Abstract

The ancient Greek kapeleion, or taverna, is an institution shunned by classicists and archaeologists alike. Preferring instead to focus on the consumption of wine within sympotic, ritual and religious contexts, this mainstay of popular life in the ancient Greek city has long been ignored. In Pompeii, albeit at a later date, tavernas reached a density that compares to modern cities. An assessment of their distribution in ancient Greece must, of necessity, be rather more impressionistic, but take to begin with, the laconic remark which Aristotle in the Rhetoric ascribes to Diogenes the Cynic: ta kapeleia ta Attika phiditia (‘tavernas are the canteens of Attica’). This paper discusses evidence for two possible taverna sites in Athens and Corinth.

Introduction

"Just as the common messes feed and water the entire citizenry in Sparta, so the whole population of Athens can befound of an evening thronging the kapeleia".

It was this line from James Davidson's Courtesans and Fishcakes (comparing two starkly opposed institutions; the plebeian and democratic Athenian taverna (kapeleion) and Sparta's communal dining-halls, which inspired my research into the archaeology of classical Athenian kapeleia. If, as Davidson claimed, the entire population of Athens thronged the kapeleia of an evening, which indeed the ancient sources would appear to corroborate then there must be a substantial body of archaeological evidence to betray their existence. The reality however, turned out to be completely the opposite. As I discovered from the very start, this seemingly well-attested ancient institution has been given no specific archaeological attention whatsoever. Beyond Courtesans and Fishcakes, written from the point of view of a classicist, and the reference-packed columns of Pauly and Wissowa's) panoramic encyclopaedia of the ancient world, it is impossible to find any detailed study of the kapeleion and few scholars even bother to refer to it. To some extent, this neglect is a direct result of the prominence accorded to the symposium and its anthropological model of commensality, the symposium traditionally being treated as the classic context for the consumption of alcohol in ancient Greek society). The symposium carried over from the archaic period associations with the lifestyle of the wealthy aristocracy and their emulators, and however much the fifthcentury democracy might try to provide public dining rooms and civic occasions for feasting, the symposium would remain a largely private and aristocratic preserve.

Those beyond the aristocratic pale had to get their liquid refreshment somewhere other than the symposium, in the taverna or kapeleion, a far more demotic and promiscuous space than the private and selective andron or men's room of the house. (These tavernas sold wine (only barbarians drank beer) and vinegar (wine's natural by-product), and in some establishments you could have something to eat as well: tragemata (sweets) or hales (savouries) translated as "bar-snacks" by Davidson (1997:54). Wine was stored in amphorae, their shape betraying the region they came from. Once the amphora was opened, the wine would be decanted into a krater (mixing bowl) , cooled using a psykter or wine-cooler which stood inside the krater, served from oinochoai or olpai (jugs) and drunk from a variety of plain or decorated cup shapes such as the kylix , kothon and kantharos. Ancient wine was much stronger than today (around16 per cent) and was always mixed with water, one part wine to three parts water being the preferred admixture. Like today, it came in three different types, austeros (dry), glukazon (sweet) and autokratos (medium-sweet or somewhere between the two) and could be red, white or rosé.

In order to establish a criterion against which to test the archaeological evidence, it was essential to determine a likely commonality between these establishments as a point of departure. As wine was always drunk mixed with water, an established taverna would need access to a constant supply, most likely in the form of a well or cistern (lakkos) on the premises. It was also essential to identify a likely assemblage of pottery drinking paraphernalia. All establishments needed the drinking pottery outlined above as well as, depending on the size and quality of the kapeleion, cooking wares such as escharai (braziers for grilling spitted meat), lopades (casseroles), griddles and chytrai (cooking bells) and possibly lamps, coins and items of entertainment such as flutes or knucklebones (used as gaming pieces).

After an examination of the archaeological evidence from the ancient agoras of Athens and Corinth (two of the most comprehensively published sites in Greece), it was possible to identify only two areas which may fit into this picture. It is those areas which will be discussed in this paper
 

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