Food In Ancient Greece
Ancient Greece emerged in the 8th century and began to develop into a city. With a developing city arose a newly created society and with that, hierarchy. Ancient Greece had four different levels of wealth, upper class, metics, freedman, and slaves. Those four levels affected everyone’s lifestyle including what everyone was able to eat. Certain foods were reserved for the wealthy and certain foods were ate by the poor people. In modern day civilization food brings cultures together but in ancient Greece it was one of the many things that split everyone apart. During breakfast the wealthy and the poor all ate the same thing, bread dipped in wine. Historians even believe that they dipped the bread in wine to help soften it. All bread was
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Both classes ate the same thing, lunch was similar to breakfast because in both cases they ate bread dipped in wine. During lunch, they also added a small cheese dish consisting of olives, figs, cheese and or dried fish. At the time, Greeks didn’t have utensils, instead they used bread to scoop up food such as hummus. For olives and figs, they might have used their hands. Supper was a different story, it primarily was vegetables, fish, meet, and sometimes cakes. The most common cake they ate was honey cake, they ate honey cake because honey was their most common source of sweeter because they were unaware of cane sugar. Fish was the main source of protein for Greeks because beef was very expensive. This brings us to the separation of the two classes, upper and lower. The upper class was able to afford the beef while the poorer classes weren’t. The only opportunity for the poorer population to eat meet was at religious ceremonies that “recurred annually, every two years, or every four years.” (religionfacts.com) That didn’t leave the poorer population very many options for other proteins.
The Greeks did indeed drink wine with about every meal they ate. Which would leave the whole civilization drunk, but just for that reason they water down the wine that way that people wouldn’t get drunk as easily. In fact, drinking pure wine was considered barbaric and even
Both classes ate the same thing, lunch was similar to breakfast because in both cases they ate bread dipped in wine. During lunch, they also added a small cheese dish consisting of olives, figs, cheese and or dried fish. At the time, Greeks didn’t have utensils, instead they used bread to scoop up food such as hummus. For olives and figs, they might have used their hands. Supper was a different story, it primarily was vegetables, fish, meet, and sometimes cakes. The most common cake they ate was honey cake, they ate honey cake because honey was their most common source of sweeter because they were unaware of cane sugar. Fish was the main source of protein for Greeks because beef was very expensive. This brings us to the separation of the two classes, upper and lower. The upper class was able to afford the beef while the poorer classes weren’t. The only opportunity for the poorer population to eat meet was at religious ceremonies that “recurred annually, every two years, or every four years.” (religionfacts.com) That didn’t leave the poorer population very many options for other proteins.
The Greeks did indeed drink wine with about every meal they ate. Which would leave the whole civilization drunk, but just for that reason they water down the wine that way that people wouldn’t get drunk as easily. In fact, drinking pure wine was considered barbaric and even