The previous chapter considered cultic options, distinct from the official range, which offered new ideas about the creation of gods and mortals, and new forms of religious belonging. In this chapter the focus is on Greek thinkers, philosophers and others, who distanced themselves from mythology and theology in favour of their own articulate views of the world. In approaching these thinkers it is tempting to employ the model of the eighteenth-century French Enlightenment; self-styled philosophers rejected the teaching of the church and avowed the supremacy of ‘rational thought’, setting faith against atheism, belief against unbelief. As we shall see, it is profoundly misleading to talk of ‘the fifth-century Enlightenment’; it is also quite misleading to treat Hellenistic philosophical schools as populated by crypto-sceptics, responding to an alleged decline in belief in civic gods.

In the first place, there was no articulate body of belief for philosophers to reject. Greek religion was not like Christianity, which elevated belief in a central set of dogmas as a defining characteristic of the religion. There were commonly accepted ideas about the gods and about the appropriate ways of relating to them, but these remained generally inarticulate. The absence of an explicitly formulated and dynamic theology is due partly to the conservative influence of Homer and Hesiod, and partly to the absence of a professionally trained, vocational priesthood, which could have developed, internal to the religious system, an explicit ‘creed’.

Reactions from outside came from the Romans, as well as from other groups with their own religious systems, namely Jews and Christians. Greek philosophers and other intellectuals engaged in debates about Greek religions, but from within Greek culture. Outsiders on the other hand were naturally convinced of the superiority of their own religious systems. Indeed in the fourth and fifth centuries the combination of Roman power and Christian belief was responsible for the official suppression of Greek cults. The responses of outsiders often focused on the issue of the antiquity of cults and religious practices, both Greek and other. This was a crucial issue because antiquity tends to be the principal guarantee of authority in institutionalised religious systems. Even in the case of Christianity, whose merits we often see as novelty, the antiquity of the Christian revelation was a pressing issue.

ROMANS

From the earliest times Rome was in contact with her neighbours, both the Etruscans and, more remotely, the Greeks. The early phase of Roman interaction with Greek religion is attested most neatly in excavations of what is probably the sanctuary of Vulcan in the Roman Forum. A sixth-century votive deposit from here includes an Attic vase representing the return of Hephaistos to Olympos (Fig. 8.1). It is likely that the Greek Hephaistos already at this time is identified with the Roman Vulcan. By the first century BG it was normal for Romans to assume correspondences between Greek and Roman gods: Zeus–Jupiter, Hera–Juno, Athena–Minerva, Artemis–Diana, Aphrodite–Venus, Demeter–Ceres, Ares–Mars.

‘Polytheism’, in contrast to Christianity or Islam, is often seen as a tolerant and open religious system. It is associated with amateur priests, who lacked authority, and with an absence of dogma, orthodoxy and heresy. Already having many gods, it is attributed the capacity to accommodate even more at any time. This romantic view of Greek religious liberalism has little to commend it. The absence of dogmas did not entail that anything was permitted, nor was the pluralism of gods open-ended. In fact the terms ‘polytheism’ and ‘monotheism’ are unsatisfactory (above, p. 11), and the issue of tolerance/intolerance is anachronistic. As a matter of state policy, religious toleration does not predate the eighteenth century. The best way forward to understand this issue is to examine religious authority and responses to religious crisis. The chapter sets the scene for Greek cities in general, and then concentrates on Athens, largely because the Athenian evidence best illuminates the issues.

RELIGIOUS OFFICIALS

Priests were an essential component of every Greek state. Aristotle's Politics, an analytic study of the fourth-century Greek political community, includes among the necessary offices of the state superintendents of religion, namely priests and, especially in larger states, a range of officials concerned with the performance of rites, the upkeep of temples and religious accounts, and also civic magistrates who were responsible for religious festivals (1322 b.18–29; cf. 1328 b.11–13).

I have used square brackets for words that are no longer preserved in the surviving text; round brackets for parentheses in the original; and curly brackets for places where I have translated or explained technical terms. Readers might like to be reminded here of the monetary units that occur in these texts:

In the fifth century BG I drachma was the daily wage for a skilled labourer.

Sacrificial Calendar from the Attic Deme of Thorikos (430s BC?)

While the state of Athens had its sacrificial calendar, the constituent demes of Attica each had their own, interlocking calendars (above, pp. 28–30). There follows the calendar of Thorikos, which lies at the south–east of Attica. The sacrifices are organised under the twelve Attic months (see above, Fig. 2.g). The sacrifices here have both central and local interest. The layout of the translation indicates the (hypothetical) grouping of sacrifices.

According to a Christian writer of the second century, the Greeks had 365 gods. For the proponent of one (Christian) god this alleged fact demonstrated the absurdity of Greek religion. Moderns too sometimes assume the nobility and superiority of one supreme god (‘monotheism’) as against the proliferation of little gods (‘polytheism’). But the number of the Greek gods (not as great as 365) does not mean that those gods lack significance, any more than does the multiplicity of gods in the Hindu tradition. In addition, proponents of monotheism (whether Jewish, Christian or Islamic) are often not ready to note the disruptive consequences of monotheistic intolerance or the extent to which alleged monotheisms contain plural elements. Within Christianity, what about the Trinity, the Blessed Virgin Mary, or the Saints? In fact the categories ‘monotheism’ and ‘polytheism’ do not promote historical understanding. In both ethnography/anthropology and ancient history scholars have sometimes sought to ‘rescue’ polytheism by arguing for an element of monolatry or henotheism, in which the power of one god in the pantheon is proclaimed as supreme. But the manoeuvre is conditioned by a Judaeo-Christian evaluation of monotheism. The terms ‘polytheism’ and ‘monotheism’ are best abandoned to the theologians.

PANHELLENIG MYTHS

The principal Panhellenic Greek deities were quite limited in number, though infinitely extensible via epithets: Zeus, Hera, Athena, Apollo, Artemis, Poseidon, Aphrodite, Hermes, Hephaistos, Ares, Demeter, and Dionysos. These ‘twelve Olympians’, the number that became conventional in the fifth century BG, formed a family.

In 402 bc Cyrus the Younger raised an army, including 13,000 Greek mercenaries, to depose his brother from the Persian throne. Among these mercenaries was Xenophon, whose account of his experiences, the Anabasis, brings Greek religions to life for us. The Anabasis recounts the march of Cyrus’ army from the west coast of Asia Minor to Assyria, where Cyrus died in battle, and the subsequent retreat of the ‘10,000’ Greeks to a Greek settlement on the north coast of Asia Minor.

Throughout the march of the 10,000, divine guidance was sought for the actions of the group and of individuals. Before the army went into action animals were sacrificed to the gods; professional diviners (manteis) inspected the entrails of the animals to determine whether the gods favoured the proposed action. Divine assent was far from automatic: sometimes plans were aborted because of unfavourable sacrifices; and sometimes sacrifices were offered repeatedly in the hope of obtaining a definite response.

Individuals too sought divine guidance. Uncertain about joining the expedition in the first place, Xenophon decided to consult the oracle of Apollo at Delphi. He enquired to which of the gods he should sacrifice and pray in order for his participation to be a success (3.1.5–8). Another Greek who was eager to become commander of the force sacrificed to the gods for three days, but gave up on his plans when the sacrifices did not prove favourable (6.6.36).

PRELIMINARIES

The historiography of malnutrition in past societies is an undernourished plant. A striking exception to the general neglect of the subject is the massive investigation into nutrition and mortality from 1700 to the present day directed by Robert Fogel of Chicago, and the studies that have proceeded under the stimulus of this project or in parallel. Otherwise, in so far as historians have been interested in problems of hunger and shortage, their attention has been captured by short-term setbacks or disasters in the historical record, while long-term deprivation and its effects on the health of the population have been little remarked upon. In short, historians have focused on famine or food crisis rather than malnutrition. In our own day, famine has evoked a world-wide response orchestrated by the media with the aid of relief agencies, statesmen, church leaders and pop stars – at least it did until the novelty wore off. Malnutrition in contrast is no news, though it is widespread and continuous in most developing countries, where it probably constitutes the greater threat to life. Malnutrition has of course been studied extensively by biological and social scientists, especially in connection with contemporary developing countries. Historians who are unaware of their findings are in danger of harbouring overoptimistic assumptions regarding the health and nutritional status of populations in antiquity and other pre-industrial societies.

PRELIMINARIES

The literary sources of antiquity depict the inhabited world as culturally heterogeneous, and regard food as one or the more significant markers of divergence. Most obviously, they contrast the food choices and eating customs of the urban elite, to which they themselves belong, and those of societies at the farthest reaches of the Graeco-Roman world or beyond its limits: the Scythians of Herodotus' History, the Mossynoeci of Xenophon's Anabasis, the various Celtic peoples of Strabo's Geography, the northern tribes of Tacitus' Germania, and so on. The construction is ideological, the details inaccurate or imaginary, and the purpose of the exercise is to emphasise the identity, singularity and superiority of the dominant cultures of Greece and Rome over those of sundry ‘barbarians’.

The fragility of the edifice constructed by our sources is transparent. Discrepant versions are offered of the diets of the same peoples. Contradictions and implausibilities occur in the treatment of major cultures like the Egyptians – for although their level of civilisation was in fact comparable with that of the Greeks, they too were seen by the Greeks as barbarians, simply by virtue of being non-Greek. Then, the inclusion of particular ‘barbarian’ tribes such as the Celts within the expanding Roman empire, and the cultural advancement that they were making in the view of their Roman overlords, created a particular problem for authors like Strabo, well-practised at imposing prefabricated cultural dichotomies. In the assessment of the Celts, a spectrum of civilisation or barbarity might have been a more apposite image to apply than a polarity of opposites.

Why do people eat what they eat? There are four main factors. The first is physiological. People eat to live and be healthy. This explains why they need food, but not why they choose to eat a particular food or combination of foods. On the whole people have chosen well, and the human race has survived. Errors have been made in ignorance: in antiquity a poison, lead, was ingested through the making of sapa (must), and colostrum in certain social circles was routinely withheld from babies. (These days, nutritionally undesirable choices are sometimes made knowingly, or out of avoidable ignorance.) In general, humans like other animals have selected food that is good for them, and this without any knowledge of nutritional science. Galen, following the Hippocratic tradition, thought that good health depended on the proper blending of the four qualities, hot, cold, dry, wet, corresponding to the four essential humours of the body, blood, black bile, yellow bile, phlegm. Thus precise knowledge of the qualities of the various foods was essential. These are primitive ideas, but the surprising thing is how often Galen was on the right lines. Just as the ancient farmer was not rendered helpless by his ignorance of plant biology, so the crude limitations of Galen's dietetics did not often lead him into absurdity, let alone into giving health-undermining advice.

The second factor is taste. Some foods simply appeal more than others. Humans can survive or flourish on a wide variety of foods. They have more choice than animals have. Some animals are mainly or entirely carnivores or herbivores.

PRELIMINARIES

The Mediterranean diet is healthier than the diets of the affluent societies of the West. On this nutritionists and pathologists are in agreement. A writer for The Times (of 31.8.93), under the banner headline ‘Switch to Mediterranean diet “can cut heart risk” ’, cites papers to a congress in Nice, a study on diet conducted at Lyon, and a consultant physician at Leicester Royal Infirmary, described as ‘author of the latest study’. Mediterranean peoples have a lower incidence of heart disease, cancer and digestive disorders, and this can be attributed directly to diet and life-style in general. In the Mediterranean region (according to a survey conducted in South Italy in the 1960s) a high proportion of total energy is provided by cereals (more than 60%); a low proportion of total energy comes from lipids, that is, fats (less than 30%); a high contribution is made to total lipids from olive oil, so that the diet is low in saturated fatty acids; and there is a relatively high intake of fruit and vegetables, providing at least half the dietary fibre that is ingested. Then, nutritionists talk of the presence in plant foods of various non-nutrients with a health-protective function that are only beginning to be understood. All this favourable publicity for the Mediterranean diet has served only to bolster the assumption already harboured by students of antiquity, that the ancient inhabitants of the region were well-off in terms of food and health.

Diet in the Mediterranean has not remained static. There have been intrusions, notably maize, potatoes, tomatoes, sugar from the New World.

PRELIMINARIES

Food comes first. No food, no life. In myth, the satisfying of this primary need was a struggle and a burden. The sin of Adam (issuing from the gut rather than the loins) condemned humanity, the flower of creation, to getting its food the hard way, through tilling the soil. Prometheus, Adam's counterpart in Greek myth, through his act of stealing fire from heaven, brought upon the human race the harsh necessity of agricultural labour, without which the seed, sunk in the earth by a vengeful Zeus, could not be converted into an edible plant. Agriculture was a punishment imposed upon mankind, and a diet of cereals a drastic comedown from the divine menu of nectar and ambrosia, or from the free produce of the Garden of Eden.

In antiquity, as in all pre-industrial societies, most people were of necessity engaged in food-production. In the Mediterranean environment this was often a hazardous enterprise carried on in hostile surroundings. The grimness of the terrain worked by the people of Palestine is reflected in the prominence of miracles of feeding in the New Testament, and in the Old Testament prophets' dreams of a Promised Land of abundant food and drink (Is. 35:1; Ezek. 47:7–12).

PRELIMINARIES: FAMINE AND SHORTAGE

The Father of Famine Theory, Thomas Malthus, asserted that a violent remedy was needed to adjust galloping population levels to existing food resources, and that was provided (along with war) by famine. His principle of population, and even more so his prescribed remedies for checking demographic growth, have always aroused controversy. The strong definition of famine with which he was working is, however, less vulnerable to criticism, and that concerns me more at present. Famine is, as he implied, catastrophic; it is a food crisis of devastating proportions, bringing in its train a sharp rise in the death rate and social, political and moral dislocation. As such it should be distinguished from, on the one hand, lesser food crises, and on the other, endemic, long-term hunger and malnutrition. These distinctions are not always carefully made. In many historical discussions, ‘famine’ and ‘shortage’ (la famine / la disette) are more or less interchangeable.

One thing at stake in the proper definition of famine is its incidence. When Fernand Braudel, the eminent historian of early modern Europe and the Mediterranean world, wrote that famine ‘recurred so consistently for centuries on end that it became incorporated into man's biological regime and built into his daily life’, he must have had food shortage, not famine, in mind. Shortages were frequent in antiquity. The precipitating cause was often one or more bad harvests. A high degree of variability of crop from year to year, in reaction to low and variable rainfall and fluctuating interannual temperatures, were basic features of the Mediterranean region.

PRELIMINARIES

In antiquity men lived longer than women. This cannot be proved. But I am sure that this is what we would find, if the data were adequate to permit a demographic investigation of Graeco-Roman ancient societies. Where the two sexes are given equal treatment in the matter of nutrition and health care, women live appreciably longer than men. That is the case in Europe, North America and other affluent countries of the modern world. Women live longer than men because they are physiologically more efficient. They need a lower protein and calorie intake, and are more resistant to disease.

In the contemporary third world, men live longer than women. Instead of a female : male ratio of 1.05/1.06: 1, it is 0.94: 1, or worse. This means, as Amartya Sen put it, in the title of an article in the New York Review of Books (December 1990), that ‘more than 100 million women are missing’. I think we would find, if we had comparable data, that there were a lot of missing women in ancient societies as well.

Sen blamed pro-male bias in two areas: division of food in the family, and access to medical and health facilities. Only the first variable is clearly relevant to us. In antiquity hospitals were hardly known, and doctors were in a complete fog about the nature of disease and how to cure it. Access to medical attention was not necessarily a benefit for the patient. Of course in antiquity the sick, or a proportion of them, did submit to medical or quasi-medical attention, and the condition of some of these perhaps improved in consequence, as it happened.

PRELIMINARIES

Although humans are omnivores, some potential foods are in practice unavailable, while others that are available, edible and nutritious are rejected or not even considered as food, food for humans that is. Among edible things treated as unfoods, some are rejected for reasons of taste, but will be eaten if necessary, in emergencies – they are famine foods – whereas others are forbidden as food. They are taboo. In this chapter I ask why it is that some social groups and communities impose food restrictions on their members, while others, the taboo against cannibalism excepted, do not. The Israelites of the Old Testament and beyond, and certain religious and philosophical groups within Greek and Roman pagan society, followed restrictive dietary rules, whereas Graeco-Roman society in general was ‘tolerant’ in this respect. Of course, food consumption is only one of the possible areas of restrictive regulation, and the range of prohibited practices will vary from society to society. As Freud observed, Greeks and Romans (as well as Jews) had their equivalents of the Polynesian taboo, in agos, sacer (compare the Jewish Kodaush), and taboo restrictions did penetrate to some extent their social, political and legal structures, as well as regulating sexual relations. But this did not happen on anything like the Jewish scale. Nor did Graeco-Roman societies lack altogether the concept of physiological pollution, the belief that contact with certain physical products or the performing of certain physical functions – including eating particular foods – might be dangerous for the society and the individual. The normal response among such communities, however, was to regulate the behaviour of only a few individuals with priestly functions.