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Grecia The Odiyssey.

by Egenia Salza Prina Ricotti


THE ODYSSEY
The Iliad and the Odyssey, the greatest poems of the antiquity. Let’s have a close look at the story of this two splendid works that appeared in the XIII cent. B.C.; poems created but not written. They were sung. As a matter of fact they were great chansons de geste that celebrated the ancient kings’ long war under the walls of Troy, and Odysseus’ adventurous sailing toward home. We are taught that both poems were the great opus of a single poet and that they were created and sang by a blind bard called Homer and that for centuries after his death they were sang by other bards (and maybe they too were called Homer) or by the same Greek people during their meetings. The Trojan War and Odysseus’ adventures remained fixed in the popular imagination as a splendid tale to be told and retold for centuries, an important part of their people heritage.
The question is still this: are they both Homer’s creations? Maybe, but only if he lived such a long life to see important changes happen in ancient Greece. The fact is that the life represented in them presents some small differences and principally we find them in the alimentation. Thus the question is this: can perchance the Odyssey belong to another epoch of the one in which the Iliad has been created? In fact the meal is not similar in the two poems. In the Odyssey people did not restrict their diet to big chunks of red meat just singed on the camp’s fires and, also if reading its verses we never find the menu of Odysseus’ dinners, we can feel the existence of other foods. As a matter of fact at those times, besides raising livestock, many men had begun to till the land, and the importance of agriculture was growing more and more. The typical products of the Mediterranean were cultivated and the farmers had become a relevant part of the community life. This is also made evident by some aspects of religion and myths. Little by little all the gods tied with agriculture became more and more revered among the Greeks and it is evident that their importance rose at the same rate with the development of the fields.
In the Iliad of the shepherd kings, also if Demetra and Dionysus made part of Greece’s Pantheon, they certainly were not among the protagonists of this poem and they didn’t fight in the Trojan War. All the important divinities took part of it and all of them either battled or at least rooted for one of the two contenders. There was Zeus, the terrible tempest’s god, who had to be pacified and beside him there was also Poseidon, the sea master, to whom, when men were obliged to cross the Aegean sea, and go from an island to another, the Greeks, sacrificed victims; to these gods we must add Ares, the god of all wars - and Greeks had always lots of battles to fight - Of course important was also Athena, the goddess of wisdom, who, over everything else, was the protector of the Trojans, and at those times was much more interested in their plight than in any form of philosophy or knowledge; with her there were Apollo and Artemis always ready to lance their deadly darts; Aefestus, the cuckolded husband, who shaped splendid weapons for Achilles, and, last but not least, Aphrodite, the love goddess, who, someway or other, had been at the roots of all this disaster.
Some time must have passed from the Iliad to the Odyssey, because usually the development of agriculture takes quite a lot of time. It was little by little that, to the primitive modest and very ancient cereals’ cultures farmed around the walls of Troy, others were added and a thriving horticulture made its appearance. Little by little the harvest of wild vegetables and fruits did not suffice to the gluttony of those new time’s men. Better could be had, and they wanted it. Thus we find Alcynous garden. a splendid and well cared fruits grove, a well irrigated and prolific plot of land where on a same tree both flowers an fruits coexisted, and in which apples, pears, pomegranates, figs, grapes and olives were grown and evidently eaten and enjoyed. And there was not only Alcynous’ garden: always in the Odyssey we find the green orchard that Laertes cultivated with his own hands.
The vivid descriptions of these places show that whoever composed the Odysey must have well known fruit groves and orchards, and means that, at least for him, the dinners were no more fastened to the monotonous meat’s diet and to the everyday loaf of bread. Of course in the poem we still don’t see tables charged with fishes, birds, or vegetables, but some verses tells us of hunting, fishing and horticulture. Then those foods existed. Probably, as Atheneus wrote, they were served at the kings’ tables but not represented on them because they were still considered humble provisions not fit for the royal meals
However things had changed and also cooking seems to have been bettered. In the Odyssey we read for instance “titbits such as the ones that are offered to the princes dear to Zeus” and more over “dishes of all kinds” a phrase not referable to the simple and primitive chunk of meat personally roasted by the princes on the large heart of the king’s “megaron”. Now the menu had certainly become richer and more interesting and, beside nourishing the guests and reinforcing their bodies, it also must have pleased their gluttony. In the Odyssey everything seems to be much comfortable and in the dining rooms of Odysseus palace there are also servants and entertainers to amuse the diners.
In short, when in the XIII or maybe XII cent. B.C., among monsters, terrible dangers and beautiful women Odysseus, trying to reach Ithaca, was still sailing in his dangerous course, around him we see the convivial life changing. Only little changes of course, because to have a real revolution in Greece’s alimentation we have to wait for the V cent B.C. the period that will bring on the tables those fishes, fruits and vegetables that up to then were considered humble and despicable foods and that afterward became the most expensive and luxurious dishes.
For a long time the two poems were only sang by bards and ordinary people. Then many centuries later, always under the name of Homer, the ancient bard, they were written down, but from what we read in them, not both at the same time. Whoever transcribed the poems was inevitably influenced by some of his times’ customs and this is the explanation of the differences existing between the two. For instance in the Iliad the heroes of the war of Troy are represented sitting down at their dinner, a custom that till the VI cent. B.C. was normal, but when the Odyssey was transcribed times had changed and people dined reclining on tricliniar couches, a much later convivial custom. The poetical transcribers describing the poem’s dinners could not imagine important men not lying on a tricliniar couch, and so, eight centuries before they appeared, couches were inserted in the Odyssey.
As a matter of fact the representation of a tricliniar couch appears for the first time in a VII cent. B.C. Assyrian bas-relief found in Assurbanipal’s Ninive palace, a piece that is now in the London’s British Museum. It represents the king reclined on a high tricliniar couch. Beside him, as was the custom of Middle East women, his wife, laying her feet on an elegant foot-rest, was sitting composedly on a high armchair. The couple was drinking to celebrate the king’s victory on Teuman, his enemy, whose head, hanging from one of his garden’s tree, was slowly swaying in the sweet Mesopotamian breezes.
Now King Assurbanipal’s tricliniar couch was certainly not the first one to be built. It is possible that earlier pieces of this kind already existed, but it is the first to be represented. One century passed after Assurbanipal’s dinner, then, through their contact with the Persians, also the Greeks learned about the tricliniar couches. In fact it was at the end of the VI cent B.C. that the first ones were imported in Greece and it is just in this period that we see this kind of furniture represented in the Corinthian and Attic ceramic.
For instance it is in a VI cent. B.C. craters, that we see Athena, standing before Hercules, while the hero is laying on a tricliniar couch and, if we confront the style of this very heavily decorated piece of furniture with the particularly rich one on which laid the Assyrian King, we see that they are quite similar and that probably this one was copied from it. Their supports repeat the same architectonic lines, and on both the couches there is a mattress covered by drapes. The only difference is that while Assurbanipal lays on a very thick mattress, Hercules one is very thin but both are covered by drapes. In the Middle East precious clothes were arranged with great ability, an art that the Greeks had still to master. At least that is what we learn reading the ancient texts where we are told that when Eutimus, the Gortyna’s man, who had succeeded to capture Xerses’ sympathies, received from him a convivial tent complete of tricliniar couches and of all its table’s furniture, he was also given a slave who was an expert in the art of properly arranging the precious drapes over the mattresses, and this because the king knew too well that the Greeks weren’t able to do it properly.
The tricliniar couches indicate that the Iliad and the Odyssey were transcribed at different times: the Iliad was done first and the Odyssey later on when the tricliniar couches had been introduced in Greece.
Thus not only there were differences in the XIII cent. B.C. texts. Also their transcriptions were not done at the same period: Why? I don’t know. However this doesn’t infringe the fact that, a part of Dante’s Divina Commedia, the Iliad and the Odyssey are the greatest poems I know and I loved them all my life starting from when at thirteen year I was introduced to their Italian versions, and at fourteen years to the Greek ones. In Greek they are much better.



Bibliography
Scientific popularization.
E. SALZA PRINA RICOTTI, L'alimentazione nel mondo greco in Archeo, nº 44, October 1988, pp.48-91
- E. SALZA PRINA RICOTTI, L'alimentazione ed il banchetto in epoca greca in L'arcano convito, Cultural publications of the “Cassa di Risparmio di Verona, Vicenza e Milano”, pp. 44-47 September 1989.
E. SALZA PRINA RICOTTI, Le ricette più antiche del mondo in Archeo: le attualità del passato. Anno VIII, n° 1, febbraio 1999

Books
- E. SALZA PRINA RICOTTI, L’arte del convito nell’antica Grecia. L’evoluzione del gusto da Achille ad Alessandro Magno , L’Erma di Bretschneider, Rome, 2005.