Homer at the table

In archaic Greece, meals were organized around the sitos (the staple food: bread or barley porridge), the opson (what accompanies the bread: olives, cheese, fish, sometimes meat), and the poton (the drink, especially wine mixed with water). The banquet (dais) of nobles and aoidoi added shared roasted meat and song accompanied by the lyre. People ate seated or half-reclining, with bread often serving as both plate and utensil.

Two flavors run through the entire Homeric epic: wine perfumed with pine resin (ancestor of retsina, which also served to preserve wine in amphorae) and wild honey, the only sweetener of the time, which sweetened flatcakes, porridges, and sacred drinks.