Archaeological evidence can provide us with an ever-clearer view of the food that was consumed in antiquity and how it was produced. Such evidence is particularly helpful in throwing light on the dietary habits of ordinary people, who infrequently appear in our literary sources. Recent studies have looked in more detail at the importance of garum production (S. Granger, The Story of Garum: Fermented Fish Sauce and Salted Fish in the Ancient World (London 2021)) and viticulture (E. Dodd, Roman and Late Antique Wine Production in the Eastern Mediterranean: AComparative Archaeological Study at Antiochia ad Cragum (Turkey) and Delos (Greece) (Oxford 2020)) to ancient economies, and we can learn much about the potential prevalence of medical conditions based on food remains.
Extant texts do of course deal with the mechanics of food production (for example, Varo, the elder Cato and Columella), but often ancient authors seem keen to focus their attention on the culinary activities of the elite classes, and there have been numerous studies of both the Greek sumposion and Roman imperial banquets. Frequently, the dining table has been seen as the context for the discussion of ideas, and here one thinks of Plato and, most notably, Athenaeus’ Deipnosophistae (itself a remarkable treasure trove of Greek comic fragments). The latter work demonstrates that the ancients saw food as much more than mere nutrition: it was actually representative of deeper philosophical truths, ranging from food consumption as a mirror of morality to reflections upon the nature of mortality.
It is this notion of commensality, and the idea that dining (and usually dining in company) might provide the impetus to philosophical reflection that drives this volume. In this sense, David Roochnik offers not only a survey of how ancient thinkers thought about food (or more particularly how they thought about consumption and denial, as it is this tension between ‘being’ and ‘not being’ that lies at the heart of the work) but also a work of active philosophizing. Each section is punctuated by a food diary in which the author recites a litany of his own food experiences, both pleasurable and otherwise, that intersperse his own daily life. Although it is initially not clear why he has included these dietary musings, it soon becomes apparent that these personal reflections mirror some of the key philosophical concerns that he raises. The ever-present need for the ingestion of food to continue corporeal existence, the anxieties around bodily pleasure and the renunciation/repudiation/formation of self-identity are some of the themes explored and are both the concerns of the ancient thinker and also of the scholar who writes about them.
The work is divided into four sections. The first is about what food in ancient Greek epic, in particular Homer’s Odyssey, can tell us about the ways in which the Greeks may have thought about concepts of self-identity and perceptions of the ‘other’. Roochnik is less concerned with the meals that Homer describes than with the opportunity they give Odysseus for the weaving of truths and untruths, constructing and remoulding his own identity as narrative performance. As a man cast adrift from the social constructs that make him (husband, father, son, king), he is free to create his own version of himself, and eating together with strangers allows him the performance space to construct these evolving narratives. He also sees such occasions as a way of establishing rituals that serve to give structure and form to a transient mortal existence, as well as laying down (or perhaps reaffirming) rules of etiquette and behaviour. Whether the law of xenia (hospitality) constituted a tangible legal code or an aspirational ideal, the space of the communal meal allows this code to weave itself into the pattern of social norms.
Later chapters consider the influence of Dionysus, most particularly in opposition to the Apollo in the Nietzschean conception of this binary polarity and the tension between the Dionysian impulse to excess and abandonment in pure emotion and the way of restraint that lies in the Apollonian. This theme is continued in the chapters on Socrates and Aristotle.
This work combines the virtues of readability and accessibility. It succeeds by limiting itself to a series of core texts and themes (existence, commensality, identity) and even though the work is relatively short, it does not stint on tackling its themes in some depth. It will appeal equally to classicist and philosopher and will make for good preliminary reading for those seeking to further explore the subject. Iwould like to see the author explore these themes further, perhaps in the way that food themes were used in the Greek comic poets (it strikes me that students wishing for a way into study of Athenaeus would be well-served in reading this work). As a scholarly work, it shares the qualities of the good meals that Roochnik eulogizes: varied and satisfying but leaving one with the desire for future pleasures in the same vein.
