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In the 5th and 4th centuries BC, wine was the celebrated social lubricant at symposia (evening parties) in Athens and other Greek city-states, while food and its preparation were transformed into a complex, sophisticated art form practiced by elite chefs and described in noted “cookbooks.” Food themes and imagery were also a ubiquitous feature in popular entertainment, especially in the political and social satires of the comedic playwright Aristophanes. BC, they had become a form of currency and were often bestowed as dedicatory offerings in religious sanctuaries such as Olympia and Delphi.

So valued and universal were the bronze or iron spits used at feasts for roasting meat over the fire that, by at least the 8th c. Homer’s poems reveal that close ties already existed between food, religion and mannerly, ritualistic social conduct as early as the Late Bronze Age and the early centuries of the Iron Age. In the world of the ancient Greeks, just as in our world, food’s life-giving power came to be intertwined with religious belief, and the occasion of its availability or plentifulness called for gratitude to be ritually expressed to the responsible god or goddess.