ABSTRACT
Poverty impacts and shapes ancient and modern societies in many ways, determining patterns of integration or exclusion in different sectors of public life. In ancient Greece, these patterns interacted with other, typically ancient identity structures, like being a freeman or the slave, man or woman, citizen or foreigner. Literary and epigraphical sources attest the existence of rituals, such as collective banquets after a sacrifice, the distribution of meat after a major festival, or the so-called “Hecate's meals”, probably consumed by the poor of the city – with the tacit approval of the offering people. The division and distribution of the meat according to a specific logic defines patterns of inclusion and exclusion and, as Gunnel Ekroth has demonstrated, serves to underline the role, the degree of participation, the social status, and the identity of an individual in society at large.
