Note 371 — Chapter X

Archestratus is constantly quoted and always praised by Athenæus as “excellent,” “experienced,” etc. Archestratus the Syracusan in his work—variously termed “Gastronomy,” “Hedypathy,” “Deipnology,” “Cookery”—begins his epic poem, “Here to all Greece I open wisdom’s store”! (Yonge’s trans.). From delivering his precepts in the style and with the gravity of the old gnomic poets, Archestratus was dubbed “the Hesiod or Theognis of opsophagists.” The comic poets have many a gibe at him, e.g. Dionysius of Sinope sums up the author of Gastronomy, τὰ πολλὰ δ’ ἠγνόηκε, κοὐδὲ ἒν λέγει (Thesmophorus, frag. I. 26, Meineke)! Before publishing this work, the author travelled far and wide to make himself master of every dish that could be served at table. Known to us almost entirely as a supreme bon vivant, and as the earliest (except Terpsion) and certainly greatest Mrs. Glasse of the Greeks, his accuracy of description of the various fishes used for the table was so consistent, that we find even so high an authority as Aristotle making use of it in his Natural History. Archestratus in his travels concerned himself not at all as to the manners or morals of the countries visited, “as it is impossible to change these,” and held little or no intercourse with any but those, e.g. chefs, who could advance the pleasures of taste. Whatever the cause, whether too many sauces or too little nutritive food, he was so small and lean that the scales are supposed to have returned his weight as not even one obol! (Cf. Hayward, The Art of Dining). Hayward himself must have appreciated the limitation of guests, which Archestratus imposes for a proper dinner

The sentiment, if not the number, coincides with the Latin proverb—“Septem convivium, novem convicium.”