Part 16 (2/2)

habits in their meal hours. The custom of Germans and of many Americans in having the heartiest meal at noonday would never appeal to them. The hearty meal is at night, and no one dreams of doing any serious work after it. When it is finished, there may be pleasant discourse or varied amus.e.m.e.nts, but never real business; and even if there are guests, the average dinner party breaks up early. Early to bed and early to rise, would be a maxim indorsed by the Athenians.

Promptly upon rising, our good citizen has devoured a few morsels of bread sopped in undiluted wine; that has been to him what ”coffee and rolls” will be to the Frenchmen,--enough to carry him through the morning business, until near to noon he will demand something more satisfying. He then visits home long enough to partake of a substantial dejeuner (”ariston,” first breakfast = ”akratisma”).

He has one or two hot dishes--one may suspect usually warmed over from last night's dinner--and partakes of some more wine. This ”ariston” will be about all he will require until the chief meal of the day--the regular dinner (”depnon”) which would follow sunset.

155. Society desired at Meals.--The Athenians are a gregarious sociable folk. Often enough the citizen must dine alone at home with ”only” his wife and children for company, but if possible he will invite friends (or get himself invited out). Any sort of an occasion is enough to excuse a dinner-party,--a birthday of some friend, some kind of family happiness, a victory in the games, the return from, or the departure upon, a journey:--all these will answer; or indeed a mere love of good fellows.h.i.+p. There are innumerable little eating clubs; the members go by rotation to their respective houses. Each member contributes either some money or has his slave bring a hamper of provisions. In the find weather picnic parties down upon the sh.o.r.e are common.[*] ”Anything to bring friends together”--in the morning the Agora, in the afternoon the gymnasium, in the evening they symposium--that seems to be the rule of Athenian life.

[*]Such excursions were so usual that the literal expression ”Let us banquet at the sh.o.r.e” ([Note from Brett: The Greek letters are written out here as there is no way to portray them properly]

sigma eta mu epsilon rho omicron nu [next word] alpha kappa tau alpha sigma omega mu epsilon nu [here is a rough transliteration into English letters ”semeron aktasomen”]) came often to mean simply ”Let us have a good time.”

However, the Athenians seldom gather to eat for the mere sake of animal gorging. They have progressed since the Greeks of the Homeric Age. Odysseus[*] is made to say to Alcinous that there is nothing more delightful than sitting at a table covered with bread, meat, and wine, and listening to a bard's song; and both Homeric poems show plenty of gross devouring and guzzling. There is not much of this in Athens, although B?otians are still reproached with being voracious, swinish ”flesh eaters,” and the Greeks of South Italy and Sicily are considered as devoted to their fare, though of more refined table habits. Athenians of the better cla.s.s pride themselves on their light diet and moderation of appet.i.te, and their neighbors make considerable fun of them for their failure to serve satisfying meals. Certain it is that the typical Athenian would regard a twentieth century ”table d'hote” course dinner as heavy and unrefined, if ever it dragged its slow length before him.

[*]”Odyssey,” IX. 5-10.

156. The Staple Articles of Food.--However, the Athenians have honest appet.i.tes, and due means of silencing them. The diet of a poor man is indeed simple in the extreme. According to Aristophanes his meal consists of a cake, bristling with bran for the sake of economy, along with an onion and a dish of sow thistles, or of mushrooms, or some other such wretched vegetables; and probably, in fact, that is about all three fourths of the population of Attica will get on ordinary working days, always with the addition of a certain indispensable supply of oil and wine.

Bread, oil, and wine, in short, are the three fundamentals of Greek diet. With them alone man can live very healthfully and happily; without them elaborate vegetable and meat dishes are poor subst.i.tutes. Like latter-day Frenchmen or Italians with their huge loaves or macaroni, BREAD in one form or another is literally the stuff of life to the Greek. He makes it of wheat, barley, rye, millet, or spelt, but preferably of the two named first. The barley meal is kneaded (not baked) and eaten raw or half raw as a sort of porridge. Of wheat loaves there are innumerable shapes on sale in the Agora,--slender rolls, convenient loaves, and also huge loaves needing two or three bushels of flour, exceeding even those made in a later day in Normandy. At every meal the amount of bread or porridge consumed is enormous; there is really little else at all substantial. Persian visitors to the Greeks complain that they are in danger of rising from the table hungry.

But along with the inevitable bread goes the inevitable OLIVE OIL.

No latter-day article will exactly correspond to it. First of all it takes the place of b.u.t.ter as the proper condiment to prevent the bread from being tasteless.[*] It enters into every dish.

The most versatile cook will be lost without it. Again, at the gymnasium we have seen its great importance to the athletes and bathers. It is therefore the h.e.l.lenic subst.i.tute for soap. Lastly, it fills the lamps which swing over very dining board. It takes the place of electricity, gas, or petroleum. No wonder Athens is proud of her olive trees. If she has to import her grain, she has a surplus for export of one of the three great essentials of Grecian life.

[*]There was extremely little cow's b.u.t.ter in Greece. Herodotus (iv.

2) found it necessary to explain the process of ”cow-cheese-making”

among the Scythians.

The third inevitable article of diet is WINE. No one has dreamed of questioning its vast desirability under almost all circ.u.mstances.

Even drunkenness is not always improper. It may be highly fitting, as putting one in a ”divine frenzy,” partaking of the nature of the G.o.ds. Musaeus the semi-mythical poet is made out to teach that the reward of virtue will be something like perpetual intoxication in the next world. aeschines the orator will, ere long, taunt his opponent Demosthenes in public with being a ”water drinker”; and Socrates on many occasions has given proof that he possessed a very hard head. Yet naturally the Athenian has too acute a sense of things fit and dignified, too n.o.ble a perception of the natural harmony, to commend drunkenness on any but rare occasions. Wine is rather valued as imparting a happy moderate glow, making the thoughts come faster, and the tongue more witty. Wine raises the spirits of youth, and makes old age forget its gray hairs. It chases away thoughts of the dread hereafter, when one will lose consciousness of the beautiful sun, and perhaps wander a ”strengthless shade” through the dreary underworld.

There is a song attributed to Anacreon, and nearly everybody in Athens approves the sentiment:--

Thirsty earth drinks up the rain, Trees from earth drink that again; Ocean drinks the air, the sun Drinks the sea, and him, the moon.

Any reason, canst thou think, I should thirst, while all these drink?[*]

[*]Translation from Von Falke's ”Greece and Rome.”

157. Greek Vintages.--All Greeks, however, drink their wine so diluted with water that it takes a decided quant.i.ty to produce a ”reaction.” The average drinker takes three parts water to two of wine. If he is a little reckless the ratio is four of water to three of wine; equal parts ”make men mad” as the poet says, and are probably reserved for very wild dinner parties. As for drinking pure wine no one dreams of the thing--it is a practice fit for Barbarians. There is good reason, however, for this plentiful use of water. In the original state Greek wines were very strong, perhaps almost as alcoholic as whisky, and the Athenians have no Scotch climate to excuse the use of such stimulants.[*]

[*]There was a wide difference of opinion as to the proper amount of dilution. Odysseus (”Odyssey,” IX. 209) mixed his fabulously strong wine from Maron in Thrace with twenty times its bulk of water. Hesiod abstemiously commended three parts of water to one of wine. Zaleucus, the lawgiver of Italian Locri, established the death penalty for drinking unmixed wine save by physicians' orders (”Athenaeus,” X. 33).

No wine served in Athens, however, will appeal to a later-day connoisseur. It is all mixed with resin, which perhaps makes it more wholesome, but to enjoy it then becomes an acquired taste.

There are any number of choice vintages, and you will be told that the local Attic wine is not very desirable, although of course it is the cheapest. Black wine is the strongest and sweetest; white wine is the weakest; rich golden is the driest and most wholesome.

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