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In some ways, this fact-filled, exhilarating book might be viewed as the third part of a trilogy, the first two volumes of which are Nietzsche's The Birth of Tragedy and E.R. Dodds's The Greeks and the Irrational. For a long time the 5th-century (B.C.E.) Athenians used to be imagined as philosopher-saints, noble-visaged guys who liked to work up a sweat at the gym each morning and then spend the afternoon arguing with Plato about the nature of the true and the good. Every one of them had a sound mind in a sound body, they knew themselves, and they did nothing to excess. You had to hate them.
Of course, many people did realize, in a vague way, that much of this high-mindedness was a tad too . . . perfect. As poet Louis MacNeice once asked, what about the slaves? Or the guys who had Socrates killed? Or the naked wrestling? Not to mention the drunken maenads and those naughty vases and drinking cups. In his first great book Nietzsche argued that much of ancient culture grew out of the tension between Dionysiac passion and Apollonian reason; E.R. Dodds, a brilliant scholar, further probed the place of madness, myth and religious belief among the early Greeks. Now James Davidson continues that tradition: In Courtesans and Fishcakes he shows how subtly and pervasively the fear of akolasia, the loss of self-control, permeated Athenian culture.
The best works of scholarship often resemble detective stories. A critic or historian remarks something puzzling in a poem or document an unexpected detail, an apparent anomaly and then determines that the seeming oddity actually makes sense as part of a larger pattern. Just so, Davidson starts his book with a banquet, one at which Socrates notices a young man gobbling his food and taking no part in the conversation. "And can we say, my friends," suddenly asks the philosopher, "for what kind of behaviour a man is called an opsophagos?"
A what? Plutarch defines an opsophagos as a fish eater, but is this right? To solve this self-imposed riddle Davidson embarks on an enthralling discussion of the dining habits of the Athenians. We learn, for instance, that the Mediterranean is poor in large, good-eating fish; that most red meat is associated with ritual sacrifice, while fish is not; that Homer's heroes hardly ever feast on seafood (which thus becomes associated with decadent modern life), that the traitor Philocrates spent his blood money on fish and whores, that the Greeks divided food into staples like bread and the toppings or "relishes" one might eat with that bread. Ultimately, it turns out, an opsophagos is a person who indulges himself immoderately, a glutton who devours the gourmet luxury items while neglecting the nutritious basics.
From here Davidson moves on to an equally detailed discussion of drinking. He describes the protocol of the symposium, the gentlemanly way to dilute one's wine (five parts water, two of wine), even the proper cup to use (small and shallow, rather than large and deep). Throughout he points out the Greeks' awareness of the tension between drinking as an act of fellowship and commensality, and drinking merely to get drunk.
A long section on "Desire" naturally follows, taking up the sexual pursuit of women and boys, the social position of those relatively independent courtesans called hetaeras, even the prices charged for various sexual positions. "One hetaera called Cyrene. . . had apparently mastered twelve." (The most expensive was called keles, meaning racehorse, with the woman astride the man.) Throughout these pages resound the romantic names of famous courtesans: Lais, Gnathaena, Aspasia, Naera and, above all, the dazzling Phryne, who, according to Hermippus of Smyrna, was almost never seen naked: But "at the great festival of the Eleusina and that of the Posidonia in full sight of a crowd that had gathered from all over Greece, she removed her cloak and let loose her hair before stepping into the sea; and it was from her that Apelles painted his likeness of Aphrodite coming out of the sea." Even now, one can almost feel the crowd's shudder at this glimpse of her awesome beauty.
Ultimately, Davidson uses his instances of unbridled sensuality to suggest that Athenians were deeply worried about akolasia in their leaders: Even conspicuous consumption didn't indicate wealth and power so much as lack of self-control. "The true gentleman manages his appetites. He is in charge of himself. . . . Those who consume immoderately are the true slaves, being slaves to their appetites. It is the profligate and the incontinent who really engage in menial tasks as they are for ever running back and forth trying to fill their leaky jars of desire." Such men were untrustworthy; they might betray their country to satisfy their tyrannical addictions. This conflict between desire and duty is vividly allegorized in the many artistic renderings of the battle between the centaurs and the Lapiths. The horse-men, invited to a wedding feast by the Lapiths, get drunk and attack their hosts. Davidson says that it would be naive not to view this "as symbolic of other struggles, of Greeks against Persians, of civilization against barbarism, of the inner struggle of rules and regulations against the anarchy presented by animal passions, of civilization versus chaos."
For the amateur Hellenist, Courtesans and Fishcakes provides a kind of ancilla to classical reading, a cornucopia of odd facts and appealing anecdotes. To me, the main thesis about the fear of unbridled appetite seems somehow unexceptionable, though its pervasiveness throughout Athenian culture is impressively outlined: no guilt-free pagan pleasure seekers here. Along the way, Davidson also provides a cogent critique of Michel Foucault's account of Greek sexuality (one that simplistically divides people into penetrator and penetratee), while showing himself to be a clear and even witty writer: "It was perfectly possible to carve out a position of power and patronage in the Athenian democracy, provided you were good at prose composition." Those were the days! Above all, James Davidson offers a conclusion that any of us might still take to heart:
"The Greeks imposed few rules from outside, but felt a civic responsibility to manage all appetites, to train themselves to deal with them, without trying to conquer them absolutely." A very humane and human point of view.
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