Courtesans and Fishcakes: The Consuming Passions of Classical Athens: Amazon.co.uk: James Davidson: Books

Review

Unsurprisingly, the ancient Greeks spent most of their time eating, drinking and making love. But were their attitudes to banquets and brothels any different from our own? Davidson compares and contrasts, drawing material from plays and from the ruins of temples and bordellos in classical Athens, painting an absorbing picture of how the Greeks satisfied their consuming passions. An entertaining and highly individual history. (Kirkus UK)

The astonishing cultural legacy of ancient Athens can leave the impression that ordinary Athenians during the Golden Age spent their leisure-filled lives contemplating the Good, the True, and the Beautiful. This refreshing look at Greeks at play corrects that idea. By examining the pleasures of eating, drinking, and sex, Davidson is able to draw broader conclusions about the distinctiveness of Athenian culture as a whole. For instance, the author makes much of the Athenians' obsessive predilection for fish: unlike beef or mutton, fish was not a sacrificial or religious food and could be enjoyed for its own qualities, and fish consumption became a hallmark of urban sophistication, if not decadence. Wine, he shows, was central to Athenian merry-making, though the ancients appear not to have recognized the addictive and destructive powers of drink. Davidson also discusses at length the complex world of Greek sexuality: in the male-dominated society of Athens, an active commercial market in sex, the subjects of which were women classified as concubines or courtesans (decent women were so secluded that they seemed invisible), coexisted with a flourishing homosexual culture. Athenian attitudes toward pleasure had pervasive political implications as well: the pleasure-seeking class was the powerful minority, and excessive pleasure-seeking, or pleasure of the wrong kind, could emerge as a public issue when the private lives of public figures were scrutinized (Davidson discusses the trial of the politician Timarchus in 346 B.C. for having served as a prostitute). In the end, Davidson argues, the Athenian approach to pleasure, for all its flaws, "was vigorously rationalistic and humane . . . confident enough to insist on personal responsibility in managing appetites, never so frightened of pleasures as to flee them in panic." Scholarly but accessible to the general reader, especially enjoyable in its use of snippets from classical texts to evoke the quotidian world of ancient Athens. (Kirkus Reviews)

Product Description

The luxury of the ancient world is legendary, but the Athenian reputation is sober because this wealthy, successful city-state spent all its money on the conspicuous consumption of ephemeral things. Their consuming passions for food, wine and sex drove their society, as well as generating the rich web of privilege, transgression, guilt and taboo for which they are remembered today. Using pamphlets, comic satires, forensic speeches - from authors as illustrious as Plato and as ignored as Philaenis - as source material - this study combines a traditional classicist's rigour with an appreciation of the new analytical techniques pioneered in gender and cultural studies to provide an alternative view of ancient Athenian culture and to bring its reality into a focus easier on the modern eye.

See all Product Description

Customer Reviews

5 star

4 star

3 star

2 star

1 star

5 reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars

Write a customer review

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

18 of 19 people found the following review helpful

A review and analysis of all the juicier aspects of Athens 1 Jan 2000

By scottie934@aol.com

Format:Paperback

As a classics undergraduate, I understand the importance of a classics book which grabs and maintains interest from the beginning. The author, James Davidson, appears to have the ability to write such a book as this in spades. Admittedly, Davidson is not hindered by the subject matter, which mainly centres upon sex and alcohol, as well as other forms of depravity. However, this is not to say that it is as easy to read as a bodice-ripper. Although it is very entertaining, this is not an easy read and a good deal of concentration has to be dedicated to it. If you have any interest in classics or ancient history, then this book is a must.

Comment |

Was this review helpful to you?

Yes

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful

A joy from cover to cover! 20 Oct 2009

By Stromata VINE™ VOICE

Erudite, well written and shockingly funny, James Davidson's book on ancient Greek consumption is a joy to read. This is, I feel, a much better work than his latest offering 'The Greeks and Greek Love: A Radical Reapprasial of homosexuality in Ancient Greece'. which I found rather hard going.

'Courtesans and Fishcakes' would interest a lot of readers, regardless of any previous knowledge of the period.

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful

Excellent for both the amateur and professional classicist 22 Dec 2006

By Roman Clodia TOP 500 REVIEWER

Davidson, in this fascinating, elegantly written, amusing and yet academically-rigorous book, gives the perfect object lesson in how to write for both the professional classicist and the amateur historian without ever losing credibility or talking down to his audience. Whatever your interest, he surveys fifth century Athens and takes you from the aristocratic male environment of the symposium, to the back lanes of the city via pottery shops, food stalls and brothels. Exposing the Athenian discourse on appetite in all its variety, he tackles the perennially- fascinating subjects of food, drink and sex - and succeeds in making us feel that the classical Athenians are both just like us and yet simultaneously utterly alien.

Forget Rubicon, Persian Fire and all the other 'pseudo-history books' - this is the real thing and an excellent read.