What do you think?
Rate this book
Siren Feasts
Cheese, wine, honey & olive oil--4 of Greece's best known contributions to culinary culture--were well known 4000 years ago. Remains of honeycombs & of cheeses have been found under the volcanic ash of the Santorini eruption of 1627 BCE. Over the millennia, Greek food diversified & absorbed neighboring traditions, yet retained its own distinctive character. In Siren Feasts, Andrew Dalby provides the 1st serious social history of Greek food. He begins with the tunny fishers of the neolithic age, & traces the story thru the repertoire of classical Greece, the reputations of Lydia for luxury & of Sicily & S. Italy for sybaritism, to the Imperial synthesis of varying traditions, with a look forward to the Byzantine cuisine & the development of the modern Greek menu. The apples of the Hesperides turn out to be lemons. Great favor attaches to Byzantine biscuits. Fully documented & comprehensively illustrated, scholarly yet readable, Siren Feasts demonstrates the social construction placed upon different types of food at different periods (was fish a luxury in classical Athens, tho disdained by Homeric heroes?). It places diet in an economic & agricultural context; & provides a history of mentalities in relation to a subject which no one can ignore.
320 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1995
1 person is currently reading
189 people want to read
About the author
Andrew Dalby
46 books20 followersAndrew Dalby (born Liverpool, 1947) is an English linguist, translator and historian who most often writes about food history.
Dalby studied at the Bristol Grammar School, where he learned some Latin, French and Greek; then at the University of Cambridge. There he studied Latin and Greek at first, afterwards Romance languages and linguistics. He earned a bachelor's degree in 1970. Dalby then worked for fifteen years at Cambridge University Library, eventually specializing in Southern Asia. He gained familiarity with some other languages because of his work there, where he had to work with foreign serials and afterwards with South and Southeast Asian materials. In 1982 and 1983 he collaborated with Sao Saimong in cataloguing the Scott Collection of manuscripts and documents from Burma (especially the Shan States) and Indochina; He was later to publish a short biography of the colonial civil servant and explorer J. G. Scott, who formed the collection.[1] To help him with this task, he took classes in Cambridge again in Sanskrit, Hindi and Pali and in London in Burmese and Thai.
Dalby studied at the Bristol Grammar School, where he learned some Latin, French and Greek; then at the University of Cambridge. There he studied Latin and Greek at first, afterwards Romance languages and linguistics. He earned a bachelor's degree in 1970. Dalby then worked for fifteen years at Cambridge University Library, eventually specializing in Southern Asia. He gained familiarity with some other languages because of his work there, where he had to work with foreign serials and afterwards with South and Southeast Asian materials. In 1982 and 1983 he collaborated with Sao Saimong in cataloguing the Scott Collection of manuscripts and documents from Burma (especially the Shan States) and Indochina; He was later to publish a short biography of the colonial civil servant and explorer J. G. Scott, who formed the collection.[1] To help him with this task, he took classes in Cambridge again in Sanskrit, Hindi and Pali and in London in Burmese and Thai.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
November 22, 2020
A labor of love, this history of "food and gastronomy" spans the entire record from prehistory to the present, focusing on the period from 650 B.C.E. to 300 C.E. "Greece" is also broadly treated, taken to include not only the European peninsula but also all areas occupied by Greeks or Greek-speakers: Asia Minor, the Aegean Islands, Cyprus, Rhodes, Crete, Cyrene and Italy--as well as those areas with whom they traded foodstuffs and culinary discoveries. This is not a cookbook, but a history of one culture's foods, their employments and enjoyments.
The treatment of prehistoric (pre-650) food consumption is cursory, occupying only twenty-two pages of text. Archaic and Classical Greece (650-250) is thoroughly treated in eighty pages while post-Classical antiquity (300 B.C.E.-300 C.E.) receives fifty-four. Byzantine, Ottoman and contemporary developments are quickly reviewed in twenty-five pages. Throughout, the concentration is on ordinary, domestic practice, not on the extraordinary or the cultic.
There is little perceptible system to this book beyond such rough chronological ordering. It is not nested, nor does it attempt to substantiate, any anthropological, sociological or economic theory. Thus, while the author demonstrates that the discipline of gastronomy originated circa 400 B.C.E., he adduces neither weighty reasons for this development nor momentous consequences. The aesthetics of eating appear to require no justification. This is a travelogue, not a scientific geography of Greek cookery.
Like a good travel book, 'Siren Feasts' contains tidbits to satisfy all tastes, excurses into the arcana of the once commonplace. For instance, I found Dalby's discussions of seafood fascinating. So various were the species available in the Mediterranean world that language fails him--literally. Modern English simply lacks the nouns. French, a richer language here, is resorted to. One wonders if contemporary supermarket cornucopias are actually more abundant than some ancient marketplaces. Again and again, I was struck by the poverty of my own culinary vocabulary, at my ignorance as regards the such an important facet of human life.
Classicists and historians already well-versed in the sociology, politics and literature of the period may, similarly, be surprised at how little they know about this fundamental topic. They will find in this humble history both a useful introduction to an academically neglected aspect of culture as well as an entre into the daily concerns of generations of ordinary Greeks.
The treatment of prehistoric (pre-650) food consumption is cursory, occupying only twenty-two pages of text. Archaic and Classical Greece (650-250) is thoroughly treated in eighty pages while post-Classical antiquity (300 B.C.E.-300 C.E.) receives fifty-four. Byzantine, Ottoman and contemporary developments are quickly reviewed in twenty-five pages. Throughout, the concentration is on ordinary, domestic practice, not on the extraordinary or the cultic.
There is little perceptible system to this book beyond such rough chronological ordering. It is not nested, nor does it attempt to substantiate, any anthropological, sociological or economic theory. Thus, while the author demonstrates that the discipline of gastronomy originated circa 400 B.C.E., he adduces neither weighty reasons for this development nor momentous consequences. The aesthetics of eating appear to require no justification. This is a travelogue, not a scientific geography of Greek cookery.
Like a good travel book, 'Siren Feasts' contains tidbits to satisfy all tastes, excurses into the arcana of the once commonplace. For instance, I found Dalby's discussions of seafood fascinating. So various were the species available in the Mediterranean world that language fails him--literally. Modern English simply lacks the nouns. French, a richer language here, is resorted to. One wonders if contemporary supermarket cornucopias are actually more abundant than some ancient marketplaces. Again and again, I was struck by the poverty of my own culinary vocabulary, at my ignorance as regards the such an important facet of human life.
Classicists and historians already well-versed in the sociology, politics and literature of the period may, similarly, be surprised at how little they know about this fundamental topic. They will find in this humble history both a useful introduction to an academically neglected aspect of culture as well as an entre into the daily concerns of generations of ordinary Greeks.
June 6, 2020
Extremely detailed, obviously the author put in a lot of work in making strong arguments and presenting evidence for the amazing ancient reality of gastronomy in Ancient Greece. Definitely recommend for ancient history nerds.
November 9, 2022
Very very nicely written
October 23, 2024
Was good for my uni class and getting an overview of what the subject was.
November 27, 2021
Quite academic, interesting nonetheless. I’m going to have a crack at the Deipnosophists now
March 10, 2014
Unlike his other books on food history, you can tell Siren Feasts is Dalby's magnum opus. It is INCREDIBLY detailed, which is why it has taken me so long to read because I kept falling asleep while perusing long lists of Greek names for various foodstuffs. So, no, it's not an easy read, but if you're interested in the subject matter, it is worth pushing through the first half of the book to reach the latter half where long lists and conflicting quotations fall away to generalizations of cuisine, ritual, and nutrition as the ancients perceived it. And I think if you skip trying to pronounce all that Greek vocabulary, you won't spend a week trying to read this slim volume!
July 21, 2016
Archaeology and food make a great combination!
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews