Food and Society in Classical Antiquity.

• Author: GREPPIN, JOHN A. C.
• Position: Review

Food and Society in Classical Antiquity. By PETER GARNSEY. Cambridge: CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS, 1999. Pp. 175, illustrations. $54.95 (cloth); $19.95 (paper).

This compact manual on food is part of a distinguished series of short guides to various intriguing, non-traditional, aspects of classical antiquity; earlier volumes dealt with literacy, law and violence, friendship, and similar domestic themes. Here Peter Garnsey, one of the series' editors, writes on ancient agriculture, famine, food choice and taboo, gluttony, and kindred topics. In addition to the traditional classical world, Garnsey pays secondary attention to ancient Palestine (particularly the Jewish tradition), and the barbarian cultures peripheral to the central classical world; further, he derives helpful data from early Christian writers. All in all, it is quite a tour de force. Most of the serious data comes from the ancient medical authors, from Hippocrates through Galen, and the later summarizers such as Oribasius and Aetius. He unfortunately does not use the Greek physician Dioscorides, who describes the effects of plants and animals on humans, both as drugs, and as a source of nutrition; Diosc orides' comments on the ostrich (II.163) are rather surprising, noting, for instance, the effects of ostrich meat on pregnant women (frequently deleterious). Other information is garnered from traditional Greek and Roman authors, the playwrights, philosophers, and poets, but their comments frequently lack the power and insight into food that is found in the medical sources such as Galen, Athenacus, and others.

Garnsey is exceptionally well read, both in primary texts and in contemporary scholarship. Further, a goodly number of the Greek medical authors he quotes are unknown in modern translation (though known in medieval Arabic versions) and are often hard reading in the original, in part because of their style, but mostly because of the number of uncommon nouns used. There is, though, one text beyond Dioscorides I would recommend to Garnsey, the Cyranides, a second-century Hermetic document, which focuses on the nutritional (and medical) value of many animals and birds available to the Mediterranean table. Quail eggs, for instance, are good for one's kidneys; the lark, boiled, aids colic; and sparrow meat provides a great erection.

Neolithic culture grew out of man's ability to utilize grain, and it is grain that provides the most nourishment. Meat is less reliable, and can be...