7. Dining cultures
MACEDONIAN AND THRACIAN ROYAL DINNERS
‘But nowadays, as Theopompus records in thefirst book of his
Philippika, there is no one even among those of moderate prosper-
ity who does not set out a costly table, who does not possess cooks
and many other servants and who does not spend more on daily
requirements than used to be spent at festivals and sacrificial rites.’
(Athenaeus,Deipnosophistai[Sophists at the Banquet] 6.275b)The historian Theopompos was probably one of the authors who made a
significant contribution to the notion of Macedonian dinners as spec-
tacular occasions of conspicuous consumption and, incidentally, to the
prevailing moralistic tone of much of the ink spilt on the subject of
dinners in antiquity (judging by the kinds of snippets cited by other
authors). When he compared Macedonian with Greek dinners, Athe-
naeus was not making an implicit comment about the culture of Mace-
donians in general, but rather confronting the ostentatious dining at
royal courts with the various non-courtly traditions of dining elsewhere
in the Greek-speaking Mediterranean.^1 His breathless race through the
cultural celebrities of the ancient world, men (it is an account almost
entirely preoccupied with men, and occasional unnamed, scantily clad
females) whose notoriety made the repetition of their names an excuse
for a tasty anecdote here, a salty quip there, is a collection of ill-assorted
indicia of dining habits sandwiched between other gossipy behavioural
eccentricities.
(^1) Athen. 4.127d (comparing Macedonian and Greek dinners); Dalby 2000, 372–94, on
Macedonian dinners described by Hippolochos of Macedon and Lynceus of Samos, dating
from the late fourth and early third centurybc; on Athenaeus as an author, see the
contributions toAthenaeus and his World; Pelling’s comments on Theopompos’fragments
in Athenaeus are particularly apposite here (Pelling 2000, esp. 177–80).