ABSTRACT
From Eat, Drink, and Be Merry (Luke 12:19) – Food and Wine in Byzantium. Copyright © 2007 by the Society for the Promotion of Byzantine Studies. Published by Ashgate Publishing Ltd,
Around 570, the villagers of Aphrodito in Upper Egypt hired the scribe Dioskoros (also known as the ‘Worst Poet of Antiquity’) to write for them a petition to the dux of the Thebais. Therein they complained about the misdeeds of the pagarch (governor). He had taken away their livestock and used up the fodder destined for them. Because of these actions they had been driven to starvation (line 21). Furthermore their region had been subject to a year-long drought, which caused their animals to die (lines 54-6). At present, they were not able even to sow sufficient fodder for those animals that had survived. Due to this shortage of victuals during the winter they had been forced to consume raw vegetables (droxima) instead of bread (lines 93-4). In short, they had been left with nothing.1 In comparison with today’s exaltation of raw vegetables as healthy foodstuffs (consult the debate in such Internet forums as: ‘Is cooked food poison?’ or the site of the Living and Raw Food Community2) this seems a strange statement: why would the people of Aphrodito consider themselves as if in a state of starvation when they had vegetables to eat? The key to understanding this passage is that these vegetables had been raw.
