My scholarly interests have recently begun to drift the way of my stomach, leading to more time spent thinking about ancient bread. About a year ago I delivered a paper at the Classical Association of the Middle-West and South annual meeting that looked at bread in the public food-scape of the Greek city, concluding, among other things, that most of the labor was done by women and non-citizens, both free and enslaved. Meanwhile the celebrated baker of Ancient Athens, credited with training a generation of bakers and introducing large bread ovens was a man named Thearion.
(The introduction to the paper is available here.)
Plato’s Gorgias (518B–518c) mentions Thearion at a point where Socrates is dismantling the idea that food can train the body for gymnastics:
As if, when being asked with regard to gymnastics who were or are good trainers of the body, you say to me in all earnestness, “Thearion the baker, Mithaecus the author of a book on Sicilian cooking, and Sarambus the tavern-keeper, these have all shown themselves to be marvelous attendants of the body, the one by preparing marvelous loaves, the next opson, the third wine.” Equally you might be aggrieved if I were to say to you: “Sir, you know nothing about gymnastics: you speak to me of servants, providers for the appetites of human beings, but without any right and proper understanding of [those appetites], those men who first fatten and fill human bodies to great applause and then wipe away even their original flesh.
ὥσπερ ἂν εἰ περὶ τὰ γυμναστικὰ ἐμοῦ ἐρωτῶντος οἵτινες ἀγαθοὶ γεγόνασιν ἢ εἰσὶν σωμάτων θεραπευταί, ἔλεγές μοι πάνυ σπουδάζων, Θεραίων ὁ ἀρτοκόπος καὶ Μίθαικος ὁ τὴν ὀψοποιίαν συγγεγραφὼς τὴν Σικελικὴν καὶ Σάραμβος ὁ κάπελος, ὅτι οὗτοι θαυμάσιοι γεγόνασιν σωμάτων θεραπευταί, ὁ μὲν ἄρτους θαυμαστοὺς παρασκευάζων, ὁ δὲ ὄψον, ὁ δὲ οἶνον. ἴσως ἂν οὖν ἠγανάκτεις, εἲ σοι ἔλεγον ἐγὼ ὅτι Ἄνθρωπε, ἐπαίεις οὐδὲν περὶ γυμναστικῆς: διακόμενους μοι λέγεις καὶ ἐπιθυμιῶν παρασκευαστὰς ἀνθρώπους, οὐκ ἐπαίοντας καλὸν κἀγαθὸν οὐδὲν περὶ αὐτῶν, οἵ, ἂν οὕτω τύχωσιν, ἐμπλήσαντες καὶ παχύωαντες τὰ σώματα τῶν ἀνθρώπων, ἐπαινούμενοι ὑπ᾽ αὐτῶν, προσαπολοῦσιν αὐτῶν καὶ τὰς ἀρχαίας σάρκας.
Athenaeus’ Deipnosophistae (3.78) includes several fragmentary references to Thearion, including a clipped section of Plato’s Gorgias that inverts Socrates’ point.
Antiphanes also recalls the Attic loaves as particularly excellent, thus in the Omphale:
How could one of good birth
Be able to come out from such a chamber,
Looking upon these white-bodied loaves
Fill the oven close-packed in the passage
And seeing them, form shapes in covered vessels
Copied by Attic hands, who Thearion
Trained for the common people.
[Note: I struggled to reconcile δημόταις, settling on something akin to “for the public good.”]
τῶν δ᾽ Ἀττικῶν ἄρτων ὡς διαφόρων μνημονεύει καὶ Ἀντιφάνης ἐν Ὀμφάλῃ οὕτως:
πῶς γὰρ ἄν τις εὐγενὴς γεγὼς
δύναιτ᾽ ἂν ἐξελθεῖν ποτ᾽ ἐκ τῆσδε στέγης,
ὁρῶν μὲν ἄρτους τούσδε λευκοσωμάτους
ἰπνὸν κατέχοντας ἐν πυκναῖς διεξόδοις,
ὁρῶν δὲ μορφὴν κριβάνοις ἠλλαγμένους,
μίμημα χειρὸς Ἀττικῆς, οὓς δημόταις
Θεαρίων ἔδειξεν.
The passage continues:
This is that Thearion the bread maker whom Plato recalls in the Gorgias and along with him Mithaicus, writing so: “about those who were or are good trainers of the body, you say to me in all earnestness, “Thearion the baker, Mithaecus the author of a book on Sicilian cooking, and Sarambus the tavern-keeper, these have all shown themselves to be marvelous attendants of the body, the one by preparing marvelous loaves, the next opson, the third wine.” And thus Aristophanes in his Gerytades and Aeolosicon:
“I come, having left Thearion’s bakeshop,
where is the abode of the cookwares.”
οὗτός ἐστι Θεαρίων ὁ ἀρτοποιός, οὗ μνημονεύει Πλάτων ἐν Γοργίᾳ συγκαταλέγων αὐτῷ καὶ Μίθαικον οὗτως γράφων οἵτινες ἀγαθοι γεγόνασιν ἢ εἰσὶ σωμάτων θεραπευταὶ ἔλεγές μοι πάνυ σπουδάζων, Θεραίων ὁ ἀρτοκόπος καὶ Μίθαικος ὁ τὴν ὀψοποιίαν συγγεγραφὼς τὴν Σικελικὴν καὶ Σάραμβος ὁ κάπελος, ὅτι οὗτοι θαυμάσιοι γεγόνασιν σωμάτων θεραπευταί, ὁ μὲν ἄρτους θαυμαστοὺς παρασκευάζων, ὁ δὲ ὄψον, ὁ δὲ οἶνον. καὶ Ἀριστοφάνης ἐν Γηρυστάδῃ καὶ Αἰολοσίκωνι διὰ τούτων:
ἥκω Θεαρίωνος ἀρτοπώλιον
λιπών, ἵν᾽ ἐστὶ κριβάνων ἑδώλια.
Further Reading:
A. Dalby, Food in the Ancient World From A to Z (Routledge 2003), 325.
Noodlings 