[Authors and titles are listed at the end of the review]
Late antiquity has long been recognized as a period of complex change, affecting everything from politics and the economy to religion and culture. It seems quite natural to assume that food and nutrition did not remain unaffected by these changes, but rather that people, in this respect too, developed a new set of tools, mindsets, and symbols under constantly changing conditions.
This smallish (133 pages of content) but nevertheless valuable volume addresses some of these topics, even if not all of them in a systematic or comprehensive way.[1] To do so would be a significant task for a larger book or even a series of books. With its eleven contributions (all in French), most of which were presented at a conference at the University of Liège in 2018, the volume under review does not aim at such a goal but rather addresses a wide and loose range of subjects, mostly based on a specific body of evidence and often employing micro-perspectives. In quite a few cases, though, the broader picture of late antiquity is addressed.
After a short introduction mainly concerned with the genesis of the volume, the articles are divided into three sections with three articles each, as well as an ‘epilogue’ that in fact consists of two additional articles.
The first section, ‘À la table des Romains’ (“At the Romans’ table”), includes three articles concerned with the Roman imperial period. C. Bertrand-Dagenbach scrutinizes the emperors’ dinners in the Historia Augusta, from Hadrian to Tacitus, scrutinizing symbols and discourse in particular. She concludes that these literary descriptions were stylized after the conventional patterns of good/bad emperors already found in Tacitus, Suetonius, and others, and also postulates convincingly that fourth-century discourse, too, must be taken into account to fully understand how those dinners were modeled. In a fascinating essay, P. Leclercq analyzes the recipes from De re coquinaria (i.e., ‘Apicius’) via a purpose-built database. This ‘cookbook’ does not provide readers much more than the names of ingredients needed for any given dish, omitting quantities, cooking times, etc. The digitization of this evidence elucidates the use and frequency of certain ingredients and their combinations. It also serves as an analytical tool. Leclercq is thus able, e.g., to single out some recipes containing olive oil and egg yolk as probably representing an emulsion. Finally, Y. Berthelet discusses the Christian adaptation of the Roman lectisternium and sellisternium, banquets for the gods that involved statues put onto dining couches and chairs respectively. He demonstrates how these rituals were modeled after banquets in the human sphere and were criticized by early Christian apologists, namely Tertullian, Arnobius, and Augustine. The obvious anthropomorphism of these banquets was just one target of Christian criticism and, except for Arnobius, far from the most important point.
The second section of the book, ‘Aliments et alimentation dans l’Égypte tardo-antique’ (“Food and nutrition in late antique Egypt”), is the most coherent, consisting of three articles based on material from late antique Egypt. In a remarkable synthesis, M.-H. Marganne makes use of an extensive number of papyri concerned with food in order to characterize consumption practices. The focus of the paper’s sections is on medicinal and elite consumption, with a brief consideration of changes introduced by Christian asceticism. Rather than proposing original theories in every section, Marganne instead offers an overview of questions relevant for future research. In their essay, N. Carlig and A. Ricciardetto employ an interesting approach to understanding Egyptian bilingualism, comparing Greek and Coptic terms for foodstuffs, but they are more concerned with bilingualism per se. Finally, A. Miccoli dedicates a detailed article to dried figs, moving from discussion of various species and ways of consumption to ‘fig culture’. After being introduced to Egypt in the dynastic period, figs became a staple food, and cultivation and trade developed successfully up to the point when, in Roman times, figs seem to have been cultivated and sold in a multitude of varieties and forms.
As indicated by its title, ‘Repas juifs et chrétiens’ (“Jewish and Christian meals”), the third section includes three articles that consider meals in Jewish and/or Christian contexts. T. Klär analyses the role of the communal meal among early Christians and among the highly disputed late antique Jewish sect, the Essenes, which he puts in the context of the Dead Sea Scrolls. He then discovers some parallels between both religious groups, ultimately hypothesizing with good reason that the communal meal of early Christianity was in many ways based on similar Jewish traditions. H. Schlange-Schöningen offers a lexicographic analysis of St. Jerome’s attitude toward food. Jerome was very much in line with earlier Christian writers, favoring simple and unprocessed food and asceticism over abundance, not least for the benefit of health. A. Binsfeld explores two important features of early Church history: the funerary meal and the feeding of the poor. While not connected by any system of signs or beliefs (except having been already in place for centuries), those two dining practices of the early Church both served as important means for building an integrative identity.
The epilogue, ‘Les lendemains de fête’ (“After the feast”), comprises two short but closely related articles of by M-H. Marganne and A. Ricciardetto concerned with medical aspects of nutrition, namely the means to avoid the consequences of heavy eating and drinking.
The volume finishes with a combined bibliography. No indexes are provided.
This is clearly not a book for a general audience or even less advanced students, and its title is somewhat misleading because almost none of the articles address matters of strategic planning with regard to food and nutrition. The specialist reader, on the other hand, will find much that is not only interesting and new but also challenging and stimulating for further research, even beyond the subjects of food and nutrition in late antiquity.
Authors and Titles
À la table des Romains
– La table de l’empereur dans l’Histoire Auguste (C. Bertrand-Dagenbach)
– Pour une analyse chiffrée des recueils de recettes anciens : l’exemple du De re coquinaria (P. Leclercq)
– Les critiques chrétiennes des lectisternes et sellisternes romains : un banquet des dieux trop anthropomorphe ? (Y. Berthelet)
II. Aliments et alimentation dans l’Égypte tardo-antique
– Pratiques et stratégies alimentaires dans l’Égypte byzantine (284–641) : le témoignage des papyrus (M.-H. Marganne)
– Alimentation et bilinguisme dans l’Égypte de l’Antiquité tardive : l’apport des glossaires gréco-coptes (dernier quart du VIe – VIIe/VIIIe siècles) (N. Carlig, A. Ricciardetto)
– La figue sèche dans les papyrus documentaires grecs (A. Miccoli)
III. Repas juifs et chrétiens
– L’organisation du repas communautaire dans les premières communautés religieuses : sur la relation entre la Cène du premier christianisme et le repas des Esséniens (T. Klär)
– La conception et la terminologie de l’alimentation chez saint Jérôme (H. Heinrich Schlange-Schöningen)
– Pratiques et stratégies alimentaires de l’église et dans les églises : du banquet funéraire à l’alimentation des pauvres (A. Andrea Binsfeld)
IV. Épilogue – Les lendemains de fête
– Se rétablir des excès de table selon Oribase, médecin grec de l’empereur Julien (M.-H. Marganne)
– Se remettre de la fête : porter des couronnes végétales pour éviter la « gueule de bois » (Antonio Ricciardetto)
Notes
[1] Examples for such an approach would be P. Erdkamp, ‘War, Food, Climate Change, and the Decline of the Roman Empire,’ Journal of Late Antiquity 12 (2019) 422–465 and D. Robinson, Food, Virtue and the Shaping of Early Christianity (Cambridge 2021). On the other hand, similar in structure to the book under review here is a recent special issue of Antiquité Tardive (2019): L’alimentation dans l’antiquité tardive.