CLASSICAL AND HELLENISTIC PERIODS

Dining Patterns
According to Athenaeus of Naucratis, the word dais signified a meal, and was derived
from the verb, daiesthai, "to divide" or "to distribute equally," and he wrote that
men who roasted meat were called diatros, or "dividers," because they provided
equal portions of meat.73 Athenaeus cited Philemon of Syracuse, who wrote that the
Greeks ate four meals daily: akratisma, ariston, hesperisma, and deipnon. The first,
akratisma, was equivalent to "breaking the fast," and from this word evolved akratos,
or "bread sopped in unmixed wine," typically eaten as a breakfast food.74
Philemon's explanation not withstanding, considerable confusion reigned
regarding Greek dining terminology. According to Athenaeus, in Homeric times
breakfast was called ariston or embroma, and the fourfold terminology of Philemon
changed through Greek history and became akratisma (breaking the fast), deipnon
(midday meal), dorpestos (early evening meal), and epidorpis (later dinner). Athe-
naeus also wrote that meal-time terminology was so confused that Aeschylus of
Eleusis had to teach his supervisors to distinguish among meals. Still others, accord-
ing to Athenaeus, held that the words ariston, deipnon, or epidorpis signified the
midday meal, while the evening meal was variously called dorpestos or hesperisma.
Ultimately, the early-morning meal of the Heroic Era, ariston, became the midday
meal; akratisma, or breakfast, remained in position, while deipnon shifted to the
evening meal.75
Among both poor and elite, breakfast commonly consisted of barley or wheat
bread dipped in undiluted wine, sometimes eaten with figs or olives.76-77 Athenaeus
also remarked that the word amaristeton applied to persons who skipped breakfast.78
The midday ariston was informal, commonly eaten outside the home, usually
was light, and consisted of various warm foods.76
In contrast, the evening deipnon was heavy and consumed at home. Among
wealthy Greeks, it consisted of elaborate cooking where guests could be entertained.
A simple dinner-drinking party was called potos, while an elaborate dinner with
several food courses and entertainment was a symposium. Three components char-
acterized the Greek evening meal: sitos, opson, and oinos. Staple foods, collectively
called sitos, were served first and included barley, lentils, and wheat. Complementing
the sitos were relishes, or opson, such as cakes, cheese, eels, eggs, fish and shellfish,
lettuce, mullet, oysters, shrimps, broiled tunny (tuna), and perhaps thrushes. Different
meat courses commonly followed, maybe goat, mutton, and pork, sometimes sausage
and lesser cuts such as feet and pig's snout, kid's head, and sometimes domesticated
fowl. During the third component, oinos, which concluded dinner, wines were served
with tragemata, or collectively, sweet cakes, various confections, curdled cream,
dried and fresh fruits, honey, and nuts.76, 79-81
Athenaeus wrote that the banquets of the wealthy started with appetizers or
propoma, among them small birds, sliced eggs, sometimes combination dishes that
included salad leaves, Egyptian perfume, myrrh, pepper, and sedge. He cited Phae-
nias of Eresus, who wrote that common dessert foods were soft tender beans and
chickpeas. Athenaeus also commented that, at the conclusion of Greek banquets,
the tongues of animals served were cut out to signal that the feast was over and that
guests should depart.82
Body position while eating varied by custom and era. Athenaeus observed that
Homer's heroes sat upright while dining, and also cited Hegesander of Delphi, who
wrote that Macedonian men were not permitted to recline at dinner until they had
speared a wild boar without using a hunting net.83 Scholars have assumed that most
families ate at home, that adult women, slaves, and children ate independently of
men, that adult women ate together, and that "respectable women" did not dine
outside the house in the evening.
Common Foods
What constituted suitable food to the Classical Greeks, whether in the Greek "heart-
land" or throughout Mediterranean lands? Athenaeus preserved the comment by
Eubulus of Athens that "real food" consisted of items that promoted health and
physical strength, especially beef boiled in huge quantities — with generous portions
of foot and snout — and slices of young pork sprinkled with salt.84 Still, a broad
range of foods available to Greeks throughout the Mediterranean can be identified

Common meats during Classical and Hellenistic periods included beef, mutton,
goat, and pork. Wild game augmented meals, specifically wild boar, deer, hare, and
numerous varieties of domesticated and wild birds including beccafico (songbirds),
blackbird, bustard, chicken, coot, crane, cuckoo, dove, duck, francolin (partridge),
goose, grebe, guinea-fowl, jay, lark, nightingale, ostrich, owl, peacock/peahen, pel-
ican, pheasant, pigeon, quail, starling, swan, thrush, and wagtail.85-89
Out in the "lands," away from the urban centers, farmers and wealthy absentee
landowners regularly consumed goat, mutton, pork, and wild game. In contrast,
urban Greeks probably consumed more fish than meat, since the term opson, which
originally signified "relish," gradually shifted in meaning to "fish," a linguistic
transition that suggested that bread and fish were common foods of the majority of
urban Greeks. Fresh fish and seafoods would have included anchovy, carp, conger
eels, eels from Lake Copais, gudgeon, halibut, mackerel, mullet, octopus, shark,
sole, squid, tunny, and turbot, as well as various echinoderms, mussels, oysters, and
snails.85-88
Milk was rarely was drunk (except in a medicinal context); most was converted
to cheese. Butter was considered fit only for barbarians, and most was used medic-
inally to soothe wounds. Olive and sesame were the primary dietary fats/oils.11, 87
Barley and wheat were the most commonly grown cereals, while minor grains
included millet and rye. Proper wheat bread, artos, was baked in the form of round
loaves and consumed on festival days. Rural and urban poor did not regularly
consume wheat bread but ate barley cakes or maza, similar to modern American-
style pancakes or griddle cakes. These were sodden with water and eaten as porridge.
Women bread vendors, artopolides, were recognized in urban centers.