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Alexander Curtis |
Bacchus |
Chapter 4 |
Surveying the night sky, my gaze passes over the houses of the gods. To the North are the dwellings of Jupiter and Juno. A little further round to the East is Minerva; then comes Ethausva, goddess of birth, followed by Phoebus, the titan of the sun. In the south-eastern quadrant there are the houses of the earthly gods, where I too have a segment. To the South is Consus, god of harvests. After reaping the fruits of the earth, he is followed by the gods of the underworld in the south-western quarter, who reap the souls of men. Returning back towards the North, one sees the dwelling places of the anonymous and invisible powers of fate and fortune, who the Romans did not dare to name but whom the Etruscans called Cilens and Thufltha.
[22]
A sacrifice, that ritual act of slaughtering an animal and then burning its meat upon an altar, was originally an invitation to a god to come and dine with the people making the sacrifice. The deity consumed the smoke, the worshippers, the charred remains left on the altar. But with the Maenads the invitation was not so much for me to dine but rather, to die. Once summoned I became one with the beast of sacrifice and my devotees would then tear me apart with their own hands, eating the raw flesh and drinking my blood.
While the Maenads swarmed about the countryside, rejoicing in the god they had slain in order that he might rise again, more sophisticated Greeks preferred (in the absence of their wives) to imbibe the fruits of the vine, allowing my spirit to permeate their consciousness in a more relaxed manner. Reclining on couches, they would discuss politics, art and philosophy, or be entertained with music and dancing girls. One drank the best wines, wore perfume and in honour of my name, adorned one's hair with ribbons and garlands. After a starter, to whet the appetite, the main courses were brought in and the symposium proper could begin.
Typical starting dishes were olives or onions pickled in vinegar. The great delicacy of the time though, was root silphium, a giant fennel from North Africa; but by the time of Nero it had become extinct and had to be replaced by a fennel from Persia. Concerning starters, Archestratus says simply, let them serve you wrinkled and tree-ripened olives.
Archestratus was a Sicilian Greek, who around 330 BC wrote an epic poem, entitled, The Life of Luxury. In this remarkable work, he described exactly where the best foods were to be found and how they were to be prepared. Like myself, Archestratus was widely travelled and his judgement was as infallible as a mortal's can be, so that when he praises the Bybline wine from Phoenicia but then quickly qualifies himself, saying that though it is worthy of praise, on no account does it match up to the wines of Lesbos, I can do no more than agree with him. Sadly though, only a meagre sixty-two fragments of his work remain. However even from this humble selection it is clear that there is more to The Life of Luxury than a simple compilation of recipes. For the Greeks seldom read literature in private, rather they had it read to them at such occasions as afforded by the symposium. Archestratus' hexameters were therefore intended to parody the epic poems of Homer and Hesiod, while at the same time celebrating the food which the listeners themselves would have been eating.
...then when you have drawn a full measure for Zeus the saviour, you must drink an old wine with a really grey old head, its moist locks festooned with white flowers, born in Lesbos with the sea all around. I praise the Bybline wine from Phoenicia, though it does not equal the Lesbian. If you take a quick taste of it and are previously unacquainted, it will seem to you to be more fragrant than the Lesbian, for this lasts a very long time. When tasted though it is very inferior, and the Lesbian will take on a rank not like wine but like ambrosia. If you scoff at me, braggarts, purveyors of empty nonsense, saying that Phoenician has the sweetest nature of all, I pay no attention to them...Olive in Salamoia. The best olives are those which have ripened and become wrinkled on the tree. They do not contain much moisture and have a strong almost bitter flavour. Tree-ripened olives are traditionally shaken from the tree and caught in nets spread out on the ground. Contrary to the usual practice they should not be soaked in a lye solution in order to remove the slightly bitter juices but instead should be packed in salt or pickled in brine, where they undergo lactic fermentation. This improves their flavour and increases resistance to other kinds of spoiling.
[23]
After a sacrifice, the leftovers (of which there would be no small amount if it had been a bull or ox that had been sacrificed) would be offered for sale in the markets. The Greek nobility consequently associated red meat with sacrifice and preferred to dine on seafood and the meat of animals not customarily used in sacrifices, such as goose or hare. Compared to the Roman cuisine, Greek cooking was simple and aimed at bringing out the flavours and textures of its ingredients, instead of masking them in a dazzling variety of exotic sauces. Meats were mostly either grilled or baked, quality and freshness thus playing a crucial role. The best fish were simply anointed with olive oil, others lightly seasoned with a few herbs.
Wine was drunk from wide, gently curved cups, which though they had a handle on each side, were usually held by their stems. The mixing of wine with water was performed by slaves in a large bowl called a crater, the ratio of water to wine being specified by the chairman of the occasion. According to Plato, "Whenever men of gentle breeding and culture come together at a symposium, you will see neither flute girls, nor harp girls; on the contrary they are quite capable of entertaining themselves without such nonsense and childishness, but with their own voices, talking and listening in turn, and always decently, even when they have drunk much wine." Not all symposia though, were as lofty as Plato would have one believe and those less inclined to debate could always play at Kottabos, the game in which the player attempts, while leaning on his couch, to dislodge with the dregs of wine in his kylix, a small bronze disk that balances on a stand some meters away. When successfully toppled the disk strikes a bronze tray lower down with a resounding ring. The refilling of kylixes and the mopping up of wine that has missed its target is however a thankless task and requires the services of at least one slave.Archestratus on the preparation of hare The hare. There are many ways and many laws for the preparation of it. Now the best is to bring the meat roasted to each guest during the drinking. It should be hot, simply sprinkled with salt, and taken from the spit while it is still a little undercooked. Do not let it distress you to see the divine ichor dripping from the meat, but eat it greedily. All other methods are mere sidelines to my mind, thick sauces poured over, cheese melted over, too much oil over - as if they were preparing a tasty dish of dogfish.
Being an attribute of all moon deities, the hare, like myself, represents rebirth, rejuvenation, resurrection and intuition, and is often associated with sacrificial fire and life through death. Due to its swiftness the hare was used as a messenger by a number of gods, including Hermes, Aphrodite and Eros. The Ancient World was not slow in noticing that the female could conceive whilst already pregnant and that hares mated openly without embarrassment and so it came to be seen as a symbol of feminine fertility. Nevertheless, further revelations into the life of the hare have not been forthcoming and like myself, it has remained an elusive and misunderstood being.
[24]
Despite his erroneous speculations on the nature of the soul, Plato was correct in identifying the liver as the organ of prophecy and the source of dreams. The liver, he says, "is both sweet and bitter so that the influence of the mind can project thoughts upon it which it receives and reflects in the form of visible images, like a mirror. When the mind wants to cause fear, it makes use of the liver's native bitterness and plays a stern and threatening role, quickly infusing the whole organ with bitterness and giving it a bilious colour... By contrast, gentle thoughts from the mind produce images of the opposite kind, which will neither produce nor have connection with anything of a contrary nature to their own, and so bring relief from bitterness, using the organ's innate sweetness to render it straight and smooth and free, and making the part of the soul that lives in the region of the liver cheerful and gentle; and able to spend the night quietly in divination and dreams." What Plato does not explain, is how the different elements of a dream are related to the physical shape and texture of the liver at the time of dreaming. For the past is reflected by the liver in such a manner that the future may be read, either by examining the organ itself, as the Etruscans were wont to do, or by interpreting the account given by a dreamer immediately after he has woken up, this second method being the one finding most favour among the Greeks.
Dreams were known to be of two sorts, those of prophetic import and those without. In the oracle chambers of Oropos, Epidauros and Lebadeia, clients were assured of dreaming dreams with a prophetic content. But even here, after a month's adherence to a strict diet, avoiding pork, certain fishes, onions, beans and garlic (which were known to induce bad dreams), it was the liver of a sacrificed chicken which decided whether or not a client was ready to go down into the chamber of the oracle. Once there, he would be subjected to the smoke and vapour of a variety of hallucinogenic plants. The secrets of the future which had been condensing in his liver, would then reveal themselves to him in the codified form of a dream. To see the future a god must merely cast his gaze upon the Earth; but a man must look in his sleep, into the depths of his liver.
[25]
For a Haruspix, the sacrificing of an animal was a complicated affair. As Plato says, fear produces bitterness in the liver, causing it to contract and become "all wrinkled and rough, bending and shrivelling the lobe, blocking and closing the vessels and so causing pain and nausea." With such a liver it is of course impossible to read the will of the gods and so every measure was taken to ensure that an animal did not become alarmed during the preparations for a sacrifice. Music would be played to induce gentle thoughts and the animals would be fed honey to ensure the sweetness of their livers. As a method of correcting matters after the event, the Roman writer Apicius suggests marinading the livers of kid or lamb in what he calls honey-water, this also having the effect of removing any bitterness.
450g liver
2 Tbsp. Olive Oil
1 Egg
6 Tbsp. Honey
1 Cup Milk
1 Tbsp. pepper
1 Cup Red Wine
Of the Roman gastrophile Apicius, even less is known than of Archestratus. Despite this, thanks to the diligence of an anonymous Roman writing during the fourth century, some 470 recipes have survived, attributed to Apicius. These constitute the famous De Re Coquinaria, which encapsulates the achievements of the Roman cuisine while bearing witness to its Greek, Egyptian and Oriental origins. By the end of the first century AD, the name "Apicius" had become synonymous with wealth and fine living, and Juvenal in his Satires asks, “What greater joke tickles the ear of the people than the sight of a poor Apicius?" It was even said that, having spent a fortune on food, he used the last remains of his wealth to procure a poison, so as to spare himself the pain and indignity of hunger.
[26]
Among haruspixes the gall-bladder was known as the eye of Zeus. For them it was with gall that Zeus surveyed and regulated his cosmos. This awareness, that first came into being when the Mother of All Things emerged from the primeval chaos and gave herself form, was then passed on to Uranus who lost it to Kronos, who in turn lost it to Zeus. As the crown of Olympian sovereignty, it is the all-embracing consciousness which, only in seeing itself in relation to all things and seeing itself in all things, knows that it exists. Lesser deities, although all-seeing only see themselves reflected in the areas under their jurisdiction. Seeing himself in all things, it is therefore Zeus who rules the cosmos - as like honey his presence seeps and flows throughout the universe.
[27]
Believing in the transmigration of souls, Orpheus and his followers sought to escape the supposedly endless cycles of birth and death by means of an ascetic life. In the belief that denying their earthly part would enable them to return to their true home among the stars, like my followers, what they sought was unity with the divine. The difference was that for the Bacchae this unity was to be achieved, if only temporally, in the here and now, while for the Orphic it was something that could only be attained after a lifetime's purification. Yet without the Bacchic revelries, how could the Orphics have known of that divine state which they sought? Somehow in honouring ecstasy and abolishing care, I had inadvertently given these people the idea that there was a spark of the divine residing in them. The enthusiasm of the Bacchae, they saw as evidence not of my presence but of a divine soul that was in them. By avoiding all that was good in life, they sought to purify themselves so that after death, this soul might be liberated. Preaching against violent sacrifice and reducing the eating of meat and the drinking of wine to mere symbolic gestures, they not only dared to presume that someone could achieve unity with a deity by these methods, but they then had the audacity to call such a person a Bakkos.
Enthusiasm comes from the word thusia, which means filled with god. As everyone knows gods are immortal; men are not. And so I asked Orpheus why he saw fit to teach otherwise. But he merely smiled and plucking the strings of his lyre, said that I should ask the oracle at Delphi. Stamping the ground in indignation, I turned my back on him and walked away, leaving a crowd of maenads to tear the heretic to pieces.
Despite my prompt action, Orpheus' teachings survived and later I had the same problem with the Christians. This sect not only surpassed the Orphics in reducing my rites to a ridiculous ceremony but then proceeded to interpret Euripides' Bacchae as a prefiguration of the gospels. Turning the Senate's prejudice against secret sects to my advantage, I took the opportunity of warning them about the dangers of this new sect, whose believers, denying the deity of Caesar, boasted of feasting on their lord's flesh and blood while speaking in obscure terms of conquering death and of establishing a new kingdom. Refusing however to eat meat that had been sacrificially slaughtered and objecting to the libations made at the beginning of a meal to the Lares, Pentates and Jupiter, they soon became unpopular. After the fire of Rome in AD 64, rumours spread that it had been started by Christians attempting to initiate the Second Coming and Nero ordered the first persecutions. Without delay I arranged for lions and tigers to be imported from North Africa; and soon no afternoon's entertainment at the amphitheatre was complete without a few dozen Christians being exposed to the fury of wild beasts. But I had underestimated the power of the Orphic legacy; for people eventually preferred to pray for the salvation of their souls in eternity, rather than release themselves from the cares and inhibitions of this world. To make this esoteric doctrine more palpable, Christ was often shown with Bacchic symbols and was called the Lamb of God. On her mausoleum the daughter of Constantine the Great appears entwined with vines, presumably symbolising the intoxicating bliss of the hereafter - but of this I know no more than those maenads who first tore Orpheus limb from limb.
[28]
In order to avoid being displaced by his offspring, Cronos was in the habit of devouring his children at birth. But after bearing Zeus, Rhea resolved to hide her son in a cave and present her husband with a large rock which she would wrap in swaddling clothes. The trick worked and Zeus was brought up by the Ash-nymph Adrasteia and her sister Io, and by the Goat-nymph Amaltheia, in the cave of Dicte on the island of Crete. So that Cronos would find the infant, neither on the earth, nor in heaven, or in the sea, the nymphs hung his cradle from a tree. Fed on honey, he drank of Amaltheia's milk with his foster-brother Pan, while the Curetes banged their swords against their shields whenever he cried for fear that Cronos might hear. After being toppled from power by his son, Cronos finally disgorged the stone, along with Zeus' brothers and sisters. The new ruler of the cosmos declared the stone to be the navel of the world and set it up at the foot of Mount Parnassus. There, the Omphalos as it came to be called, became an important requisite in the proceedings of the oracle at Delphi. Sitting in a trance upon the three-legged bronze cauldron, the Pythia would hold in one hand a bunch of laurels, in the other the loose end of a string which was wrapped around the Omphalos. In the liver, the Omphalos is the hub of the so-called Wheel around which the earthly powers and gods of the underworld have their houses. Mount Parnassus meanwhile, is represented by the Processus Pyramidalis which penetrates the Olympian air of the Lobus Dexter, where the celestial deities and powers of fate reside. The Processus Pyramidalis is the first area of the liver to be investigated by a haruspix and usually sets the tone of a prediction. For example, if it is unusually large it is a sign of coming happiness or prosperity; if split it means that there will be change, while a crown-like formation signifies victory. Subsequent analysis of the houses of the gods and of the fissures that are particularly common in sheep and goat livers, then specify the details of the prognostication. A few days before he was assassinated, the liver of the bull sacrificed by Caesar was found to be lacking a Processus Pyramidalis, while the organ of the animal sacrificed by Augustus on the day he came to power, was found to be twice the normal size; this being interpreted as meaning that the size of his empire would double during the course of his rule.
Despite the gradual conquest and annexation of the Etruscan city states and the erosion of Etruscan cultural and political identity, the Etruscan Discipline, as it was called, survived right up until the seventh century AD. Generally coming from families of the Etruscan nobility, where knowledge was passed from father to son, the haruspixes were able to maintain their prestige and influence by offering advice to the Roman aristocracy. Both Sulla and Caesar had their own personal haruspixes and soon no Roman dignitary was complete without a liver-diviner in his service. In 121 BC the haruspixes attempted to stop the founding of a Roman colony at Carthage, by giving negative predictions of the outcome of such an endeavour. In 99 BC they opposed the Field Laws of Sextitius, which threatened to disrupt the sacred boundaries of Etruria. On the other hand, it was haruspixes who warned Octavius of Marius and supported the steps Cicero took in acting against the conspiracy of Catiline. Despite the fact that they dared to critise his dictatorship, it was Augustus, who after the fire that destroyed the Jupiter temple in Rome, built the Palatine Temple where the books of Sibylline prophesy were housed together with the religious and scientific codices of the Disciplina Etrusca. During this time only one law was passed curtailing the activities of haruspixes and that was by Augustus, forbidding the answering of questions concerning death.
Unfortunately, the dictates of fashion lead to a proliferation of unofficial fortune tellers, who brought the activities of bona fide haruspixes into disrepute. To combat this, the emperor Claudius forwarded a motion, ordering an investigation to find out which practices were genuine and which were not. The motion was passed by the senate with the intention of saving what was generally acknowledged to be Italy's oldest science. A certain Alexander Severus also sought to combat this unhealthy trend by setting up a chair where the Etruscan Disciplines could be taught alongside the other practical sciences. But with the acceptance of Christianity the haruspixes found themselves under attack from the proponents of the new faith. In 319 AD emperor Constantius passed an edict prohibiting a haruspix from practising in all places other than in his own home. Thankfully, due to public pressure, he was forced to modify the edict to allow prognostications to be made at public altars and in temples. Thirty-eight years later Constantine the Great brought in a ban on the activities of all oracles and soothsayers. Punishable by death, it was promptly annulled by Julian Apostata, who although officially a Christian, was himself wont to consult oracles and frequently sought the advice of haruspixes. In 362 AD he sent a delegation to Delphi, asking how he might help restore the oracle to some of its former glory. But the one remaining Phthia replied,
Tell the king, the well-appointed house has fallen.
Phoibus Apollo no longer has refuge, the holy laurel has withered,
His springs are silent forever, and dumb is the murmur of the waters.
Subsequently banned by Theodosis, the use of the Ordo Haruspixum nevertheless continued. When Alaric surrounded Rome in 408 AD, haruspixes offered to help defend the city by inducing lightning from the gods. Despite Pope Innocent's passive acceptance of this offer, it was too late. Respected but not worshipped, we gods had been banished to the stars and the mood of the time was now one of passive submission to the powers of fate. People no longer believed in making sacrifices to sweeten a god's temper so that he might intervene on their behalf. Instead they sought consolation in the teachings of Stoics, astrologers and Christians. For the first of many times, Rome was sacked.
Bread
Bay Leaves
Milk
Rosemary
Olive Oil
Cumin
Honey
Fennel Seeds
Break the bread into pieces and soak in milk before adding the rosemary, fennel seeds, a pinch of cumin and a teaspoon of olive oil. Drain off the excess milk and form into little cakes, each of which is to be placed on a bay leaf. In a hot oven, bake the cakes for half an hour, before spooning warm honey over them and pricking so that they absorb as much of it as possible. Serve either hot or cold.
Before being allowed into the inner sanctuary of the oracle, clients at Delphi and Lebadeia had first to offer a honey-cake to the gods. This they bought from the priests for a price that reflected the client's rank and wealth. For a poor man, the lowest rate at which a pelanos could be obtained, corresponded to at least two days work, while for kings, princes and state delegations, gifts of gold and fine statuary were expected.
Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3 | Chapter 4 | Chapter 5 | Chapter 6 | Chapter 7 | Chapter 8 | Chapter 9 | Chapter 10 | Chapter 11 | References | Bacchus Table of Contents