Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of illustrations
- List of tables
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- Abbreviations, transliterations, and other conventions
- Chapter 1 Introduction
- Chapter 2 The march route
- Chapter 3 The army
- Chapter 4 Unit organization and community
- Chapter 5 The things they carried
- Chapter 6 Marching
- Chapter 7 Resting
- Chapter 8 Eating and drinking
- Chapter 9 The soldier's body
- Chapter 10 Slaves, servants, and companions
- Chapter 11 Beyond the battlefield
- Tables
- Bibliography
- Index
Chapter 8 - Eating and drinking
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 September 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of illustrations
- List of tables
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- Abbreviations, transliterations, and other conventions
- Chapter 1 Introduction
- Chapter 2 The march route
- Chapter 3 The army
- Chapter 4 Unit organization and community
- Chapter 5 The things they carried
- Chapter 6 Marching
- Chapter 7 Resting
- Chapter 8 Eating and drinking
- Chapter 9 The soldier's body
- Chapter 10 Slaves, servants, and companions
- Chapter 11 Beyond the battlefield
- Tables
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
Though moderns like to portray cooking in ancient Greece as women's work, a closer look at the literary sources reveals men preparing food themselves both at home and in the fields. True, some wealthy Athenian hoplites in the fourth century had slaves to cook for them, but archaeological evidence from Euboea suggests that other Greek soldiers were cooking together in small groups as early as the Archaic period. Indeed, it was no shame even for Homeric heroes to do their own cooking. In an intimate scene from the Iliad, for example, Achilles and Patroclus in camp outside Troy prepare a repast for their comrades: Achilles with the aid of Automedon carving and spitting a medley of sheep, goat, and pork, Patroclus mixing drinks and stoking the fire, then serving out bread while Achilles lays roast meat on platters.
Like Achilles and Patroclus, the Cyreans did their own cooking in small groups, as members of a suskenia. The chow line and mess tent may be icons of modern military life, and professional chefs were familiar figures to sophisticated Athenian gourmets, but no evidence of centralized food preparation appears anywhere in the Anabasis. This absence strikes all the more considering the idealized Persian army of the Cyropaedia. There, Cyrus the Elder's troops enjoy the benefits of full-time quartermasters, company cooks, full-time servers, and organized group feeding. It seems unlikely Xenophon would have devoted so much attention to this perfect mess system if he had already seen something similar amongst the Cyreans.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- A Greek Army on the MarchSoldiers and Survival in Xenophon's Anabasis, pp. 208 - 231Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2008