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S. Douglas Olson and Alexander Sens, Archestratos of Gela: Greek Culture and Cuisine in the Fourth Century b.c.e. Text, Translation, and Commentary. Oxford University Press, 2000. Pp. xxiv + 261. ISBN 0-19-924008-6. $80.00.
Gastronomic literature was much more developed in ancient Greece than the scarce remains preserved would lead us to believe. In spite of its almost total loss, there was an important production in prose, most of which was cookery books. There was also a flourishing poetic production, in which the figure of Archestratus of Gela, whom Albert Rapp does not hesitate to qualify as "the Father of Western Gastronomy," soars above all others. Of his gastronomic poem, known as Hedupatheia, we now have approximately 330 verses, handed down by Athenaeus of Naucratis in his Deipnosophists, of which S. Douglas Olson and Alexander Sens now offer us an excellent critical edition, translated into English, with an ample introduction and a very complete commentary.
The bibliography, with which this work starts, includes, on one hand, the editions by Archestratus and Athenaeus of Naucratis and, on the other hand, the main reference works. Even so, a quick glimpse at the footnotes in the introduction and at the commentaries to the fragments gives us an idea ofthe scope of the material used. One may perhaps miss certain references to some other works (apart from "Note di parodi greci," Sileno 1, 1975, pp. 157-174, and the introduction to Poesia parodica greca, Università degli Studi di Bologna, 1983^, which are indeed included) that Enzo Degani dedicated to gastronomie poetry. In such works, Degani studied the figure of Archestratus ("Appunti di poesia gastronomica greca," in Prosimetrum e spoudogeloion Francesco Della Corte obìatum, Istituto de Filologia Classica, Università degli Studi di Genova, 1982, pp. 29-54; "La poesia gastronomica greca, ?-?," Alma mater studiorum "ili, 1990, pp. 33-50 and 4/1, 1991, pp. 147-163), and in particular the ampie introduction that accompanies the re-edition of the Italian translation that Domenico Scinà published in 1823 (Archestrato. I frammenti della gastronomia, raccolti e volgarizzati da Domenico Scinà, Palermo 1993).
In the introduction, which the authors divide into nine sections, there is a detailed study ofthe poem from various points of view. After a brief disquisition on the fate ofthe...