In 4th-century BCE Athens, two meals were distinguished: the *ariston*, a light morning meal, and the *deipnon*, the main evening meal. Each plate was organized around the *sitos* (the cereal base: barley bread, flatbread, porridge) accompanied by *opson* (what "enhances" the bread: olives, vegetables, cheese, sometimes salted fish). Sweets and dried fruits (*tragemata*) closed the *deipnon*, often during the *symposion* where wine mixed with water was drunk.

Barley (*krithê*) was the everyday grain of Athenians, transformed into *maza* or *kykeon*; the fragrant honey of Hymettus, near Athens, was the sweetener of all Greece before sugar. For a woman trained in medicine, barley was also a remedy: decoctions and digestible porridges were made from it for the sick and for women after childbirth.