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Fish, Sex and Revolution in Athens1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

James Davidson
James Davidson
Affiliation:
Trinity College, Oxford
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Extract

Anyone who picks up a collection of fragments of comic poetry is likely to be struck by the large number of references to eating fish. There are shopping-lists for fish, menus for fish and recipes for fish-dishes, with the ingredients and method of preparation graphically described. Aristophanes and others dwell in several places on the charms of eel wrapped in beet-leaves. Other writers describe preparations for a great fish-soup, or the dancing movements of fish as they are fried. Undoubtedly Athenaeus is responsible for this preponderance among the fragments of Comedy of passages concerned primarily with food, especially fish, but some of the fragments are rather long in themselves and indicate, at the very least, that cooks were important characters in many plays, and that dinner-parties must have figured significantly in many plots. Outside Comedy, references to fish-consumption are somewhat fewer in number, but perhaps even more surprising when they do occur. It seems strange that Demosthenes, in discussing Philocrates' betrayal of his city, should think it at all relevant to state that he spent his ill-gotten gains on fish, or that Aeschines, attacking Timarchus on a capital charge, should dwell on his fondness for fish. Moreover, references to fish occur also in philosophy and the Hippocratic corpus. In fact, the frequency with which ancient authors seem to have written about fish reveals almost a preoccupation. The consumption offish clearly held a significance for the Athenians which needs to be uncovered and explained.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 43 , Issue 1 , May 1993 , pp. 53 - 66
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1993

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References

2 Alexis 191–6 K–A; cf. Nesselrath, H.-G., Die Attische Mittlere Komödie: Ihre Stellung in der antiken Literaturkritik und Literaturgeschichte (Berlin, 1990), pp. 304–5CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3 Ar. Peace, 1013–14, Ach. 894; Eubulus 34, 36, 64 K–A, and Pherecrates 113 K–A, line 12.

4 Eubulus 108 K–A, Ophelio 1 K–A, Ephippus 5 K–A.

5 Cf. Mnesimachus, , Hippotrophos 4 K–AGoogle Scholar. For Menander's use of the fish section of this list, cf. Gomme, A. W. and Sandbach, F. H., Menander: A Commentary (Oxford, 1973)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, ad Kolax F7.

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7 19.229.

8 1.42, 65 and 95, and see n. 74.

9 Cf. Plato, , Laws 7.823–4Google Scholar. Fish figure prominently in the dietetics of the Hippocratic corpus, especially in the two treatises On the Diseases of Women.

10 493–5: ἢν μ⋯ν ὠν⋯τα⋯ τις ⋯ρϕὼς μεμβρ⋯δας δ⋯ μ⋯ θ⋯λῃ, εὐθ⋯ως εἴρηχ' ⋯ πωλ⋯ν πλησ⋯ον τ⋯ς μεμβρ⋯δας “οὑτος ⋯Ψωνεῖν ἔοιχ' ἅνθρωπος ⋯π⋯ τυρανν⋯δι.”

11 Starkie, W. J. M., The Wasps of Aristophanes: Text and Commentary (London, 1897)Google Scholar, ad loc.

12 Lintott, A. W., Violence, Civil-strife, and Revolution in the Classical City (London, 1982), p. 130Google Scholar; Carter, L. B., The Quiet Athenian (Oxford, 1986), p. 64 n. 29Google Scholar.

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14 Cf. Kassel-Austin on Cratinus 171 1.49; Hegesander, , FHG (Müller) iv. 416Google Scholar ap. Ath. 337f, and Lynceus of Samos ap. Ath. 7.285f. For the γλα⋯κος, see W. G. Arnott's review of Hunter, R. L., ‘Eubulus: The Fragments’, CR 34 (1984), 182Google Scholar.

15 Ober, J., Mass and Elite in Democratic Athens (Princeton, 1989), p. 206Google Scholar adducing Dem. 48.81, 18.320, and 36.43; cf. Donlan, W., The Aristocratic Ideal in Ancient Greece: Attitudes of Superiority from Homer to the End of the Fifth Century (Lawrence, Kansas, 1980), pp. 160–1Google Scholar; Murray, O. ‘The Symposion in History’, in Gabba, E. (ed.), Tria Corda: Scritti in onore di Arnaldo Momigliano (Como, 1983), pp. 257–72Google Scholar.

16 Dem. 21.158–9.

17 Cf. esp. 160 and 174K–A.

18 E.g. 928ff., 353–5; cf. Ach. 1156–61.

19 Aeschin. 1.42 and 65.

20 Philetaerus 2 K–A; Timocles 4 and 17 K–A cf. Hermippus 68aII and 68b (Wehrli); [Plu.] Vit. X Oral 849e.

21 Dem. 19.229.

22 Alexis 130–1 K–A, see Arnott, W. G., ‘Towards an Edition of the Fragments of Alexis’, PCPhS n.s. 16 (1970), 6Google Scholar n. 2. Hansen, M. H., ‘Rhetores and Strategoi in Fourth-Century Athens’, GRBS 24 (1983), 161Google Scholar.

23 Eubulus 8 K–A, Alexis 249 K–A, Antiphanes 77 K–A.

24 Ath. 13.592e-593a.

25 32 K–A.

26 Alexis 204 K–A lines 3–4.

27 Antiphanes 164 K–A.

28 Boeckh, A., Die Staatshaushaltung der Athener, 3 Aufl. von Max Fränkel (Berlin, 1886), p. 129CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

29 A. Boeckh and E. Oder, RE I col. 3; W. J. M. Starkie, Comm., ad loc.

30 Amphis 30 K–A.

31 67 K–A.

32 Eupolis 160 K–A.

33 Men, . Dyscolus, 131–9Google Scholar, cf. 327 and 844–7. Cf. Finley, M. I., Studies in Land and Credit in Ancient Athens (New Brunswick, NJ, 1952), p. 267Google Scholar n. 29, but Menander has his supporters: cf. Gomme, A. W. and Sandbach, F. H., Menander: A Commentary (Oxford, 1973), ad Dys. 738CrossRefGoogle Scholar, Webster, T. B. L., An Introduction to Menander (Manchester, 1974), pp. 25–6Google Scholar; Paoli, U. E.,’Note giuridiche sul Δ⋯σκολος di Menandro’, Mus. Helv. 18 (1961), 53–62Google Scholar.

34 Feyel, Michel, ‘Nouvelles inscriptions d'Akraiphia’, BCH 60 (1936), 27–36CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Salviat, F. and Vatin, C., Inscriptions de Grèce centrale (Paris, 1971), pp. 95–109Google Scholar.

35 Schaps, D. M., ‘Comic Inflation in the Market-Place’, Scripta Classica Israelica, 8–9 (1985–1988), 66–73Google Scholar, esp. 68–70. See also Gallant, T. W., A Fisherman's Tale (Ghent, 1985), pp. 39–40Google Scholar, who provides much useful information on the economics of fishing in the Mediterranean.

36 The evidence for laws concerning fishing and the sale of fish is collected with a none-too-critical eye by Bohlen, Diedrich, Die Bedeutung der Fischerei für die antike Wirtschaft, thesis (Hamburg, 1937), pp. 23ffGoogle Scholar. For fixed prices in general (a rare phenomenon in the classical period), see Millett, P. ‘Sale, Credit an d Exchange in Athenian Law and Society’, in Cartledge, P., Millett, P. and Todd, S. (eds.), Nomos: Essays in Athenian Law, Politics and Society (Cambridge, 1991), pp. 172Google Scholar n. 13 and 192 n. 53. Fantastic laws are a favourite theme of comedy and should be taken extremely cautiously. On the other hand, there is no reason why laws and decrees themselves should not have been impracticable from a modern point of view.

37 7 K–A.

38 130 and 131 K–A. For the identity of this Aristonicus and his political career, see n. 22.

39 Scholiast, on Iliad 21.203Google Scholar.

40 Alexis 131 K–A.

41 Timocles 11 K–A, lines 1–2.

42 Aeschin. 1.42 and 65. For this stall or area of the market, see n. 74.

43 Alexis 78 K–A.

44 Diphilus 31 K–A. Salmon, J. B., Wealthy Corinth (Oxford, 1984), p. 200Google Scholar suggests the measure may go back to Periander. However, I think it must remain doubtful whether the Measure ever existed at Corinth even in the 4th c. It is certainly of a kind quite different from other known archaic sumptuary legislation, including Periander's measures.

45 Ar. Ecc. 606.

46 Antiphanes 188 K–A, line 19.

47 On metaphors of political voracity, see Taillardat, J., Les Images d'Aristophane: études de angue et de style (Paris, 1962) pp. 413–16Google Scholar.

48 As indeed the scholiasts suggest commenting on Ar. Knights 313; cf. Suidas s.v. θυννοσκ⋯πος.

49 359–60. The phrase is τ⋯ν πραγμ⋯των…τ⋯ν ζωμ⋯ν.

50 Although it should be noted that sea-bass really were considered a great speciality of Miletus and the phrase ‘Milesian sea-bass’ became proverbial, cf. Archestratus F45 (Brandt), 1–9; Suidas s.v. λ⋯βραξ.

51 κ⋯π⋯ τ⋯ν πετρ⋯ν ἄνωθεν τοὺς Φ⋯ρους θυννοσκοπ⋯ν. For this metaphor in particular, cf. Taillardat, J., Les Images, p. 422Google Scholar. For the techniques of fishing referred to, cf. Gallant, T. W., A Fisherman's Tale, pp. 21—3Google Scholar.

52 Cf. 1017–1019 and 1023 and Taillardat, J., Les Images, pp. 403ffGoogle Scholar. The ‘opson’ could well be the stall referred to in Ar. F 258 K–A; see n. 74.

53 For public banqueting and the inscription known as the ‘Prytaneion decree’(IG I3, 131), see Schmitt-Pantel, P., ‘Les Repas au Prytanée et à la Tholos dans l'Athènes classique, Annali, Istituto orientate di Napoli: Archeologia e storia antica 2 (1980) [55–68], 58–9Google Scholar, and Osborne, M. J., ‘Entertainment at the Prytaneion at Athens’, ZPE 41 (1981), 153–70Google Scholar.

54 Ar. Knights 282–3, cf. 709.

55 Cf. esp. 518–20; 666–79; 682–95; 698–724.

56 Ar. Wasps 709–10; cf. Knights 814–16 and 1166ff. Taillardat, J., Les Images, p. 397Google Scholar, comments: ‘La politique alimentaire tient une telle place dans l'esprit du populaire que le Charcutier, rendant hommage au grand homme d'état Themistocle, assimile tout naturellement ses bienfaits à un repas servi à Athèes.’

57 Sommerstein, A. H., Aristophanes' Wasps: Text and Commentary (Warminster, 1983), ad locGoogle Scholar; Thuc. 1.138,5. 1 assume with MacDowell and Sommerstein that the request is for a leek to be given to him free of charge.

58 Her. 2.98,1, cf. Lewis, D. M., ‘The King's Dinner’, in Sancisi-Weerdenburg, Heleen and Kuhrt, Amélie (eds.), Achaemenid History, II. The Greek Sources (Leiden, 1987), pp. 79–87Google Scholar; id., Sparta and Persia (Leiden, 1977), pp. 4–5, 53–5, 122Google Scholar; Lloyd, Alan B., Herodotus Book II: A Commentary (Leiden, 1976), vol. ii ad loc.Google Scholar; Thuc. 1.138.5; Xen, . Anab. 1.4.9Google Scholar; [Plato, ] Alcibiades 1 123bcGoogle Scholar; D.S. 1.52.

59 Theopompus, , FGrHist 115 F 113Google Scholar.

60 Alexis 204 K–A, lines 3–4.

61 Further to this might be a description of a painting in a Pisan temple (Strabo 8.343 and Ath. 8.346c) supposedly of Poseidon offering a tuna to Zeus while he is giving birth to Athena or Dionysus. Lippold, , RE xii col. 574Google Scholar considers that later viewers have misinterpreted an archaic representation of Poseidon's attributes, but it may be significant that the tuna was one of the few fish that could be sacrificed, see Durand, Jean-Louis, ‘Ritual as Instrumentality’, in Detienne, M. and Vernant, J.-P., La Cuisine du sacrifice en pays grec (Paris, 1979)Google Scholar, Eng. transl. (London, 1989), pp. 127–8 and 116 fig. 10, and Shapiro, H. A. ‘Poseidon and the Tuna’, AC 58 (1989), 32–43Google Scholar.

62 Other examples of the connection between fish and power, especially in a context of usurpation, are Plu, . Alex. 23.9Google Scholar with D.S. 17.108.4, an d the strange fragment of the Constitution of the Naxians, preserved by Athenaeus (8.348bc) = Arist. fr. 510 (Rose). A similar association between fishing an d the seizure of power is presented in a metaphor employed by Solon to describe the way people spoke of his refusal of autocratic power, Plu, . Solon, 14.9Google Scholar = Solon fr. 33 (West); cf. too the oracle given to Pisistratus just before the battle of Pallene, although here, the image of tunny-fishing refers not so much perhaps to a symbol for power, as to a graphic illustration of a planned mass slaughter of his enemies drawn into the confined space between Hymettus and Pentelicum (Hdt. 1.62.4). For a recent study of the passage with a rather different conclusion, see Lavelle, B. M., ‘The Compleat Angler: Observations on the Rise of Peisistratos in Herodotos (1.59–64)’, CQ 41 (1991), 317–24CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

63 See esp. De dea Syria, 14 and 45–7.

64 Ath. 8.346de.

65 Antipater of Tarsus F6 4 (SVF iii.257); cf. Mnaseas, of Patara, , FHG (Müller) iii. 155Google Scholar.

66 Cf. Timocles 4 K–A, line 9, on the phenomenon of Syrians not eating fish.

67 Ephippus 5 K–A. For the date, cf. Webster, T. B. L., Studies in Later Greek Comedy (Manchester, 1953), pp. 42–3Google Scholar; Dusšanić, S., ‘Athens, Crete and the Aegean after 366/5 B.C.’, Talanta 12/13 (1980–1981), 12Google Scholar.

68 Dušanć, ibid., 23–7. Interestingly, Nesselrath, , Die Attische Mittlere Komödie, p. 221Google Scholar, arguing from different concerns, comes to a similar conclusion: ‘Wer immer in fr. 5 von Geryones und seinem Riesenfisch erzählte, tat dies wohl, urn Herakles von der Macht des i Gegners, gegen den er antreten sollte, einen Begriff zu geben und ihm klarzumachen, auf welch. gefahrliches Abenteuer er sich einlieβ.’

69 e.g. an allusion in Theopompus, , FGrHist 115Google Scholar F 187 to the tyrant Nysaeus' fondness for fish, in Phaenias ap. Athenaeus 1.6ef to Dionysius the Elder reserving the largest fish for himself and in Diodorus Siculus to the tyrant Gelon's fish-pond in Agrigentum (11.25); for the general theme of the tyrant as devourer in archaic literature, see Fileni, Maria, ’Osservazioni sull'idea di tiranno nella cultura greca arcaica’, Quaderni urbinati di cultura classica, 43 (1983), 29–35CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

70 Alexis 249 K–A, line 4.

71 Ar. Knights 1131ff.; cf. also 282–3, 707, 709, 816, and 1148.

72 Ar. Clouds 559. Cf. K. J. Dover ad loc.

73 Cf. Taillardat, J., Les Images, p. 411Google Scholar, and Edmunds, Lowell, Cleon, Knights and Aristophanes' Politics (Lanham, Maryland, 1987), p. 7Google Scholar and in general on the theme of disturbance, pp. 5–20.

74 The reference to toupson at 65 has caused translators some difficulty. Wycherley, R. E., The Athenian Agora, iii (Princeton, 1957), # 637–9Google Scholar, lists it as a place where ‘Fish, meat etc.’ are sold. His only explicit evidence for this seems to be the scholiast commenting on this passage in Aeschines' speech, who refers to the more general meaning opson and claims it is a place where ‘all edibles are sold’. This is wrong on any account, and derives from a later misunderstanding of the category of opson. The error shows that the scholiast knows no more than that the Athenians named stalls after what was sold there, and cannot be used as independent evidence for the wares to be found at the opson. Others, like Charles Adams, the translator of the Loeb edition, have chosen to see it as some kind of delicatessen, but opson does not mean delicacy, and there is no evidence, even if we include the Aeschines scholion, for a stall like a delicatessen at Athens which would have to mix up fish, meats, dairy produce and vegetables, which in the classical period at least seem to have been kept separate. We have only the title to go on, and this leaves two reasonable possibilities: (1) a major division of the market-place, where all foods that could serve as opson were kept together and distinguished from an area where grain and grain-products were sold, or (2) with LSJ, the fish-market. The problem with the first possibility is simply that there is no evidence for such major divisions of the agora, and it is hard to see the point of criticizing someone for being at the opson, when they could be merely buying olives or lentils. On the other hand, opson and its diminutive, as Johannes Kalitsunakis showed in his article on the subject (“Ὃψον und ⋯ψάριον” in Festschrift für P. Kretschmer (Vienna, 1926), pp. 96–106)Google Scholar were already occasionally used to specify fish in Old Comedy, a usage which became more and more common in the fourth century, especially in compounds used of the market, like euopsos (well stocked with fish), anopsia (lack of fish) and opsonomos (magistrate to control the price offish), where the ops-element seems to refer exclusively to fish; see Anaxandrides 34 K–A, Antiphanes 188 K–A, Timokles 11 K–A and Sophilus 2 K–A. Opsopolion and opsopolia are used by later authors to refer to places where specifically fish were sold (see LSJ svv), terms which would be automatically translated into the Attic idiom as toupson. The opson moreover is where such notorious consumers of sea-food as Callimedon swoop down (Alexis 249 K–A), and the only occasion when we are given a glimpse of what could be bought at the opson, in Aristophanes 258 K–A, it turns out to be fish and sea-food, a passage which is the main support for LSJ's gloss ‘fish-market’. All in all, then, it is very probable that Aeschines' toupson is the same as Aristophanes', and that the orator's attack on Timarchus should be placed in the context of the many other passages where citizens and especially politicians are criticized or ridiculed for being caught at the fish-stall.

75 This line has sometimes caused problems for editors and translators, although Kassel-Austin seem happy with it as it is. Anaxandrides is continuing the military narrative with what looks like an image of an assault on a city: I suggest that a bowl or ladle is pictured as a siege-machine to batter the young man's defences.

76 Anaxandrides 34 K–A, lines 5ff. Cf. the suggestion of Lynceus of Samos ap Ath. 7.295ab that Theseus yielded his favours to Tlepolemus for the sake of a particularly tasty fish, and the story of Oppian that Pan lured Typhon out of his lair with a meal of fish, Hal. 3.18–19. Fish are sometimes found used as love-gifts in vase-painting, see Koch-Harnack, G., Knabenliebe und Tiergeschenke (Berlin, 1983), pp. 133Google Scholar Abb. 65 and 229–31, and cf. Mommsen, G., Der Affecter (Mainz, 1975), p. 64Google Scholar for men carrying fish for some unknown reason on several of that painter's vases. For the desultory fish in lines 11–12 see Kassel-Austin ad loc. and cf. Davidson, Alan, Mediterranean Seafood (2nd ed., Harmondsworth, 1981), p. 90Google Scholar ‘in Venice you could insult someone by calling him a picarel-eater’. For the use of fish in love-magic and seduction, see Abt, Adam, Die Apologie des Apuleius von Madaura und die antike Zauberei [= Dietrich, Albrecht and Wiinsch, Richard (eds.), Religionsgeschichtliche Versuche und Vorarbeiten, Heft II] (GieBen, 1908Google Scholar, repr. Berlin, 1967), pp. 135–6 and 140–4.

77 Ar.Ach. 885, cf. 894.

78 Ar. Peace 1013–14; cf. also Eubulus 34 an d 36 K–A.

79 See esp. Archippus 27 K–A and Antiphanes 27 K–A with the editors' comments ad loc.

80 Antiphanes, ibid.

81 Becker, W. A., Charicles, Eng. transl. (London, 1874), p. 324Google Scholar.

82 Cf. Anaxandrides 34 K–A and n. 76.

83 SVF iii. 167 # 667.

84 1.95:…⋯πωγώγει κα⋯ κατεκεκ⋯βευτο κα⋯ κατωψοΦ⋯γητο…

85 Alexis 204 K–A, line 6.

86 Alexis 76 K–A, lines 7–8.

87 Cf. also Antiphanes 27 K–A line 11 and Hyperides F 26 ap. Pollux vi.39.

88 Diphilus 31 K–A, lines 12–17; cf. Alexis 78 K–A.

89 Aeschines 1.191.