Athenaeus - Deipnosophists Book IV
Book IV. 128 c – 131 e
In Macedonia, as I have already said, Caranus celebrated his marriage with a banquet at which the number of men invited to gather was twenty; no sooner had they taken their places on the couches than they were presented with silver cups, one each, to keep as their own. Each guest, also, had been crowned before he entered with a gold tiara, worth, every one of them, five gold staters. And after they had emptied their cups, they were each given a bronze platter of Corinthian manufacture, containing a loaf as wide as the platter; also chickens and ducks, and ringdoves, too, and a goose, and an abundance of suchlike viands piled high; and each guest took his portion, platter and all, and distributed it among the slaves who stood behind him. Many other things to eat were handed round in great variety, following which came a second platter of silver, on which again lay a huge loaf, and geese, hares, young goats, and curiously moulded cakes besides, pigeons, turtle-doves, partridges, and other fowl in plenty. “This also,” he says,* “we presented to the slaves in addition, and when we had had enough of food we washed our hands. Then numerous chaplets were brought in, made of all kinds of flowers, and in addition to them all were gold tiaras, equal in weight to the first chaplet.”
On top of these viands, Hippolochus says that Proteas, descendant of that Proteas who was the son of Lanice – the same who had been the nurse of King Alexander – drank a great deal (for he was given to drinking, like his grandfather Proteas, Alexander’s comrade), and toasted everybody. Hippolochus then continues with the following; “When we had at last pleasantly taken leave of all sobriety, there entered flute-girls and singers and some Rhodian sambuca-players. To me these girls looked quite naked, but some said that they had on tunics. And after a prelude they withdrew. Then came in other girls carrying each two jars fastened together with a gold band and containing perfume; one jar was silver, the other gold, and held half a pint. These also they gave to each guest. After dinner, namely a silver platter gilded all over to no little thickness, and large enough to hold the whole of a roast pig – a big one, too – which lay on its back upon it; the belly, seen from above, disclosed that it was full of many bounties. For, roasted inside it, were thrushes, ducks, and warblers, in unlimited number, pease puree poured over eggs, oysters, and scallops; all of which, towering high, was presented to each guest, platters and all. After this we drank and then received a kid, piping hot, again upon another platter as large as the last, with spoons of gold. Seeing, therefore, our embarrassment, Caranus ordered baskets and bread-racks made of plaited ivory strips to be given us, at which we applauded the bridegroom with delight for having rescued our gifts. Then more crowns again, and a double-jar of gold and silver containing perfume, equal in weight to the first. Quiet being restored, there trooped in men who would have graced even the religious observances at the Athenian Feast of Pots. After them entered ithyphallic dancers, clowns, and some naked female jugglers who performed tumbling acts among swords, and blew fire from their mouths. After we had finished with them, our attention was next engrossed in a warm and alm ost neat drink, the wines at our disposal being Thasian, Mendaean, and Lesbian; and very large gold cups were handed to each guest. After this draught we were all presented with a crystal platter about two cubits in diameter, lying in a silver receptacle and full of a collection of all kinds of baked fish; also a sliver bread-rack containing Cappadocian loaves of which we ate some and gave the rest to the slaves. Then we washed our hands and put on crowns, again receiving gold tiaras twice the size of those we had before, and another double-jar of perfume.
When all was quiet, Proteas jumped up from his couch and demanded a six-pint bowl, and filling it with Thasian wine with just a dash of water he drank it all saying, ‘He that drinks most shall have least sorrow.’ And Caranus said, ‘Since you have been the first to drink, be the first also to receive the bowl as a gift; and this shall be the meed of all the others who drink.’ At these words, ‘all of the nine rose up’ and seized a bowl, each striving to get ahead of the other. But one unfortunate, who of all our companions was unable to drink, sat up and wept at his bowless state, until Caranus made him a present of the cup unfilled. After this, a chorus of one hundred men entered singing tunefully a wedding hymn; then came in dancing girls, some attired as Nereids, others as Nymphs. While then our merrymaking was proceeding, and the late hour was beginning to bring darkness, they threw open the room, which had been curtained all about with white linen; and when this was drawn back, the barriers being let down by a hidden contrivance, there rose to our view torches; Cupids and Dianas, Pans and Hermae and many similar figures held the lights in silver brackets. While we were admiring this artistic device, veritable Erymanthian boars were served to each guest, on square platters rimmed with gold; they were skewered with silver spears. The wonderful thing about it was, that though relaxed and heavy with wine, as soon as we saw any of these things introduced we all became sober enough to stand on our feet, as the saying is.
Well, the slaves began to stuff our happy baskets full until the customary signal for concluding the banquet was sounded on the trumpet; for this, as you know, is the Macedonian practice at dinners attended by many guests. Then Caranus, leading off the drinking in small cups, ordered the slaves to circulate them quickly. We, therefore, sipped them gently as an antidote to the drinking of unmixed wine which had gone before. Meanwhile, the clown Mandrogenes had come in, a descendant, so they say, of the celebrated Athenian clown Straton. He caused many a loud laugh among us by his jokes, and afterwards danced with his wife who was over eighty years old. And last there came in the concluding courses; that is, dessert in ivory baskets, and flat cakes of every variety, Cretan and your own Samian, friend Lynceus, and Attic, were given to all as a present along with the boxes in which they were separately packed. So, after this, we arose and took our leave, quite sober – the gods be my witness! – because we were apprehensive for the safety of the wealth we took with us. But you, staying in Athens, think it happiness rather to listen to the precepts of Theophrastus, eating wild thyme and rocket-seed and your esteemed rolls while you attend the festivals of the Lenaea and the Pots! We, however, have carried away a fortune from Caranus’s banquet instead of trifling portions, and are now looking for houses or lands or slaves to buy.”
* The nuptials of Caranus the Macedonian, as described by Hippolochus, of Macedon, historian (ca. 300 B.C.)
Book IV. 146 c - d
Alexander the Great, every time he dined with his friends, according to Ephippus of Olynthus, in the book which describes the demise of Alexander and Hephaestion, spent one hundred minas, (1-1/2 talents) there being perhaps sixty or seventy friends at dinner. But the Persian king, as Ctesias and Dionon (in his Persian History) say, used to dine in company with 15,000 men, and four hundred talents were expended on the dinner. This amounts, in the coinage of Itlay, to 2,400,000 denarii, which, divided among 15,000 men, make 160 denarii, Italic currency, for each man. Consequently it comes to the same sum as that spent by Alexander, which was one hundred minas, as Ephippus related.
Book IV. 148 d - f
Viewing all this, which surpasses what we have, we may well admire Greek poverty, having also before our eyes the dinners of the Thebans, an account of which is given by Cleitarchus in the first book of his History of Alexander. He says that “after the demolition of their city by Alexander, their entire wealth was found to be under 440 talents; he further says that they were mean-spirited and stingy where food was concerned, preparing for their meals mincemeat in leaves, and boiled vegetables, anchovies, and other small fish, sausages, beef-ribs, and pease-porridge. With these, Attaginus, the son of Phrynon, entertained Mardonius together with fifty other Persians, and Herodotus says in the ninth book that Attaginus was well supplied with riches. I believe that they could not have won the battle, and that the Greeks need not have met them in battle-array at Plataeae, seeing that they already had been done to death by such food.
Book IV. 155 a
And Diyllus of Athens, in the ninth book of his Histories says that when Cassander returned from Boetia and held the funeral of the king and queen at Aegaeae, as well as of Cynna, the mother of Eurydice, he not only honored them with all the other fitting rites, but set up also a contest of single fighters which was entered by four of his soldiers.
Note: F.H.G. ii. 361; the occasion was the state funeral of Arridaeus and Eurydice, murdered by order of Olympias, 317 B.C. Cynna had been assassinated by Alcetas. All three were buried in the royal tombs of Aegae.
Book IV. 155 c - d
Duris of Samos, in the seventeenth book of his Histories, says of Polysperchon* that whenever he was elated by wine he would dance, even though was rather old and second to none among the Macedonians either in military achievement or in general esteem; he danced continually, clad in a saffron tunic and wearing on his feet Sicyonian slippers. Agatharchides of Cnidus, in the eighth book of his Asiatic History records that whenever the friends of Alexander, son of Philip, entertained him at dinner, they encased everything that was to be served as dessert** in gold; and when they desired to eat the dessert, they tore off the gold with the rest of the waste and threw it away, that their friends might be spectators of their extravagance, while their slaves enjoyed the profit. But these gentry had forgotten, what Duris also records, that Philip, Alexander’s father, possessed a gold cup weighing fifty drachms, and that he always took it to bed with him and placed it at his head.
* Polysperchon, one of Alexander’s generals (lost Macedonia to Cassander 317 B.C.)
** Note: such as nuts, figs, raisins, of which the shells and stones were thrown on the floor.
Book IV. 166 f -167 d
Concerning the extravagance and mode of life of Philip and his companions Theopompus writes the following in the forty-ninth book of the Histories. ‘After Philip had become possessor of a large fortune he did not spend it fast. No! he threw it outdoors and cast it away, being the worst manager in the world. This was true of his companions as well as himself. For to put it unqualifiedly, not one of them knew how to live uprightly or to manage an estate discreetly. He himself was to blame for this; being insatiable and extravagant, he did everything in a reckless manner, whether he was acquiring or giving. For as a soldier he had not time to count up revenues and expenditures. Add to this also that his companions were men who had rushed to his side from very many quarters; some were from the land to which he himself belonged, others were from Thessaly, still others were from all the rest of Greece, selected not for their supreme merit; on the contrary, nearly every man in the Greek or barbarian world of a lecherous, loathsome, or ruffianly character flocked to Macedonia and won the title of “companions of Philip.” And even supposing that one of them was not of this sort when he came, he soon became like all the rest, under the influence of the Macedonian life and habits. It was partly the wars and campaigns, partly also the extravagances of living that incited them to be ruffians, and live, not in a law-abiding spirit, but prodigally and like highwaymen.’
Duris, in the seventh book of his Macedonian History, speaking of Pasicyprus, king of Cyprus, and his prodigality, writes the following: ‘After the siege of Tyre, Alexander, in dismissing Pnytagoras, gave him among other presents a fortress which he himself had asked for. This fortress the reigning king Pasicyprus had before this been compelled by his extravagance to sell for fifty talents to Pygmalion of Citium; along with the fortress went his kingdom too. Pasicyprus took the money and passed his old age in Amathus.’
Book IV. 171 b - c
Those who give the summons to come to the king’s table, as Pamphilus says, are called “table men,” from eleon, which means “meat-table.” But Artemidorus names them “dinner-summoners.” He further says that they used to call the foretasters “eaters,” because they ate before the king to ensure his safety. But in our day the “eater” has become the superintendent of the entire service; his office was distinguished and honorable. Chares, at any rate, in the third book of his Histories says that Ptolemy Soter was appointed “eater” for Alexander.
Book IV. 184 b
You, indeed, are not aware that Menecles, the historian of Barca, and again Andron of Alexandria, in his Chronicles, record that the Alexandrians were the teachers of all Greeks and barbarians at a time when the entire system of general education had broken down by reason of the continually recurring disturbances which took place in the period of Alexander’s successors.