This intriguingly titled book has become a somewhat unlikely publishing hit. A re-packaged doctoral thesis, it has been lauded for shaking up classical scholarship and pulling the Greeks down from the realms of philosophy and tragedy to more carnal matters. Each generation likes to reinvent the Greeks, of course, and this study reflects a very contemporary preoccupation with physical well-being, sexual fulfilment and diet-as-identity. James N. Davidson shines a searchlight on the brothels, bedrooms, bars and banqueting halls of 5th- and 4thcentury Athens, and gleans a mass of vivid anecdotes about over-indulgence in sex, wine and food - especially fish. All that's missing are the colour photographs.
It is not the pleasures of the flesh themselves that Davidson is focusing on, as much as what the Athenians thought and said about them - not surprisingly, they said a great deal. This is primarily a study of attitudes, or "discourse". Although he takes issue with Foucault's definition of this overused term, and with his rigid views on ancient sexuality, he is unquestionably working within the broad, rather abstract, framework of cultural criticism espoused by the French scholar. As a result, there is often a lack of clarity about the context and reliability as evidence of the source material Davidson draws on, and a blurring of the significant distinctions between a Platonic dialogue, a rhetorical courtroom flourish from Demosthenes, and the New Comedy of the late 4th century.
His research unearths many neglected texts, such as Athenaeus's Dinner-sophists or Banquet of Scholars - a late dialogue in the style of Plato about different kinds of food and wine, chefs and courtesans, crammed with quotations from earlier Greek authors. He also examines a manual of sex and seduction by Philaenis, works by Lynceus and Machon (who?), as well as forensic speeches and the more familiar work of the Attic comic dramatists, such as Aristophanes. He takes us on a hermeneutic journey through the seedier side of Athenian private life, investigating the repertoire of sexual positions (including "the lion on the cheese-grater"), the interior of a brothel, the relative values ascribed to oral and anal penetration, the many terms for prostitutes (e.g. "cisterns: passive recipients of effluvia") and the iconography of erotic vase painting - misinterpreted, he argues, by generations of prudish scholars. From street-walkers to flute-girls and the celebrated higher-class courtesans (hetairai), he highlights the predominance of heterosexual activity in Athenian circles, contrary to the conventional view.
The pleasure of this study lies not in the lines drawn on the battleground of critical theory, nor in the ubiquitous, generalised comparisons with our own time, but in the uninhibited relish with which Davidson presents his stories and characters: from Philoxenes, who consumes an entire octopus and almost dies, to Melanthios who prays for a neck as long as a heron's so that he may prolong his feasting, to the guests at a symposium who imagine they are at sea (too much unmixed wine) and throw the furniture out of the window to save themselves from drowning. The formal drinking-party, or symposium, interests him most (the availability of sources helps, too) and he tenaciously teases out the relationship between food and power, and the prevalence of reproving attitudes to over-indulgence. "The Greeks imposed few rules from outside," he concludes, "but felt a civic responsibility to manage all appetites, to train themselves to deal with them . . . If there were few absolute prohibitions, there was nevertheless a great deal of monitoring in the interests of the community. This morality may be described as basically economic rather than absolute." Nothing to excess, in fact.
Helen Meany is an Irish Times arts journalist and critic
