In the time of Aristarchus, the main evening meal (deipnon) rested on two pillars: sitos, the staple food made from cereals (barley cake or bread), and opson, what is eaten "with" it — olives, cheese, pulses, sometimes fish. The meal extended into the symposion, a drinking moment where wine mixed with water and tragemata, sweet treats of the "second table" (figs, nuts, honey cakes), were shared. People mostly ate seated or reclining, frugally on weekdays, more richly on feast days.

Two markers of the Hellenistic Greek table: barley, the humble grain that nourished daily life in the form of flatbread or porridge, and thyme-scented honey, the only known sweetener, which transformed cheese and figs into festive delights. Aristarchus, who measured the Sun's course with a gnomon, ate these simple foods under the same sky shared from Samos to Alexandria.