erary form" [p. x].
2. The document is excerpted from Book 1 of Deipnosophistae.
3. Athenaeus frequently quotes short passages from both the Iliad and the Odyssey,
indicating the primacy of those works and also the high degree of familiarity with
them that Greek (and Roman) authors possessed.
4. The Phaeacians (first sidebar) lived on an island not far from Athens. Odysseus was
shipwrecked there, on his voyage home from Troy, after the Trojan War. The Phaeacians received him hospitably, and, after a sumptuous banquet, he told them of his many adventures during the voyage. Books Nine through Twelve of Homer's Odyssey are comprised of this recitation.
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? Document: Menu Options Described in Homer's Iliad and Odyssey
The heroes had vegetables . . . served to them at meals. That they are acquainted with the growing of vegetables is clear from the words "beside the farthest line of trimly planted garden beds" [Odyssey 7. 127]. Moreover, they ate onions, too, though they are full of unhealthy juices: "thereto an onion, as relish to the drink" [Iliad 11. 630]. Homer also portrays them as devoted to the culture of fruit trees: "For pear on pear waxes old, fig on fig" [Odyssey 7. 114. ]. Hence he bestows the epithet "beauti- ful" on fruit-bearing trees: "Beautiful trees grow there-- pears, pomegranates, and apples. " [Odyssey 7. 120] . . . The use of these fruit trees was older even than the Trojan war. Tantalus, for example, is not released from his hunger for them even after he is dead, seeing that the god who metes out punishment to him dangles fruit of this kind before him . . . yet prevents him from enjoying them at the moment when he comes near to realizing his hopes. Odysseus, too, reminds [his father] Laertes of what he had given him in his boyhood, "Pear trees thou gavest to me, thirteen," etc. [Odyssey 24. 340].
That they also ate fish is disclosed by Sarpedon [a leader of the Trojan army], when he compares captivity to the catch of a great [fishing net]. And Eubulus [an early comic playwright], with comic wit, says jokingly: "Where has Homer ever spoken of any Achaean [i. e. , Greek] eating fish? " And flesh, too, they only roasted, for he represents nobody as boiling it . . . Nor did the heroes allow the air to be free to the birds, for they set [traps] and nets to catch thrushes and doves. They also trained for bird-shooting . . . But the poet is silent about the eating of vegetables, fish, and birds because that is a mark of greed, and also because it would be unseemly for the heroes to spend time in preparing them for the table, since he judges it beneath the level of heroic and godlike deeds. But that they did use boiled flesh he makes clear when he says: "Even as a cauldron boileth . . . melting the lard of some fatted hog. " [Iliad 21. 362]. Then, too, the ox foot which was hurled at Odysseus [Odyssey 20. 299] is a proof of the boiling, for nobody ever roasts the foot of an ox. Again, the line [Odyssey 1. 141] "he [a servant] took and placed besides them [the suitors who had invaded Odysseus's palace in his absence] platters of all sorts of meat" shows not merely the variety of meats, such as fowl, pork, kid, and beef, but also that their preparation was varied, not uniform, but attended with ingenious skill. [Tr. Charles Burton Gulick. Athenaeus: The Deipnosophists (1. 24-25). Volume I. LCL, 1927. Page numbers: 109, 111. ]
AFTERMATH
Following the descriptions and anecdotes that appear in the first book of the Deipnosophistae, Athenaeus goes on to expound upon many other dining and food-related topics, including
? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? fig on fig: See the sidebar, below. Tantalus: The famous mythological figure who, because of a trick that he played on the gods, was con- demned to stand eternally in a pool of water, with the branches of a fruit tree nearby. Each time he bent over to take a drink, the water receded just beyond his mouth, and each time he reached to grab a piece of fruit, a gentle breeze arose, and blew
the branch just out of his reach. etc. : The rest of the passage reads thus: "ten apple [trees], forty figs. And here you marked off fifty rows of vines to give, each one in bearing order. "
[tr. Palmer. ]
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After a Long Day of Marching or Fighting, What Did the Homeric Heroes Eat?
? ? ? ? PHAEACIAN BOUNTY
On his long journey home after the end of the Trojan War, Odysseus was shipwrecked for a time on the island of the Phaeacians (not far from the Greek mainland); the Phaeacians received him hospitably. Homer describes in great detail the wide variety of foods cultivated by the Phaeacians, on four acres of ground:
Here grow tall thrifty trees--pears, pomegranates, apples with shining fruit, sweet figs, and thrifty olives. On them fruit never fails; it is not gone in winter or summer, but lasts throughout the year . . . Pear ripens upon pear, apple on apple, cluster on cluster, fig on fig. Here too the teeming vineyard has been planted . . . heating in the sun; elsewhere, men gather grapes, and elsewhere still, they tread them . . . Nearby, two fountains rise, one scattering its streams throughout the garden, one bounding by another course beneath the court-yard gate toward the high house. From this the townsfolk draw their water. [Homer. The Odyssey 7; tr. Palmer. ]
? ? characteristics of various kinds of seafood; the merits of lentils and lentil soup; the use of sil- ver utensils at dinner parties; the best kinds of fish for eating; the themes and scenes embossed onto drinking cups.
ASK YOURSELF
1. What kinds of foods does Athenaeus report that the Greeks ate during the time of the Trojan War and shortly after? For the most part, does this seem like a healthy range of foods?
2. In the second sidebar, the humorous story is told of the man who gargled with hot water to acclimatize his throat to hot liquids, so that he could eat up all the hot food at a party, before anyone else had a chance to partake of it. What do you think of this story? Would it really be possible to "toughen" one's throat in this way?
TOPICS TO CONSIDER
e WhydoyousupposeHomerapparentlycharacterizedtheeatingofvegeta- bles, fish, and birds as a "mark of greed"?
e Inthe"KeepinMindasYouRead"section,itwasnotedthatthetranslator of the document, Charles Gulick, suggested that Athenaeus's elaborate story of a dinner party followed in the tradition of similar accounts by Plato, Xenophon, and Lucian. Find out the kinds of stories and topics that
? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? SOME LIKE IT VERY HOT!
One of the diners at the banquet described by Athenaeus relates the following amusing anecdote: "I remember a certain gourmand, who was so far lost to all feelings of shame before his companions . . . that in the public baths, he accustomed his hand to heat by plunging it into hot water, and gargled his throat with hot water that he might not shrink from hot food. For they used to say that he had actually won the cooks over to serving the dishes very hot, his object being to eat up everything alone, since nobody was able to follow his example. " [Athenaeus. The Deipnosophists 1. 5; tr. Gulick. ]
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those authors included in their accounts. What similarities and/or differ- ences do you notice between what they wrote and what Athenaeus wrote?
Further Information
Braund, David and John Wilkins. Athenaeus and His World: Reading Greek Culture in the Roman Empire. Exeter, UK, 2000.
Dalby, A. Siren Feasts: A History of Food and Gastronomy in Greece. London, 1996. Wilkins, John, D. Harvey, and M. Dobson. Food in Antiquity. Exeter, UK, 1995.
Website
The Deipnosophists, or, Banquet of the Learned, of Athenaeus. http://digicoll. library. wisc . edu/Literature/subcollections/DeipnoSubAbout. html
Bibliography for Document
Gulick, Charles Burton (tr. ). Athenaeus: The Deipnosophists. Volume I. [LCL. ] London and New York, 1927.
Palmer, George Herbert (tr. ). The Odyssey. Homer. New York, 1962.
16. SPINNING THREAD AND MAKING CLOTHING
INTRODUCTION
The natural scientist Pliny the Elder (23-79 CE) provides us with information about wool making and a brief history of fabric making and clothing.
KEEP IN MIND AS YOU READ
1. The Romans used silk and cotton as materials for making clothes, but wool was apparently the most commonly used fabric.
2.
Marcus Terentius Varro (116-27 BCE), from whom Pliny derives a good deal of his information on these topics, wrote a noted--and still-surviving--treatise on agri- culture, and hence he is regarded as an authority on sheep and other livestock.
3. Pliny the Elder's massive treatise on natural history was a gigantic undertaking: he consulted some 2,000 works, produced by 473 different authors, from whom he derived over 20,000 facts. Every conceivable subject, from astronomy to topogra- phy, to botany, to gems and metals, to plants, birds, and animals--and many more topics--found its way into his writing. So it is perhaps not surprising that he included information on cloth making and clothing production.
Document: Pliny the Elder's Account
of Making Clothing
Marcus Varro informs us . . . that the wool on the distaff and spindle of Tanaquil . . . was still preserved in the temple of Sancus; and also in the shrine of Fortune a pleated royal robe made by her, which had been worn by Servius Tullius [her son-in-law]. Hence arose the practice that maidens at their marriage were accompanied by a decorated distaff and a spindle with thread. Tanaquil first wove a straight tunic of the kind that novices wear with the plain white toga, and newly married brides. The pleated robe was the first among those most in favor; consequently the spotted robe went out of fashion. Fenestella writes that togas
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of smooth cloth and of Phryxian wool began in the lat- est times of the [divine emperor] Augustus. Togas of closely woven poppy-cloth have an older source, being noticed as far back as the [second-century BCE] poet Lucilius . . . Bordered robes found their origin with the Etruscans. I find it recorded that striped robes were worn by kings, and they had embroidered robes as far back as Homer, these being the origin of those worn in triumphs. Embroidering with the needle was discovered by the Phrygians [that is, the Trojans], and conse- quently, embroidered robes are called Phrygian. Gold embroidery was also invented in Asia, by King Attalus, from whom Attalic robes got their name. Weaving dif- ferent colors into a pattern was chiefly brought into vogue by Babylon, which gave its name to this process. But the fabric called damask [a multicolored cloth that could be made from various fabrics], woven with a num- ber of threads, was introduced by Alexandria, and check patterns by Gaul. Metellus Scipio [first-century BCE pol- itician] counts it among the charges against Capito that Babylonian coverlets were already then sold for 800,000 sesterces, which lately cost the emperor Nero 4,000,000. The state robes of Servius Tullius, with which the statue of Fortune dedicated by him was draped, lasted till the death of Sejanus [31 CE], and it was remarkable that they had not rotted away or suffered damage from moths in 560 years. [Tr. W. H. S. Jones. Pliny: Natural History (8. 194-197. ) Volume VIII. LCL, 1963. Page numbers: 137, 139. ]
AFTERMATH
Clothing styles changed after the time of Pliny the Elder, most noticeably in the manner of enhanced decorative touches, such as embroidered plant, animal, or human designs. Preferences for clothing made of silk gradually displaced the traditional reliance on sturdy materials like wool, a trend that had begun to take shape even in Pliny's time and one that he decried: "Nor have even men been ashamed to make use of [silken clothing], because of [its] lightness in summer. So far have our habits departed from wearing a leather cuirass that even a robe is considered a burden! " [Pliny the Elder. Natural History 11. 78; tr. Rackham. ]
ASK YOURSELF
1. Who was Tanaquil? What were her contributions to the history of Roman clothing?
? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? Attalus: The name of a dynasty of Asian kings--it is unclear which Attalus is referenced by Pliny-- who were known for their great wealth; hence, Attalicus became a byword in Latin for opulence.
distaff and spindle: The two chief tools used in the production of woolen thread were the colus (spindle) and fusus (distaff). The newly shorn wool was wound around the distaff, a stick about 12 inches long. The mass of woolen strands were then drawn from the distaff and twisted into thread on the spindle, a wooden rod that tapered at each end; the strands were simultane- ously wound around the spindle, thus producing a neat coil of thread, ready to be spun into clothing.
Etruscans: The Etruscans were a dynamic and cultured people who lived in central Italy and were dominant in that region prior to the rise of Roman civilization.
Fenestella: A Roman historian who lived during the Augustan era, late first century BCE and early first cen- tury CE.
novices: Tirones, in Latin. The word gen- erally refers to beginners in various occupations, and especially to sol- diers, gladiators, orators, and busi- ness people. Pliny does not specify which of these occupations he has in mind, so the word probably could be associated with any of them.
Phryxian: Trojan; apparently a top- quality kind of wool. The first- century CE philosopher Seneca, in his essay On Benefits, [1. 3. 7], men- tions that the three Graces (attend- ants of Aphrodite) were attired in plush robes of Phryxian wool.
poppy-cloth: Papaveratus in Latin, which, according to the Oxford Latin Dictionary, means "treated
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Spinning Thread and Making Clothing
? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? with poppy, that is, with an extract that acts as a whitening or bleach- ing agent. "
Sancus: Sancus was the Roman god of trust, oaths, commerce, and contracts. spotted robe: An interesting turn of phrase with an uncertain meaning. The Latin word, in this context, for "spotted," sororiculata, is seldom
seen and not clearly understood. Tanaquil: Tanaquil was the wife of Rome's fifth king, Tarquinius Priscus (reigned 617-579 BCE), and the mother-in-law of the sixth king, Servius Tullius (reigned 579-535 BCE). Among other things, she was greatly respected for her skill in weaving, as Pliny
indicates.
? ? ? 2. What were the different varieties of robes and other cloth- ing used by the Romans? What accounts for such a wide range of colors and materials?
TOPICS TO CONSIDER
e Pliny does not explain why it was considered improvident for women to "twirl their spindles" (see the sidebar) while they were walking along country roads. Can you think of any reason for this superstition?
e Pliny mentions "the poet Lucilius," but he does not provide any context for mentioning him. Why do you suppose Pliny refers to him here? What kinds of poetry did Lucilius write?
e What magnanimous gift did King Attalus III (reigned 138-133 BCE) bestow upon the Romans? Is it likely, then, that he was the Attalus to whom Pliny refers in the document?
e Pliny states that coverlets costing 800,000 sester- ces in the first century BCE had risen in price to 4,000,000 by the time of the emperor Nero, in the mid-first century CE. What factors do you suppose could account for the astronomical increase in price?
Further Information
Forbes, Robert J. Studies in Ancient Technology. Amsterdam, 1964.
Johnston, Harold Whetstone. The Private Life of the Romans. Chicago, 1903.
Sebesta, Judith Lynn and Larissa Bonfante (eds. ). The World of Roman Costume. Madison,
WI, 1994.
Website
Clothing in Ancient Rome. http://en. wikipedia. org/wiki/Clothing_in_ancient _Rome#References
Bibliography for Document
Jones, W. H. S. (tr. ). Pliny: Natural History. Volume VIII. [LCL. ] London and Cambridge, 1963.
? ? ? ? ? ? DO NOT WALK AND SPIN THREAD AT THE SAME TIME!
According to the Elder Pliny, it was forbidden that farm women should "twirl their spindles while walking along the road, or even to carry them uncovered, on the ground that such action blights the hopes of everything, espe- cially the hope of a good harvest. " [Pliny the Elder. Natural History 28. 26; tr. Jones. ]
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? ? ? ? DYE IT PURPLE
The color purple as a sign of royalty dates back to the earliest days of Roman history. Pliny writes that the first Roman king, Romulus (reigned 753-714 BCE), owned purple cloaks, but by the time of the third king, Tullus Hostilius (reigned 671-642 BCE), kings were wearing purple-bordered robes; perhaps the contrast of the purple border with lighter colors elsewhere emphasized the king's majesty. The historian Cornelius Nepos (d. first cen- tury CE) states that when he was a young man, purple dye was considered the peak of fashion, but later, reddish- purple dyes became popular. He also reports that "double-dyed" clothing gained favor.
The first-century BCE politician and orator Cicero wrote a letter to his friend Caelius in the year 49 in which he described some of the political maneuvering of the time: "I expect that you have been told that Oppius is having a toga praetexta [an embroidered robe worn by Roman magistrates] woven for him; for our friend Curtius has set his heart on a double-dyed robe [i. e. , a kind of robe called a trabea, one of purple and saffron, worn by augurs, priests who interpreted signs and omens from the gods]. But he finds his dyer's 'job' takes time. " [Cicero. Letters to His Friends 2. 16; tr. Williams. ] W. Glynn Williams, the translator of the passage, notes that the literal translation of the final sentence is "his dyer [i. e. , Julius Caesar] keeps him waiting," and that the operative verb has the double meaning of "waiting" and "corrupting. " The implication: that Curtius has accepted a bribe to support Caesar's political aspirations, but that Caesar has been slow to pay up.
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Rackham, H. (tr. ). Pliny: Natural History. Volume III. [LCL. ] London and Cambridge, 1940.
Williams, W. Glynn (tr. ). Cicero: The Letters to His Friends. Volume I. [LCL. ] Cambridge and London, 1927.
17. CONTROLLING APPETITE AND CURBING WEIGHT GAIN
INTRODUCTION
The essayist Aulus Gellius was nothing if not a diversified writer. The document below, one of his essays, touches upon two topics that seem very contemporary: artificial stomach con- traction as a dieting and weight control method, and bulimia.
KEEP IN MIND AS YOU READ
1. Erasistratus, whom Aulus Gellius quotes at length in the document, was a third- century BCE Greek physician. His writings no longer exist except in fragmentary form, but his influence on subsequent physicians was considerable.
2. Neither the Greeks nor the Romans, of course, had developed bariatric surgery as a way to control appetite and weight gain, but Aulus Gellius seems to be describing a similar method, whereby the stomach is artificially contracted to make difficult the passage of food into it.
Document: Aulus Gellius and Erasistratus
on Dietary Issues
I often spent whole days in Rome with Favorinus. His delightful conversation held my mind enthralled, and I attended him wherever he went, as if actually taken prisoner by his eloquence; to such a degree did he constantly delight me with his most agreeable discourse. Once when he had gone to visit a sick man, and I had entered with him, having conversed for some time in Greek about the man's illness with the physicians who chanced to be there at the time, he said: "This ought not to seem surprising either, that although previously he was always eager for food, now after an enforced fast of three days all his former appetite is lost. For what Erasistratus has written is pretty nearly true," said he, "that the empty and open fibers of the intestines, the hollowness of the belly within
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