Feeding an Ancient Greek Army on Campaign | DOCUMENTARY

Okay so John, we find ourselves in an ancient Greek camp and I don't know about you but after all of the campaign that we've done I'm a little bit hungry. So what is it that we can expect to be available to feed an army on campaign in our period of roughly the 5th century BC? So what we're attempting to portray here is a possible menu, if you will, of what the average hoplite might have eaten. It starts with the cereals. In Greece they didn't grow their own wheat at that time. They only could really grow barley successfully. It's a much more rugged plant and so what we have here is barley on display in the various stages of it. So after it's been threshed, the corn has been removed and then it's been ground. Now you might be able to get it a little finer than this but honestly if you're out in the field and you're relying on small mortars like this, that's probably about as good as you're going to get. You've probably got a lot of rations to make as well for a lot of people. That's correct. So with this meal, this is probably what you're traveling with. You're probably traveling with it already ground, at least some of it, and then otherwise you're picking up grain along the way. You can already make a pretty nutritious, subsistence-based diet off of this. So you could, by simply adding, by taking this barley flour, toasting it briefly just to essentially bake it, you would then add water and olive oil and you have maza cake. So maza is this very simple rustic cake. It can be baked right over the fire, can even be baked on a hot stone by the fire. You might add a little honey to it. If you have that, we have a little honey here that you could have picked up. Beekeeping was very popular and very common in the ancient world, especially in Greece, and perhaps some sesame seeds or something like that. But that is, the barley is really not only being used for bread, it's used for porridge, it could be used in a soup, it could be boiled whole in a sort of pilaf style, if you will. So that's a large portion of your diet right there. Right. So barley grain. And is it similar to a hard tack that you hear about in later periods? How long will this last before it goes moldy or off? As long as it's in dry conditions, it can last quite a while. But because of the simplicity of putting it together, they're usually baked fresh. Right. And eaten probably pretty quick. Right. And they're very easy to put together. And if the men aren't doing it themselves, obviously their servant or their slave would be doing so. Yes. Okay. So that's sort of the main grain-based diet, but it's not the same style of bread that we would think of. So what other elements we might have, proteins or fibers that would also accompany this diet? Right. So vetches, legumes, this sort of thing, including in desiccated state. What we have here are lentils, very commonly eaten lentils, peas, which is a type of vetch. This, all it needs to do is be submerged in water for a period of time or boiled in a couple of hours. And that is a good hearty meal right there. So that, again, here's your base foundation of what's actually filling your stomach. It's not necessarily the most delectable. You can add spices or herbs to it if you can collect those along the way, or if you can bring them with you, but it's what's filling your belly. Right. And something else I think is interesting, especially, of course, we're told by the Spartans that hunting was a really important part of aristocratic life. So could we be expecting that they would also be hunting on campaigns as well and bringing in other styles of food apart from what they might bring with them? Yeah, it's certainly possible that you could strike a lucky hunt and supplement some of this food with some fresh meat. You might catch some deer or some rabbit, perhaps some wild game, some birds or poultry of some sort. But generally speaking, meat was actually quite insignificant in comparison to the caloric intake that's coming from other things. Absolutely. We have to always remember, of course, the Greeks could only eat the meat if it was ritually slaughtered. Sacrifices were certainly being performed while on campaign. But divvying up that meat amongst many men would probably result in a small amount for each man. So typically, you're not actually getting a piece of meat. It would be cut into the lentil soup. It would be cut into the boiled barley, and it's a supplement to that. Because I think that's something that most people probably notice when we see this display, is there's pretty much a complete absence of meat. And for us in modern sense, meat is often a large portion of our plates, as opposed to for this, it's a very small period. We basically only have fish. That's been dried fish, so it lasts longer and is easier to transport. Yeah, so to your point about protein, most of the Greeks' protein is going to be coming from seafood. Pretty much anything in the sea they would eat. All sorts of fish, jellyfish, cuttlefish, snails, sea cucumbers, you name it, they ate it. But unless you're right along the coast, the difficulty is preserving that fish's freshness, especially in the heat of grease. So it's only going to last probably a few hours, if not maybe a day. So it has to be preserved. And of course, they don't have refrigeration. So salting, drying, smoking, pickling, these are all methods for preserving fish. Now, this is a really common way that you might consume your fish. Not directly, of course, but this has been salted and dried. This is mackerel, which was available to the Greeks. You would desalinate this in either a bath of water, you can put it in a fresh running stream, and that would rehydrate it, desalinate it, and then you can place it in your meal, in your soup. So you're adding it again into that other more dominant parts of the meal. You're just adding it in as a supplement. Healthy omega, lean protein, and really lightweight. Easy to travel with these. So that's pretty much it then for the meat side. So what else can we see here? We got some cheeses. Right. That's a big part of the Mediterranean diet is cheese. Sure. So not dairy cows, of course. Cattle is not popular for dairy purposes. It's a difficult choice given the terrain features in Greece. So it's mostly sheep and goats that they're using for their dairy. So that's what we have here. We have both a sheep cheese and a goat cheese. We don't know the exact nature of these cheeses beyond their texture, their firmness, soft cheese, hard cheese, medium cheese. We see that in the ancient cookbooks and also its application. So based on the application, we can postulate what type of cheese it was. Feta is pretty much commonly accepted to have been around in ancient times. So that's what we have here. We also have supplemented with that some olives, of course. They grow perfectly in Greece. They've been harvested since very ancient times. Once you've preserved or pickled the olive, you can consume that, of course, or press it for oil, dip your masa in that. That's going to make it taste a lot more delectable. We hear of the silver glinting fields in Greece. That's from the olive trees. You see down there, it's such a staple. Here we have some examples of perhaps interesting foods a lot of people don't think of. So this is raw onion? Correct, yeah. The onions that they had were either a chive-like onion or a green onion that has a small bulb attached to, of course, the sprout growing from it. Very popular to just consume it raw. So one can imagine their breath. It smells wonderful. But it is a very invigorating, healthy, juicy, vitamin C-based bite. You could also cook it. You could grill that or stew it, add it to your soups as well or have it as a side. But eating it just raw was very common. We also have apples, pears, any number of fruits that would have been available that were harvested. Also wild varieties of them, including wild plums. That was all for the taking, so to speak. You could also bring that and supplement your diet, give you a little bit more nutrition that way. But dried fruits was also very popular. And so what we have here are just some dried figs. Dried figs, dried apples, this sort of thing. Lightweight, again, preserves really well over a long period of time and nutritious. And finally, we have some nuts here, uncracked nuts, walnuts and almonds. So another protein source too, so it's not just the meat that we're relying on. So what's the green stuff that we have? Yeah, so for basic flavoring, I mean, thyme grew wild famously. Cilantro and rosemary, oregano, tarragon, all of these are herbs that are growing in the countryside. So you probably wouldn't even need to take them. You could dry them and have them for adding into dishes to make it a little more flavorful. Or you might get lucky and collect them just for a while. Awesome. And of course, there's some item that we hear that is very iconic, which is the laconian black broth, the blood soup. And you have an example here of something. So talk me through this dish because we don't entirely know how it was made. So how have you gone about with the reconstruction of this one? Well, based on the textual evidence, all we really know are the three main components that went into it. Whether there were supplementary ingredients or not, that's up for speculation. But the primary ingredients are pork meat of some sort, pork blood, and then vinegar to ensure that it doesn't quite coagulate and to cut into that iron taste that would come from the blood. Those are your primary ingredients and it's just being stewed. I tend to believe that you're using, since the Greeks were using pretty much every part of the animal, unlike in modern cultures where we only usually preserve the choice cuts or that's what we typically serve. So in this particular version, I've diced in pork ears and it also has pork tongue and pork belly. Interesting. So the pork belly is nice because that provides a little fatty substance and flavor to it. So it greases it up a little bit more, but that's the core of it. You know, if you could supplement it maybe with grains, there's some interpretations that say, you know, you could perhaps. So it's a high impact, effective, nutritious, dense food that isn't even necessarily, it has a bad rap, right? We're told that, like, I understand why the Spartans don't fear death if they have to eat this. But there are plenty of cultures even today that still consume a black broth of sorts. The Philippines, I believe, is one that does this. Yeah, correct. And it's, it is just a, for us as a modern viewpoint, it's such a gross thing to think of, but it is some of the most nutritiously packed parts of the animal that you eat. So if you're on a campaign situation, you're pressed for calories, you're getting exhausted, that, though maybe not appetizing, could legitimately save your life in an instance. Yeah, agreed. And to your point, I got my inspiration for, you know, presenting it in the way that I have by looking at the Filipino dish called dinuguan. And it's very similar to this. The core, the core is still pork, usually with organs, sometimes not. If you go to a fancy place, you might get some pork shoulder or pork rump with the blood and the vinegar. Remove those certain flavorings that the Filipinos add, and you essentially have black broth. Interesting. That's really cool to see that there's still a contemporary culture today that almost has the exact same dish. Right. So that's a little bit of an overview of the food. Of course, food is not the only type of thing that you need on a campaign. Drinking is arguably even more important. So what type of drinks would we be looking at? Obviously, water and wine are very iconic and famous. How would you transport, how would you water an army, if you will? Yeah, you could send out a provisioning party to find some local wine, and that's probably what they might have brought some with them initially. But if you're trying to refuel the army, you can go out to a local town or a local agora or local market and purchase their local wine. Same thing with water, except typically you might be going to the local well or cistern. You can take it straight from the creeks, of course, if it's a good season for that. But what we have over here is a goat skin, a water skin, also called a wine skin, depending on what it is currently holding. And in this case, it can hold around 20 to 25 liters of liquid. We put water in ours. This one's only partially full right now, but it's enough to sustain a small company of men. And good thing is that it's lightweight as well. Once it's empty, it's lightweight. And it's not easily breakable. So yes, they had clay pots and clay jars and amphoras in that. But what are you bringing? Who's carrying this? And how much weight needs to be considered when loading your wagons or your carts? So we see it in the iconography, we see it in the vases where they're constantly carrying these giant water skins. Yeah, huge, something really big. So they're probably either sheep, goats, possibly pigs or small calves, this sort of thing. But in this case, it's a kid, actually. It's a small goat. Right. Interesting. So that's sort of how you carry water. And then of course, something else that's important is there's traveling markets that go to campaigning armies. Even if you're their enemy in this particular war, we often see people fleeing that or not even fleeing, running out of their city gates to make some quick bucks selling to a campaigning army. So you can also replenish your supplies or ingredients that you need from literally passing through in your campaign group as well. And I think we try to strike that balance here on the table. There's fresh provisions here that could easily be acquired from such local markets. It may be something more than this too, but since we are trying to present the most rudimentary food that a hoplite might have eaten, this is where we've landed. But yes, for sure, local agoras, I mean, they don't want their villages burned down, right? So even if you're in hostile territory, that is, they would come out, set up a market, there would be body servants or slaves that were sent out to purchase these and bring it back to the hoplites. Right. Awesome. I think that's a really great rundown of what we can expect these people to be eating on campaign. So not massively meat-rich diets, quite grain and veg-focused really, with some interesting side dishes. So thank you very much for your knowledge. Absolutely. However, rations would not be the only thing that we would be eating, especially for those of us who are a little bit higher status. We could also see a multi-course meal coming in later in the day during the symposium. We will let John run through that now as well. The first course of the daipno on the proper Greek banquet meal, the dinner, would have been propamata. And propamata were sort of like a mousse bouche. They're meant to stimulate your taste buds, stimulate your appetite and make you even hungrier for the meals to come. And so what you have is just small pickable foods that can include olives of different types. In this case, we also have pickled onions, wild pickled radish, a olive spread, mixed nuts, smoked mackerel, and hard cheese, particularly salty hard cheese. So again, to stimulate your appetite. You might also be served some, even early on in this meal, a little bit of the masa bread. This is the rustic barley cake. That's just water, olive oil, and the barley flour. And this would have been used for dipping into the spreads. The second course that would come out in the daipno on is the opsa, plural, or opsom, singular. The best translation we can come with today is probably a relish or a topping. It's what's placed on top of food, or it's the more delectable food the Greeks typically are eating with their fingers or spoon. But these are the tasting menus, small plates if you will, that preceded the main course, the situs that we'll get to next. So as a sort of a spectrum of the different types of food, you might be able to sample at a symposium. First, we have what sounds like a modern arugula salad, but it has fresh herbs with parsley, green onions, cilantro, and tarragon with celery diced into it. There's olive oil, white wine vinegar, and fish sauce. Stinking with the vegetables, we have grilled asparagus with oil, grilled in oil with salt and a little bit of vinegar dashed on that as well. We have honeyed mushrooms. These have been sautéed in vinegar again with a little bit of fish sauce and honey to sweeten it. The food that you see here that's been minced is a stewed goose tail, fricassee so to speak, with multiple herbs, leeks, and onions. Next, we have pig tongue, which has been sautéed with a little bit of vinegar and a little salt and a little honey. And then finally in the center, you have one of the delicacies of the ancient world were pig brains or sheep brains. In this case, we have pig brains. And that's also been sautéed with a little bit of oil, some fresh herbs, and a little bit of salt. In this bowl, excuse me, we have a mince meat that's made from currants and raisins, a red wine vinegar syrup, and liver, pig liver diced into it to bring forth a little more savory quality. And finally, mackerel and fish oil. To sop up some of this food, we have the classic masa cake, the barley cake. Water, olive oil, the barley flour, and a little bit of honey and sesame seeds. So these tasty foods are what the Greeks will be savoring first as part of the next course of the day before they move on to the real filler. The main portion of the meal following the opsa was the sitos, which means staples, often veggies or legumes or cereals of some sort like barley, boiled barley. In this case, what we've prepared tonight is a lentil porridge with goat meat, cabbage, leeks, onions, garlic, flavored with fish sauce, which the Greeks called garum, red wine vinegar, silphium, salt, cardamom, cumin, and fresh herbs like oregano, thyme, and sage. After feasting the delicious meal prepared by John and his helpers, it was then time for the philosophy, discussion, and of course, the wine. The symposium would not be complete without drinking a little bit. However, that wine would be watered down, roughly 50% with water, and often other elements like honey and different herbs would be added as well to make the wine a little bit better. Drunkenness was not something that was admired in the ancient Greek world, so drinking in moderation was very much encouraged. At the symposium, you may give thanks to the gods, you may give thanks to your friends and the people around you, and I'll let John take it from here. Well, here's to those that watch over us, those that support us, here's to our friends, here's to the harmony that we made together out here and the teamwork and partnership. Spondae. And a spondae to my amazing channel members and patreons. Thank you so much for the support, it truly helps out a lot. A massive thank you to John for setting up this amazing display, and make sure to go and check out our group's website, thegreekphalanx.org, for more information.