125449
THE INNS OF
GREECE & ROME
SEEKING A TAVERN
THE INNS
OF
GREECE ROME
And a History of Hospitality Jrom the
Dawn of Time to the Middle Ages
BY
W. C.FIREBAUGH
With an Introduction
by WiaiACE RICE
and Illustrations by
NORMAN LINDSAV
CHICAGO
PASCAL COVICI
MCMXXVIII
COPYRIGHT, 1923
M.
, 1998
COVICI,
129- T^CX; U^rixED STATES ay
ILLUSTRATIONS
PAGE
Seeking a Tavern Frontispiece
Vintage Experts 6
Bringing in a Course SO
At the Door of the Tavern 59
The Vegetable Cook 79
A Tavern Bedroom 121
A Cabaret Girl 142
An Innkeeper 194
The Hostess of Apuleius 215
Returning from the Tavern 226
INTRODUCTION
Surely there is fitness in having a man horn and reared
in the best hotels of his time, of which his father was pro
prietor, write a brief introduction to this interesting
account of the best, and worst, inns of antiquity. For to
most of us life outside the home, whether stately or
humble, is an abnormal and too often a subnormal state
of being, fully met when the only home one has known in
early life is itself an inn.
Reading of the hostelries of Greece and Rome as dis
closed in the classic and post-classic writings of these
lands, where the good old tradition of hospitality was
often so grossly abused, one is left to wonder if it was not
after all the exception that secured attention, if the honest
keeper of the clean tavern, with its warmest welcome and
savory food, was not in all ages performing his pious duty
to his guests, simply and unostentatiously and unmen-
tioned, while his ill favored competitor with his tricks of
misrepresentation, adulteration, and secret theft caught
the attention of poet and prose writer, who justly f ound
him guilty of an inhumanity which stands forth as a
sacrilege to the race.
For giving shelter from the storm, drink to the thirsty,
and food to the hungry has been at all times and places a
fundamental duty; and men, however unable to attain
their own ideals whether simple or lofty, have always been
dutiful. The debt owed by host to guest was sacred and
until lately has so remained in all stages of society, even
those of savagery in which the stranger is perforce an
enemy. Means of securing not mere immunity from
plunder and attack but all the rites of hospitality have
been noted by travellers in every continent where taverns
had not yet been demanded by the numbers of sojourners.
The sacredness of the wanderer s goods and person has
been willingly conceded, even to the formation of a per
manent bond between the provider of bread and salt and
him who partakes thereof. May we not rightly assume,
therefore, that even when the inns of antiquity are shown
at their worst there were still countless hosts, respecters
of the gods and worshipful of the rites of guestship, who
welcomed the coming, rejoiced the staying, and sent good
luck with the parting guest?
But in modern days a more subtle danger threatens
the ancient spirit* however maintained through the ages.
The devil of industrialism has invaded the hotel, and even
the revival of the roadside tavern in response to motor
travel has been contaminated by the desire to make
money first and allow the guest s comfort and pleasures to
become a mere secondary consideration.
Here I recall my father s sitting in the corridor down
which his guests must depart, his spacious pockets filled
with little flasks of choice liquor, with his own hands
bestowing these upon the men who slept under his roof,
not as an advertisement, not to secure their return thereto,
but because they had enabled him to discharge a duty
blest by the gods, for which he was duly thankful.
Happy picture of a bygone age in these United States,
and happy memory of a good man, best perhaps because
so genial a host, now gone to his reward a long generation
ago, having preserved into our own time the good and
ancient tradition so vividly set forth in this entertaining
volume.
WALLACE RICE.
been noted by travellers in every continent where taverns
had not yet been demanded by the numbers of sojourners.
The saqredness of the wanderer s goods and person has
been willingly conceded, even to the formation of a per
manent bond between the provider of bread and salt and
him who partakes thereof. May we not rightly assume,
therefore, that even when the inns of antiquity are shown
at their worst there were still countless hosts, respecters
of the gods and worshipful of the rites of guestship, who
welcomed the coming, rejoiced the staying, and sent good
luck with the parting guest?
But in modern days a more subtle danger threatens
the ancient spirit, however maintained through the ages.
The devil of industrialism has invaded the hotel, and even
the revival of the roadside tavern in response to motor
travel has been contaminated by the desire to make
money first and allow the guest s comfort and pleasures to
become a mere secondary consideration.
Here I recall my father s sitting in the corridor down
which his guests must depart, his spacious pockets filled
with little flasks of choice liquor, with his own hands
bestowing these upon the men who slept under his roof,
not as an advertisement, not to secure their return thereto,
but because they had enabled him to discharge a duty
blest by the gods, for which he was duly thankful.
Happy picture of a bygone age in these United States,
and happy memory of a good man, best perhaps because
so genial a host, now gone to his reward a long generation
ago, having preserved into our own time the good and
ancient tradition so vividly set forth in this entertaining
volume.
WALLACE RICE.
THE INNS OF GREECE & ROME
CHAPTER I.
Inns and Taverns of Antiquity A Nation s Inns an index to its
roads and methods of transportation Inns of the great routes of Egypt
Beer a National beverage Vintage Wines in the time of Rameses
Tavern Songs Drinking and conviviality among students Method of
making wine Cabarets of Alexandria Athenaeus the glutton
Drunkenness among women Juvenal s accounts of the debaucheries of
the Egyptians.
One whose habits of mind prompt him to seek diver
sion amongst company more select than that brought
together by chance in some inn or tavern may deem such
a subject unworthy of consideration and may even find
fault with the writer for presuming to invite him upon
such a ramble, for it will be a ramble, and along the little
known byways of culture. In fact, a history of hospitality
can not be less than a contribution to the most interesting
chapter in anthropology: the chapter which deals with
Survivals in Culture. Let us then remind him of the
cellar of the Auerbachs, and the legends which have grown
up around it: the ventas and posadas of the Spain of
Cervantes, of many an enchanting passage in the Letters
of James Howell, of the Wild Boar s Head kept by Mrs.
Hurtig, in Eastcheap, of the Tabard Inne of Chaucer, and
last, but not least, of the Mermaid Tavern, where Ben
Jonson gained inspiration for much of his finest work!
The inns and taverns of antiquity were not lacking in
scenes which deserve to be reanimated and preserved. It
is true that such establishments occupied a lowly station
i
THE INNS OF
~ i MI ii u*~m-*mm~m*
and that the calling of the innkeeper was looked down
upon, and even despised, but fortunately, the subject has
an interest aside from the poetic, an interest which justifies
the most minute treatment in detail. The nature of this
interest will begin to make itself felt when we give thought
to our inns and palatial hotels and the conditions which
brought about such development. The institutions of our
day fill a double purpose; they minister to the comforts
and needs of their patrons, and they cater to the amuse
ment and social needs of the public. That interchange of
ideas which, more than any other factor, has refined and
broadened civilization, and contributed to refinement in
taste and standards of comfort, has its origin in three
primary causes: wars of conquest, travel, and commerce,
and the last named has contributed more than the other
two. The greatest progress in the modern world has been
made in the direction of overcoming space, whether by
telephone, airplane, ocean greyhound, or luxurious trans
continental trains, and the impetus behind all these is
commerce.
If, then, we examine the public houses of the ancients
with closer attention, is it not in fact the same as though
we were to dissect their civilization for purposes of con
trast with our own?
Are not a nation s inns an index to its roads and
methods of transportation, as well as a true reflection of
the national character?
With this in mind we shall collect the scattered notices
upon the subject and attempt to bring it together into a
connected whole. For the present, we shall devote our
principal efforts to the inns and taverns of Egypt, the
Levant, Greece, and Rome; though in the future we hope
to pursue the subject through the Dark Ages, and deal
with the refectories and monastic orders which took upon
themselves the burden which a dying commerce could no
GREECE & ROME S
longer support. The growth of gilds in France, Italy, the
Low Countries, and England slowly rehabilitated com
merce and the monastic orders were gradually relieved of
their burden as we reach the age of Chaucer.
With the most primitive ages we have no concern, for
where traffic and commerce do not exist, where individuals
do not travel, and the wild hordes wandering in search of
spoil and pasturage are the only wayfarers, there is no
necessity for an inn.
The Heroic Age, however, furnishes us with an
entirely different picture and one infinitely more beautiful
and agreeable. Following an age of chaotic social rela
tions we are confronted with a rude culture which finds its
closest parallel in the writings of the Old Testament. It
has been well said that the two great literary works which
bear the closest resemblance to one another are the works
of Homer and the Old Testament. This, on its face, is a
startling assertion, but a little reflection will make the
conviction stronger. These two collections of writings are
emphatically the productions of two opposed civilizations
which had progressed to about the same stage of develop
ment. In both we have wars and rapine; both are largely
poetic and poetry is older than prose as a literary medium.
In both we find a realistic description of practically the
entire circle of life down to its smallest details: might
begins to yield the palm to wisdom and guile, but hos
pitality is still a duty and an obligation. Even in that age
individual traveling was by no means common. Save in
the instances of Egypt, Tyre, and Sidon, and probably
Cnossos, commercial intercourse was of little importance:
it was carried on almost exclusively upon the water and at
its best was but little removed from piracy. The urge to
go out into the world to gain knowledge, that divine
dissatisfaction from which all progress comes and which,
in the ages to follow, was to inspire the works of Herodotus
4 THE INNS OF
and Rutilius, had not yet awakened. A few, perhaps,
visited relatives or friends living near at hand, or some
vagrant may have fled from the scene of his crime of
passion. Yet even in that age, and before it, we know of
the sack of Cnossos, and read of the wanderings of
Ulysses. He, however, was an unwilling traveler and was
driven by powers beyond his control.
In the early heroic age there were no special establish
ments designed to profit from the necessities of strangers.
An arrangement nobler and more beautiful served as a
substitute, and a general hospitality, founded upon
religion, custom, and obligation, was practised.
Taking our subject in order, we will begin with Egypt,
whose monuments have preserved more than one scene in
wineshop and tavern, and whose festivals are the very
stuff of which the purest hospitality (purissimae impur-
itatis) was made.
"No people/* says Brugsch, in his Historie d Egypt,
" could be gayer, more lively, or of more childish sim
plicity, than those old Egyptians who loved life with all
their hearts and found the deepest joy in their very
existence* Everybody was fond of enjoyment, sang,
drank, danced, and made excursions into the country."
"They loved the flowing cup when work was done,"
remarks Arnold, in his History of Beer and Brewing, "and
perhaps, sometimes, when work was not yet done. Thus
the hieroglyphics tell us, and thus, too, do their ancient
literature, their imperishable monuments, their inscrip
tions, their papyri, nay, even their temples and their
tombs. 3 *
"Beer was the national beverage of the Egyptians, and
it was perhaps with them first of all, prior to the Baby
lonians and Assyrians, that barley was grown and beer
made. Beer was as intimately interwoven with Egyptian
life as it is with that of any modern European country
GREECE & ROME
where the vine is not grown in abundance. Four thousand
years ago the Egyptian peasant and landowner drank it,
as did the craftsman, the soldier, the merchant, the priest,
and the king. They brewed beer and they drank beer
down to the very last of the Pharaohs, under the
Ptolemies, as under the Roman rule. Even today, the
poverty-stricken fellah drinks his old fashioned Egyptian
beer, just as his ancestors did under Senefru or Thothmes,
or Rameses, and he is still bearing the same yoke they did,
thousands of years ago, and as much imposed upon and as
much tyrannized over as they were. But he does not
alone DRINK his beer in the same fashion, HE ALSO MAKES
IT IN THE SAME WAT*"
Maspero, in his "Sketch from Life in an Ancient
Egyptian City/ 5 has combined and condensed an immense
amount of material from original sources into a connected
and, lucid description which we hasten to quote:
The scene is probably laid in some Egyptian city of
the New Empire, circa 1300 B. C., in the time of Rameses
IL In our wanderings through the streets of this city we
come at length to a beer-house or tavern. , <^*~ - .
"The reception-room has been freshly lime washed,"
says Maspero. "It is furnished with mats, stools, and
armchairs, upon which the habitual customers sit side by
side, fraternally drinking beer, wine, palm brandy (shodu),
cooked and perfumed liquors, which would probably seem
detestable to us, but for which the Egyptians display a
strong taste. The wine is preserved in large amphorae,
pitched outside, and closed with a wooden or clay stopper,
over which some mud is laid, painted blue and then
stamped with the name of the owner or the reigning
Pharaoh. An inscription in ink, traced upon the jar,
indicates the origin and the exact date of the wine: THE
YEAE XXIII, IMPORTED WINE; THE YEAR XIX, WINE OF
BOUTO, and so on.
6 THE INNS OF
"There is wine of every variety, white and red; wine
from Mareotis, wine from Pelusium, wine of the Star of
Horus, Master of Heaven, native growths from the oases,
wines of Syene, without counting the wines of Ethiopia,
nor the golden wines which the Phoenician galleys bring
from Syria.
"Beer has always been the favorite beverage of Ihe
people. It is made in a mash-tub of barley steeped in
water, and raised by fermented crumbs of bread. When
freshly made it is soft and pleasant to the taste, but it is
easily disturbed and soon turns sour. Most of the
vinegar used in Egypt is made from beer. This defect is
obviated by adding an infusion of lupine (?) to the beer,
which gives it a certain bitterness and preserves it.
"Sweet beer, iron beer, sparkling beer, spiced beer, per
fumed beer . . . cold or hot, beer of thick sticky millet
like that prepared in Nubia and amongst the negroes of
the Upper Nile. The beer-houses contain stores of as
many varieties of beer as of different qualities of wine.
"If you enter, you are scarcely seated before a slave or
a maid-servant hastens forward and accosts you: * Drink
unto rapture, let it be a good day, listen to the conversa
tion of thy companions and enjoy thyself/ Every
moment the invitation is renewed: " Drink, do not turn
away, for I will not leave thee until thou hast drunk/
The formula changes, but the refrain is always the same
. . drink, drink, and again, drink. The regular cus
tomers do not hesitate to reply to these invitations by
jokes, usually of the most innocent kind: Come now,
bring me eighteen cups of wine with thine own hand. I
will drink till I am happy, and the mat under me is a good
straw bed upon which I can sleep myself sober. * (The
remarks of the drinkers are taken from a scene of a funeral
meal in the tomb of Ranni, at El-Keb. I have para
phrased them to make them intelligible to modern readers.)
VINTAGE EXPERTS
GREECE & ROME
They discuss together the different effects produced by
wine and beer. The wine enlivens and produces benevol
ence and tenderness; beer makes men dull, stupefies them,
and renders them liable to fall into brutal rages. A man
tipsy from wine falls on his face, but anyone intoxicated
by beer falls and lies on his back. The moralists reprove
the excesses, and cannot find words strong enough to ex
press the danger of them. "Wine first loosens the tongue
of man, even wresting from him dangerous words, and
afterwards it prostrates him, so that he is no longer
capable of defending his own interests. Do not, there
fore, forget thyself in breweries; be afraid that words may
come back to thee that thou hast uttered without knowing
that thou hast spoken. When at last thou fallest, thy
limbs failing thee, no one will help thee, thy boon com
panions will leave thee, saying: * beware of him, he is a
drunkard! Then, when thou art wanted for business,
thou art found prone upon the earth, like a little child.
Young men especially should avoid this shameful vice,
for beer destroys their souls. He that abandons himself
to drink is like an oar broken from its fastening, which no
longer obeys on either side; he is like a chapel without its
god, like a house without bread, in which the wall is
wavering and the beam shaking. The people that he
meets in the street turn away from him, for he throws
mud and hoots after them until the police interfere and
carry him away to regain his senses in prison."
Thus has Maspero given us an intimate picture of
Egyptian life under Rameses IE, enabling us to glance
back over the centuries.
We shall probably be greeted with song and laughter
in the next tavern we enter. The company will be jolly
and bent on festivities and both string and wind instru
ments will contribute to the occasion. While we are
catching up with the rest of the party and sampling the
8 THE INNS OF
stock in trade, singers will entertain us with something
like the following:
Let sweet odors and oils be placed for thy nostrils,
Wreaths of lotos flowers for thy limbs
And for the bosom of thy sister (mistress), dwelling in thy heart,
Sitting beside thee.
Let song and music be made before thee.
Cast behind thee all cares and mind thee of pleasure,
Till cometh the day when we draw towards the land
That loveth silence.*
The Horatian philosophy of Carpe Diem was thus not
original with the Augustan, Why should they not make
merry:
"Whether your term of life drags on in sorrow,
Or in some grassy nook you forget tomorrow,
Dallying and idling at your leisure
Wooing with Palernian your pleasure,
While Youth and Fortune grant you power,
While yet the Sisters threads endure. . . .
and the Egyptian, fatalist and almost Epicurean, withal,
goes on to say:
For no one can take away his goods with him,
Yea, no one returns again who has gone hence, f
Every now and then there is mention of students
private drinking bouts with doubtless all the con
comitants of a successful party, for it was not the
Egyptian custom to deprive the women of the social
indulgences in which the men took such delight. Abste
miousness was no part of the creed of Egyptian woman
hood, as is easily seen from tomb decorations, frescoes, con
temporary literature, and the like, and the gilded youth
of the day took its pleasures where it found them even as
*Duemichen, Hist. lose. II, 40.
fHatris 500 Pap. Maspero EtuA Egypt L
GRE E C E & ROME 9
our own today. In proof of this statement we have the
evidence of a letter written by some teacher or tutor to
his pupil who "did forsake his books/ 5 and "did wander
from street to street."
Thou art caught as thou dost climb upon walls,
And dost break the plank,
The people flee from thee,
And thou dost strike and wound them.***
Yes, even in that dark age the college boys were
enlightened enough to have acquired a taste for beer,
wine, palm brandy, or other ardent spirits : " every evening,
the smell of beer, the smell of beer (that) drives men
away/* Our rah-rah boy of long ago was also " instructed
how to sing to the flute, to give a monologue to the
accompaniment of the pipe, to intone the lyre, to sing to
the harp."
Another budding genius, who probably found the cost
of high living totally out of all proportion to the allowance
granted him by his father, is advised by that worthy man
" to content himself with two jugs of beer and three loaves
of bread."!
Nor are drinking and conviviality the only subjects
allied to hospitality upon which antiquity has com
mented* As there was a cause, so also was there an effect
and we learn quite a little about that famous "pulling of
the hair/* that morning-after-the-night-before feeling.
The Egyptians used a very simple and popular remedy to
cure it; a remedy which, since the discovery of the
bromide pick-me-up, has become obsolete in the so-called
western civilizations, but one which the writer has often
seen used when the guests of some Chinese mandarin were
a trifle heavy and lumpy in spots after undergoing a
*Pap. Anastasi, in Sd. Papyri
f Sallier Papyri.
10 THE INNS OF
course of sprouts at the august table. Athenaeus also
mentions the same specific, and the English translator of
his work has put the verses into English rhyme:
Last evening you were drinking deep,
So now your head aches, go to sleep;
Take some boiled cabbage, when you wake
And there s an end of your headache.
And, fortifying his position still further, he runs on,
"and Eubulus says, somewhere or other,"
Quick, wife! Some cabbage boil of virtues healing,
That I may rid me of this seedy feeling.
Some idea of the amount of wine and beer available in
Egypt (its population probably did not exceed some seven
and one-half millions) may be gained from the Great
Harris Papyrus, a document one hundred and thirty-
three feet in length, in which are recorded the endowments
of Rameses III, during a reign of about thirty-one years.
The amounts of wine and beer granted by him to the
temples were:
Jars of Wine 256,460
Jugs of Beer 466,303
The capacity of the beer jugs is not known to us, but,
judging by their bulk in proportion to the human figures
in the frescoes, they must have held more than one
gallon, and we thus arrive at the conclusion that the
average annual contribution of beer for sacrificial pur
poses was about fifteen thousand gallons, and, of wine,
probably about nine thousand five hundred gallons. Nor
should we assume that these beer and wine endowments
were in the form of a levy upon the people. They prob
ably came direct from the royal treasury and are set down
as regular expenses for the sacrificial fund. "There can
be no doubt that the department for the management of
GREECE & ROME 11
the royal domains, that is, in this case, the royal brewery,
made the beer/ *
From what has gone before we can infer that the
taverns of old Egypt were no less popular there than else
where, and we have the testimony of Strabo, the geo
grapher, to the conditions which in his day prevailed at
Canopus.
"They sail by this canal to Schedia," says mine author,
"to the great river, and to Canopus, but the first place at
which they arrive is Eleusis. This is a settlement near
Alexandreia and Nicopolis, and situated on the Canopic
Canal. It has houses of entertainment which command
beautiful views, and hither resort men and women who
are inclined to indulge in noisy revelry, a prelude to
Canopic life, and the dissolute manners of the people of
Canopus."f
Nor is this the only passage in which Strabo makes
mention of the taverns and cabarets of that joyous clime:
"But remarkable above everything else is the multi
tude of persons who resort to the public festivals, and
come from Alexandreia by the Canal. For day and night
there are crowds of men and women in boats, singing and
dancing without restraint, and with utmost licentiousness.
Others, at Canopus itself, keep hostelries, situated on the
banks of the Canal, which are well adapted for such kinds
of diversions and revelry." J
The theory of decantation as a preservative and
ripener was well known to the Egyptians, who taught it
to the Hebrews. According to Strabo the Mareotic
vintage was very highly esteemed after having ripened
and aged, the process being aided by decantation. The
Egyptians had several methods of pressing the grapes.
*Arnold, supra cit. p. 77.
fLib. XVH, Chap. I, No. 16.
{Lib. XVII, Chap. I, No. 17.
12 THE INNS OF
Sometimes they trod them under foot in stone troughs but
their more general practice seems to have been as follows:
they would weave an osier weir, enclose the grapes therein,
as though in a hammock of fine meshed net, and then have
recourse to torsion by means of bars to press the juice and
permit it to flow into a vessel placed to receive it.
Wilkerson has produced a bas-relief in which this process
is illustrated.
In the age of the Ptolemies, wine had come to be
regarded as one of the sources of wealth and one of the
glories of that sensual land. Athenaeus has transmitted
much information concerning the vintages, indicating
their respective claims to excellence, as, for example, their
color, their headiness, their excellence, their bouquet, taste,
and so on. That of Coptos is light and an aid to diges
tion, and was prescribed to patients with fevers. The
Mareotic was an excellent white wine, with an exquisite
bouquet, diuretic, and as it destroyed neither co-ordina
tion nor lucidity, it was little likely to give one that
morning-after-the-night-before feeling. Another there is
called by some Alexandrine the best, but the finest of
all was the wine which was produced on that tongue of
land between the sea and the lake, which was called the
Taeniotic, the ne plus ultra of the Egyptian wines, and
it was of a dark yellow color.
Athenaeus, always the glutton whom he professes to
be, omits, nevertheless, a number of vintages which ought
to be included. Far be it from us to reproach him for
having omitted to mention the wine of Libya, a detestable
beverage which the proletariat at Alexandria drank and
guzzled whenever anything but water or beer came its
way. " It is bad," says Strabo. " One is likely to discover
more sea water than wine in one of those casks, which,
along with their beer, is the drink of the commoners at
Alexandria. One is reminded of the smuggling conven-
GREECE & ROME 13
tions on the Cliina coast, when, if one were to substitute
counterfeit coin on the Chinese bootlegger who was good
enough to supply the needs of the enlisted personnel of the
Navy, his successor was certain to have as many bottles
of sea water as there were counterfeit coins in the original
order. And this, at five Mexican dollars per head, not
withstanding the peril of hauling such contraband cargo
up the side of a white ship with a white pack thread,
there was always the danger that some officious officer
might look overside and beat the bottle to its destination
before the prospective owner could cache it and himself.
But the elegant gastronomer and refined host and enter
tainer should not have failed to mention the Sebennytici
vini which were derived from the mixture and blending of
the juices of three different grapes, whose slips came from
three different parts of Greece, and which the gluttons at
Rome set such store by.
"The Sebennytici," says Pliny, "come from three
varieties of grapes called Thasian, Oethalus, and Peuce."
It would only be just, then, should Athenaeus, in speaking
of the wine that abounded under the name of Arsinoite,
and which came from the oasis of that name, to pay
tribute to it. Lastly, Athenaeus, in editing his list of the
wines of Egypt, should not have passed over in silence the
wine of Meroe, which is often confounded with Mareotic,
its pale rival, more especially as Lucan, in a passage no
less bombastic than eloquent, has taken the trouble to
distinguish between these two exquisite vintages. The
passage occurs in his description of the banquet of Caesar
and Cleopatra, and is one of the finer points in Egyptian
wine making:
"Many birds and wild beasts did they set before them,
the Gods of Egypt; and crystal supplied the water of the
Nile for their hands, and capacious bowls studded with
gems received the wine, but not of the grape of Mareotis,
14 THE INNS OF
but noble Falernian, to which, in a few years, Meroe had
imparted maturity, compelling it, otherwise full of
maturity, to ferment."*
The immoderate thirst of the drunkards of Egypt
could not have been assuaged by anything short of that
abundance of liquors of exquisite savor, nor could the
unbridled passion for drunkenness which the women
manifested have been sated otherwise. The bas-reliefs and
tombs furnish peremptory evidence of this devouring
passion, and, among a host, one illustration is often cited,
in which two women are represented, one of them paying
her dues to nature, being full of drink, while the other
holds her head and renders her kind service. The orgies
of Memphis and Alexandreia have been perpetuated by
pictorial art as well as by literature, and the scenes in
Pierre Louys* Aphrodite are by no means an exaggeration.
On the contrary, they are well within the limits of art and
are, if anything, less than realistic. A slave, holding a
basin whilst her mistress discharges the bile from a
stomach which can endure no more, is also an illustration
well known to the Egyptologist, and in still another bas-
relief we see two slaves supporting their master, who is
dead drunk, on his precarious voyage home from the com-
messatio. Joseph, therefore, had reason on his side when
he remarked that of all people in the world, the Egyptians
were the most debauched, and there is little of hyperbole
in the statements of Strabo, quoted above, or in the
terrible passage from Juvenal which follows. A passage
that seethes with energy and contempt, with sarcasm and
satire, a banquet at Tentyra or Canopus or Ombi, the
brawling and fighting which are the inevitable sequelae,
more especially when the same city limits contained the
revelers and their enemies. The passage occurs in Satire
XV, lines 33 to 83.
*Pharsalia, Lib. X,
GREECE & ROME 15
"Between the neighboring towns of Ombi and Tentyra
there burns an ancient and long cherished feud and
undying hatred, whose wounds are not to be healed.
Each people is filled with fury against the other because
each hates his neighbors gods, deeming that none can be
held as deities save its own. So when one of these peoples
held a feast, the chiefs and leaders of their enemies
thought good to seize the occasion, so that their foe might
not enjoy a glad and merry day, with the delight of grand
banquets, with tables set out at every temple and every
crossroad, and with night-long feasts, and with couches
spread all day and all night, and sometimes discovered by
the sun on the seventh morn" Egypt doubtless is a rude
country, but in indulgence, so far as I myself have noted,
its barbarous rabble yields not to the ill-famed Canopus.
Victory, too, would be easy, it was thought, over men
steeped in wine, stuttering and stumbling in their cups.
On the one side were men dancing to a swarthy piper,
with unguents, such as they were, and flowers and chaplets
on their heads; on the other side a ravenous hate. First
come loud words as preludes to the fray; these serve as a
trumpet to arouse their hot passions; then, shout answer
ing shout, they charge. Bare hands do the fell work of
war. Scarce a cheek is left without a gash; scarce one
nose, if any, comes out of the battle unbroken. Through
all the ranks might be seen battered faces, and features
other than they were; bones gaping through torn cheeks,
and fists dripping with blood from eyes. Yet the com
batants deem themselves at play and waging a boyish
warfare because there are no corpses to trample. What
avails a mob of so many thousand warriors if no lives be
lost? So, fiercer and fiercer grows the fight; now they
search the ground for stones, the natural weapons of civic
strife, and hurl them with bended arms against the foe;
not such stones as Turnus or Ajax flung, or like that with
16 THE INNS OF
which the son of Tydeus struck Aeneas on the hip, but
such as may be cast by hands unlike to theirs, and born in
these days of ours. For even in Homer s day the race of
man was on the wane; earth now produces nothing but
weak and wicked men that provoke such gods as see them
to laughter and loathing.
"To come back from our digression, the one side, rein
forced, boldly draws the sword, and attacks with a
shower of arrows; the dwellers in the shady palm groves
of the neighboring Tentyra turn their backs in headlong
flight before the Ombite charge. Hereupon, one of them,
overafraid and hurrying, tripped and was caught; the
conquering host cut up his body into scraps and morsels,
that one dead man might suffice for everyone, and
devoured it, bones and all. There was no stewing of it in
boiling pots, no roasting upon spits so slow and tedious
they thought it to wait for a fire that they contented
themselves with the corpse uncooked. 5 *
Wine, however, not only intervened in the affairs of
the Egyptians and Hebrews, Phoenicians and Assyrians,
to arouse them to violence and cause such bloody affairs
as that described above, it also played an important part
in the settlement of disputes and business difficulties
everywhere. It was one of the principal sinews of com
merce and credit through all antiquity, and, incidentally,
the one means by which a contract was sometimes
concluded. Among the Romans, and among our own
forefathers of the Middle Ages, no affair of importance
was disposed of without taking a drink upon it, and it i
so today, in the countries still fortunate enough to be free
from the^ propaganda of zealots and bigoted reformers,
whether it be the little intrigue of some artizan or the
vital concern of some cabinet minister, whether the pledge
be red zinfandel or some rare brandy, the ratification
(rata fiat) is never complete without this last formality.
GREECE & ROME 17
And it was the same amongst the Phoenicians, and after
them with the Hebrews, for they derived many of their
business usages from the merchant princes of Tyre and
Sidon. When a bargain had been struck, and a satis
factory understanding reached they shook hands, and
ordered a drink called "Chopen," that is to say, meta
phorically, the wine of the land, to drink to celebrate the
treaty. The French word chopine is said to have come
from this custom. It is not impossible, but it is certainly
very ingenious, if true, or, in our newspaper parlance,
interesting if true.
We have said above that beer was the drink most in
demand in Egypt, and Diodorus Siculus has credited
Osiris with the invention of it. c< Wherever a country did
not permit the culture of the vine, there he (Osiris)
taught the people how to brew the beverage which is
made of barley, and which is not greatly inferior to wine
in odor and potency. 55 *
18 THEINNSOF
CHAPTER EL
Assyrian and Babylonian inns conducted by women Laws reg
ulating inns Drinking led to most unbridled extremities Entire tity
of Nineveh in different degrees of intoxication Aromatic wines
Hebrew conception of hospitality The inn at Bethlehem where Joseph
and Mary were forced to take skelter in the stable in which Jesus was
lorn Donovan s description of the caravanseraei at Kuchan.
In closing our account of the professional hospitality
amongst the Egyptians we should bear in mind that they
regarded the affairs of everyday life, whatever their tenor,
as of little importance; on the other hand, they lavished
untold wealth and meticulous care upon their tombs as
the places of eternal silence and the sanctuaries to which
they withdrew themselves to sleep out time. In these
tombs the character of the Egyptian, king or noble, was
accurately mirrored, and a sense of dignity, aloof and
impersonal, was probably as deeply imbedded in his
character as the desire for life itself.
Our information as to Assyrian and Babylonian inns
and taverns is necessarily limited because of the fact that
their ruins were buried deep below the surface of the coun
try as it is today. Until a relatively recent period we
knew little of their records and experienced the greatest
difficulty in deciphering such of their inscriptions as had
come to light. Now, however, clay tablets, sherds, and
tiles have begun to give up their information and the pic
ture is becoming more and more distinct, though they are
still far from complete* In the code of Hammurabi (B, C.
circa 2225) we have a few facts from which we may infer
with reasonable certainty that wine and beer were vended
and drunk upon the premises. The ownership of such
beer-houses, wine-shops, or taverns, as were conducted in
GREECE & ROME 19
Nineveh and Babylon seems to have been vested in the
hands of big merchant princes who installed women as
managers, and these women actually conducted the
resorts. Payment seems to have been made in grain, the
price of which was fixed by statute. Patrons were given
credit and the score was paid after the harvest. Women
conducting such places were forbidden by law to demand
money, as this might have caused the customer em
barrassment or inconvenience, and the establishment
would also have profited if, after the harvest, there had
been a fall in the price of grain. Each evasion or con
travention of this law was punishable with death. The
paragraphs vital to our subject follow:
No. 108. If any of the wine-selling women have not
accepted grain in lieu of money, but have
insisted upon money in ordinary coin, and
thus have assisted in lowering the price of
drink and grain, she shall be summoned
and thrown into the water.
No. 109. If rebels have assembled in the house of a
wine-selling woman, and she has not seized
upon them and led them to the fortress,
she has forfeited her life.
No. 110. If a priestess who does not reside in the
convent have opened a dram shop, or if she
have entered there with the purpose of
drinking, she shall be burned.
It is of interest to note that the huge block upon
which the laws were inscribed had been erected in the
temple at Esagil, which was the temple of Bel Merodach,
in Babylon. It was discovered in 1901-2 by De Morgan,
French archaeologist, and a Dominican monk named
Scheil, in the acropolis at Susa. Evidently it had been re
moved from Babylon by the Elamites. Its contents
prove an astonishing degree of civilization in early Baby-
20 THE INNS OF
Ion and only recently it was invoked as a precedent by a
jurist in St. Louis, Missouri.
In addition to the native products, such, for example,
as the wines made from palms and dates, caravans also
transported the choice vintages of neighboring countries.
Drinking was almost universal. Royal banquets were
always heavily provided with wine, as both Daniel and
Curtius Rufus testify, and the daily fare of the upper
classes would have been ill esteemed without the benign
and cheering influence of the spirit of the grape. In the
houses of the wealthy, fruit juices were fermented and
mead and cordials were common. Curtius Rufus, in his
history of Alexander the Great, states that in Babylon
drinking was an out and out vice, and that in many
instances it was carried to the most unbridled extremes
and led to excesses such as even the court of Rome knew
but infrequently.
As to Assyria, Maspero has drawn the following
picture from original sources:
"The Assyrian is sober in ordinary life, but he does
not know how to stop if he once allows himself any
excess. Wines of Assyria and Chaldaea, wines from Elam,
wine from Syria and Phoenicia, wines from Egypt,
amphorae and skins are emptied as soon as opened, with
out visibly quenching the universal thirst. After one or
two days no brain is strong enough to resist it, and
Nineveh presents the extraordinary spectacle of an entire
city in different degrees of intoxication. When the
festival is over several days are required before it resumes
its usual aspect* Whilst the people are becoming tipsy
outside, Assurbanipal feasts the leading chiefs and the
ministers of state within the palace. They are seated on
double chairs, two on each side of a small table, face to
face. The chairs are high, without any backs or footstool
upon which the guests can rest either elbows or feet; the
GREECE & ROME 21
honor of dining with, the king must always be paid for
with some fatigue.
"The tables are covered with fringed cloths, upon
which the dishes are placed by the slaves. Unlike the
common people, the nobles eat little, so that few dishes of
meats are placed before them, but cakes and fruits of
different kinds; grapes, dates, apples, pears, and figs are
brought in continued relays by long lines of slaves.
"On the other hand, they drank a great deal with
more refinement, perhaps, than the common people, but
with greater avidity. Upon this occasion, the king has
distributed the most precious vases in his treasury, cups
of gold and silver, the majority of them moulded or
chased in the form of a lion s head. Many of them were
formerly sacred vessels which the priests of vanquished
nations used in their sacrifices; some are from Babylon
or Carchemish, some were taken from Tyre or Memphis,
whilst others belonged to the temples at Samaria and
Jerusalem. By using them for a profane occasion,
the Assyrians insult the gods to whose service they be
long, so that to the pleasure of drinking is added that
of humiliating the foreign deities in the sight of Assur
whom they resisted.
"The wines, even the most delicate, are not drunk in
their natural state; they are mixed with aromatics and
various drugs, which give them a delicious flavor and add
tenfold to their strength. This operation is performed in
the hall, under the eyes of the revelers. An eunuch,
standing before the table, pounds in a stone mortar the
intoxicating essences, which he moistens from time to
time with some substgoice. His comrades have poured
the contents of the amphorae into immense bowls of
chased silver, which reach to their chests. As soon as the
perfumed paste is ready they put some of it into each bowl
and carefully dissolve it. The cup-bearers bring the cups,
22 THE INNS OF
draw out the wine, and serve the guests. Even the
sentinels at the doors receive their share, and, standing
spear or club in hand, pledge each other as they mount
guard. The only persons who do not drink, or who drink
very little, through the necessity of retaining their
sobriety, are the eunuchs who stand behind the guests
to fan them the servants, and the musicians/*
The ancient Hebrew conception of hospitality was
based upon tenets as pure as those of Menelaus, though in
later times the right was not binding upon them unless
the wayfarer was of their own people.
The place where Zipporah and her son stopped when
Moses returned to Egypt may well have been one of the
inns along the road between Egypt and the northeastern
countries. Owing to the fact that the Hebrews made no
distinction between a harlot and an hostess, we cannot be
certain that Bahab did not conduct an inn rather than a
house of ill fame. In any case, the spies of Joshua found
shelter under her roof and she received her reward. The
same may be said of the harlot at Gaza whose hospitality
Samson shared; but one episode there is which admits of
no double meaning; I refer to the return of the sons of
Jacob from Egypt. They stopped at an inn and opened
their sacks to give fodder to their sumpter mules. One is
also impressed with the fact that they carried supplies for
the return journey. Such places differed little from the
khans of present day Asia; establishments where there
was shelter for man and beast but where it was necessary
to provide supplies. On the second journey the brothers
received from the ruler of Egypt an abundance of supplies
and a train of mules and wagons as well. One well
furnished with necessities and perhaps a few comforts was
confronted, in these towns of Judaea, with some difficulty
if he had no friends or acquaintances, and often was com
pelled to go into camp in the public place, like a modern
GREECE & ROME 23
Bedouin; proof positive that in the Hebrew villages there
was often no shelter except that of the shrine of the oldest
of professions.
When the angels arrived at Sodom they would have
remained in the streets had not Lot pressed his kindly
hospitality upon them, which probably meant that there
was no inn to which they could apply.
The Levite of Ephraim, a stranger at Gaba, had gone
into camp in the public place with his women, his servant,
and his beasts of burden; the latter had received their
fodder and he was even then getting ready to serve
supper, when an old man, a fellow countryman, came to
offer, in his own house, a hospitality which was accepted
because of the common tie between them.
One can still see in the Jewish villages the open places
where travelers pitch their tents, those spaces in the khans
where the caravans still find shelter, and conditions today
differ little from those of the days of Joseph. The khans
are, generally speaking, built within the villages, whereas
the enormous caravanserais are constructed along the
roads and at distances of about eight miles from each
other. Some described by O Donovan are enormous and
the discomfort which they offer is only exceeded by their
size.
It is in the khans, however, that we find the nearest
approach to the shelters which, in the times of Jacob,
were to be found along the roads leading from Egypt;
shelters which the Latin translators of the Holy Writ have
probably rendered erroneously by the term deversorium,
and the bleak desolation and utter lack of commissary are
eloquent commentary upon the wisdom which prompted
the sons of Jacob to prevent themselves from being placed
at the mercy of those conducting such places, more
especially where they were otherwise unknown and
friendless.
24 THE INNS OF
The inn at Bethlehem where Joseph and Mary were
forced to take such shelter as they could find in the face
of the emergency which confronted the expectant mother
was one of the khans such as are still the rule in those
regions. The crowd of travelers, caravan hucksters,
which had already arrived, left not even a corner for the
weary pair, and they were forced to find such comfort as
they could in the stable. There the mother gave birth to
Him who was thereafter to be the Saviour of all humanity;
she wrapped Him in swaddling clothes and laid Him in
the manger because there was no room in the inn.
If the inns were by no means numerous in the Hebrew
countries, the taverns were not more so, and an exhaustive
analysis of the Holy Writ will produce no allusion to a
cabaret, and this, notwithstanding the fact that much
wine was consumed and that the Hebrews also knew how
to brew beer. In addition to the native vintages, and
some of them were of the finest, wine was imported from
Phoenicia and from Egypt, and, later on, from the Greek
Archipelago and Ionia.
The promised land which lay at the end of the long
exodus from Egypt was a land of i1V and of honey, a
land of wine and of plenty. The grape and the pome
granate flourished, and the wines of Engeddi, Carmel,
and Gelboa were famous, although not produced in suffi
cient quantities to meet the demand, and pomegranate
wine and various artificial products were made.
Before quitting the subject of Levantine hospitality,
we wish to introduce the readers to two pictures which, it
is hoped, will enable the mind to visualize both sides of
the subject, the sordid and the beautiful. For this
purpose we quote O Donovan s description of the caravan
serai at Kuchan, as he found it in the latter part of the
nineteenth century. The quotation is apt because the
conditions he describes are in no way different from those
GREECE & ROME 25
which beset travelers in pre-classical ages, in the Levant,
and could with equal propriety be attributed either to
Persia or Palestine.
"After some experience of Kuchan, and especially of
its caravanserai, I felt the strongest desire to get away
from it. Of all the wretched localities of this wretched
East, it is one of the worst I have been in. To people at
a distance, the petty miseries one undergoes in such a
place may seem more laughable than otherwise; there
they do not at all tend to excite hilarity in the sufferer.
For four days and nights at a stretch I did not enjoy ten
minutes* unbroken rest. All day long one s hands were
in perpetual motion, trying to defend one s face and neck
against the pertinacious attacks of filthy blue-bottles, or
brushing ants or various other insects off one s hands and
paper. With all this extra movement, each word I wrote
occupied me nearly a minute. Dinner involved a per
petual battle with creeping things, and was a misery that
seldom tempted one s appetite. As for the time spent
on the top of the house, lying on a mat, and which it
would be a mockery to call bed-time, it would be difficult
to say whether it or the daylight hours were the more
fraught with torment. Every ten minutes it was neces
sary to follow the example of the people lying around,
and to rise and shake the mat furiously, in order to get
rid, for a brief space, of the crowds of gigantic black fleas
which I could hear dancing around, and still more dis
tinctly feel. The impossibilities of repose, and the con
tinual irritation produced by insects, brought on a kind
of hectic fever which deprived me of all desire to eat.
All night long three or four scores of donkeys brayed in
chorus; vicious horses screamed and quarrelled, and
hundreds of jackals and dogs rivalled each other in mak
ing night hideous. After sunset the human inhabitants
of the caravanserai mounted to the roof, and sat there in
THE INNS OF
^ ^M ^ BMB^B BMHM
scanty garments, smoking their kaliouns, and talking or
singing until long after midnight."
In contrast to this dreary picture we have O Dono-
van s tribute to a comfortable hotel in Teheran. It is
worthy of notice that there were and are certain estab
lishments in Ispahan and other centers which have a
charm scarcely to be found elsewhere except in some
secluded garden in Seville or in the private grounds of one
of the smaller potentates of the Asiatic tropics. The
Caf6 de Roses, the Caf 6 du Fleuve, the caf 6 de la Porte-
du-Salut, with its sycamores, happy patrons and servants,
lovely gardens and artificial waterfalls, has all the en
chanting and haunting charm of a half remembered
dream in which complete rest and relaxation fade slowly
into oblivion only to awaken to a reality that becomes
more haunting as it is better understood. Well did the
philosopher remark that East is East and West is West
and never the twain shall meet.
GREECE & ROME 27
CHAPTER m.
The Lydians established the first inns and taverns (?}The Greeks
of the Heroic Age knew not taverns nor inns, but practised the highest
standards of hospitality Lesches, places of gossip, preceding inns
Pausanias s description of two casinos in Athens and Sparta.
Herodotus, who, as he is better understood, will be
better appreciated, and who generally attempts to get to
the root of a matter, would place the origin of inns among
a people among whom he saw them and had experience
with them for the first time, and he therefore attributes to
the Lydians the establishment of the first inns and
taverns. In those primitive times, however, the truth
would be difficult to arrive at, if not utterly impossible,
and we shall not contradict his statement; nevertheless,
we doubt it, and we have many times asked ourselves why
the Lydians and no other people should have conceived
such an idea. It is true that they were jolly, light hearted,
and passionately fond of amusement. Had that not been
the case they would never have fallen so rapidly into a
state of decadence after the conquest of Sardi by Cyrus,
nor could they have taken so light a view of the captivity
and humiliation of Croesus. And Polydore Virgil has
defended his statement with a singular pleasantry and
brilliance, on the ground that the thing is very natural.
The Lydians, says he, invented games and they ought
therefore to have been the first to conceive the idea of a
tavern, and to open establishments, places, as he remarks,
where games and gambling would always be held in great
favor: ."quippe tale opus in cauponis maxime semper
fervet." Larcher, the great French translator of Herod
otus, is by no means agreeable to this. He does not accept
28 THE INNS OF
in that sense the word kapelos, employed by Herodotus,
and he is caustically critical of the translators of Herod
otus who have rendered that expression by the Latin term
caupona. According to him, the term of Herodotus
should be taken in the sense of retailer, retail tradesman,
and thus does he everywhere render it. He cites a great
number of passages where kapelos, in effect, is used in the
sense in which he maintains it should be taken, notably a
phrase in Plato where it is said that "all commerce
between towns other than bartering is called kapelican"
but with all the evidence he has cited, there is still room
for disagreement and an opinion to the contrary may be
maintained without any great difficulty. Scholarly
candor, however, compels us to admit that, notwithstand
ing the various Latin versions of Herodotus, and even the
evidence of Polydore Virgil, the word kapelos can be
taken in a double sense, i.e*, cabaret keeper and merchant.
And this legend upon a sign could only have been embar
rassing to a stranger in a Greek town, if he was searching
for an inn and not for a retailing establishment. The
habit of cheating, which from the earliest times has been
inherent in the two callings, would be a complicating
factor in the affair, and to do justice to such a situation
one should give still a third meaning to the term kapelos"
-i.e., that of pilfering or obtaining under false pretensions:
and the verb kapeleuein is no less elastic in the meanings
which it may convey, yet notwithstanding the various
innuendoes which it conveys, in spite of the various shades
of meaning which it takes on in different constructions,
one well acquainted with the genius of the Greek tongue
will unerringly arrive at the proper sense, and should the
stranger seek a wme-shop he had but to ask where he
could find an oinopoles; were he in search of lodgings, he
asked the location of a panddokos or a katagogos, but not
withstanding all his care and precaution, he would find
GREECE & ROME 29
himself in the presence of the kapelos whether he patron
ized the one or the other; and, in addition, he did well to
be on his guard against deception which often presented
itself in a guise as lovely as it was sweetly predacious.
The Greeks of the Heroic age were unacquainted with the
plagues which beset the ages in which inns and taverns
flourished. At that time there was literally no such thing
among them as professional hospitality, maintained for
profit. Each and every stranger had the right of sanctu
ary and asylum; every wayfarer, as though under the
protection of Zeus Xenios himself, was sure to find a host.
After the feast, a libation in honor of the god of hospitality
was poured upon the hospitable table, the protector of
strangers was honored, and the guest was then on even
terms with the host who entertained him. Pomp and
pageantry made not the slightest difference in the quality
of the welcome; a guest might arrive with a baggage train
of mules and slaves, or he might come as unostentatiously
as Orestes, in the Coephores, with a lean scrip, and leaning
upon a staff; he was a stranger, and sanctuary was his by
right. "At the voice of the stranger/ 5 eloquently remarks
Barthelemy, "all gates were opened, all his needs were
met, and, as a still more beautiful tribute to the homage
thus rendered to humanity, the host was not informed of
the state and birth of a guest until after the latter had
satisfied his necessities."
One phase of hospitality there was, in the Heroic Age,
which placed it far above the standards practiced by the
Hebrews, at least in the later ages of their history, and the
only examples which can be cited to compare with this
Greek standard are those of Abraham and Lot. To the
Greek, it made not the slightest difference whether his
guest was a Dorian or an Ionian, a Locrian, a Corcyrian,
or an Attican, it made no difference whether he was even
of Greek stock, he was entitled to food and shelter, and
30 THE INNS OF
also to protection while under his host s roof* The
Hebrew, in the later periods of his history, while always
hospitable, confined his charity and entertainment to
members of his own race, or to those closely allied to it.
The unlimited scope of Hellene hospitality will be better
understood after a thorough perusal of Homer. Let us
then attempt a description of the age in which he is said
to have lived, and perhaps we shall better understand the
entertainment of Telemachus by Menelaus, which is the
earliest and one of the finest examples of the hospitality
with which we are concerned. We need but cast a glance
at this cheerful, well contented, happy Homeric world to
be convinced that there was anything but a lack of social
amusement. At that time the cultus itself was a series of
light hearted entertainments, beautified by dances, sing
ing, and joyous barbecues and banquets. In addition to
this, the council of the nobles, the court of the monarch,
and the assembly of the people, were, to all practical pur
poses, as much social as political or commercial, and their
debates, often acrimonious and generally entertaining,
with their cutting and thrusting, were entertaining to the
highest degree, and the innumerable special celebrations
and religious fetes in the houses of the king and the nobles
added still more to the variety and richness of contem
porary life. After the banquet, virile youth hastened to
-the palaestra to engage in athletic sports and match their
strength and skill against one another in a physical com
petition beneficial to both body and character alike.
From this custom the finest artistic sense of all time was
evolved. The elders looked on and decided the issues in
accordance with the merits of the contestants, and the
Homeric age produced few weaklings, or, rather, few
survived, which is not a left-handed compliment to later
and supposedly better times. Then followed a wonderful
old folk dance of lovely damsels and armed epheboi, such
BRINGING IN A COURSE
GREECE & ROME 31
as are sometimes seen on the finer pottery of the time, a
dance which was symbolical of life itself, and Dryden, in
one little line, has caught the very spirit of that dance:
"None but the brave deserve the fair!"
Happy times, in that fairy-tale age of pure gold, when
man at his best was "knee deep in June, 55 when he led a
healthy, vigorous life, uncontaminated at its source by a
seething commercialism destined to devour itself and
everything it touched; when Advertising, its crafty and
specious spokesman, had not educated Appetite or tutored
Desire. What Horace wrote as his conception of the ideal
condition for man might be applied with equal propriety
to that age:
Who covets much will ever want,
But happy he on whom the gods bestow
With sparing hand, enough, and grant
Him health, and industry to keep him so.
How do the majority of our social pleasures compare
with these simple and healthy amusements? Are they as
good, as constructive? Are they not too refined? Will
not such a trend produce eventually a race of mollycoddles
and cuddling moths if carried to its end ? Let us note that
in building the stadia at the various universities we are
getting in tune with the ancient Greek ideal of robust
health and the physical beauty which crowns it. And we
shall have less of ennui, and of political indifference with
which to reproach demagogues, as a result.
The first public institutions in Greece which can with
any justice be compared with our inns and taverns, the
so-called kschai, are, in all probability, a development
arising at the close of the Heroic age. In the age which
followed they were adapted to the needs of the Ionic
cities, and larger towns, especially Athens. They were
also known to Doric Greece, but to a much less degree.
32 THE INNS OF
The first mention of these leschai is found in Homer in
that passage of the Odyssey in which an empty-headed
maidservant attempts to scold Odysseus, disguised in
beggar s rags, out of his own house:*
"Wretched guest" (Melantho, Penelope s adopted
ward, is speaking), "surely thou art some brain-struck man,
seeing that thou dost not choose to go and sleep at a
smithy, or at some PLACE OF COMMON BESORT, but here
thou pratest much and boldly among many lords and hast
no fear at heart. Verily, wine has got about thy wits, or
perchance thou art always of this mind, and so thou dost
babble idly. Art thou beside thyself for joy, because thou
hast beaten the beggar Irus ? Take heed lest a better man
than Irus rise up presently against thee, to lay his mighty
hands about thy head and bedabble thee in blood, and
send thee hence from the house."*
This is the only Homeric poem which contains such
mention, and it is probably, as stated above, that the
institution of public houses did not belong to the earlier
Heroic age and the bard very likely carried an institution
of his own time back into an earlier age. As regards the
passage cited, Eustathius the scholiast informs us that
leeches were buildings with open halls where people con
gregated for purposes of gossip and amusement.! Hesiod
also admonishes against habits of idleness which these
lesches fostered.
Gossip, however, was not the only conversation heard
in these places; more serious subjects were also discussed,
and as the gymnasiums later became the lecturing places
and haunt of philosophers and their neophytes, so also
these earlier substitutes served a like purpose. The
passage from Homer quoted above shows also that these
lesches, in addition to their social usage, served as shelter
*Book 18, 520 et sequitur;
fButcher and Lang.
GREECE & ROME 33
and sanctuary to the homeless and needy vagrants. As it
was unusual for the Greeks to foster a public custom or an
institution of a public nature without associating the same
with their religion and folklore, so they had also for these
institutions a patron : this was Apollo, who in this capac
ity was called Apollo Leschenarios. On this account
we need not be surprised at reading of these lesches as
being enumerated among the public buildings belonging
to the different cities. The degree to which these gath
ering places were frequented, depended naturally upon
the varying social character of the native customs and
still more, upon their mode of living. Athens and Sparta
will serve as striking examples of what is meant. Accord
ing to Pausanias, there were two such casinos, as we will
call them for want of a better word; one called the Krot-
anon or Club-room of the Crotonians, the other the
Painted Club-room, and in another passage, Book 10,
chap. 25, Frazer s translation, he speaks of another such
building at Delphi adorned with paintings by Polygnotus
and dedicated by the Cnidians.
Called by the Delphians the Club-room (lesche, place
of talk), because here they used of old to meet and talk
over both mythological and more serious subjects. That
there were many such places all over Greece is shown by
Homer in the passage where Melantho rails at Ulysses:
And you will not go sleep in the smithy,
Nor yet in the club-room, but here you prate.
Plutarch has laid the scene of one of his dialogues (De
Defectu Oraculorum) in this building. He says (chapter
6) : "Advancing from the temple we reached the doors of
the Cnidian club-house. So we entered and saw the
friends of whom we were in search seated and awaiting
us." Pliny mentions the paintings of Polygnotus at
Delphi, but seems to suppose that they were in a temple.
34 THE INNS OF
(Hist. Nat. XXXV, 59.) Of the two series of paintings
in the club-house, the one which represented Troy after
its capture seems to have been especially famous; it is
mentioned by Philostratus (Vit. Apollon. VI, 11, 64) and
by a scholiast on Plato (Gorgias, p. 448 b.). Lucian
refers to the graceful eyebrows and rosy cheeks of Cas
sandra in this picture (Imagines, 7). In the time of
Pausanias the pictures were already between four and five
hundred years old, and they seem to have survived for at
least two centuries more, for they are mentioned with
admiration by the rhetorician Themisteus, who lived in
the fourth century of our era (Or. XXXIV, 11).
The scanty remains of the club-house which contained
these famous paintings were excavated by the French in
recent years. The club-house is situated, in accordance
with the description of Pausanias, higher up the hill than
the spring Cassotis, a few steps to the east of the theatre.
It was built on a terrace, which is supported on the south
by a high retaining wall. A marble slab in this wall bears
this inscription:
KNIDIONODAMOS
TOANALAMMA
APOLLONI
"THE CNIDIAN PEOPLE (dedicated) THE STJPPORTING
WALL TO APOLLO"
t t
Let it not be inferred that the other club-houses in
Greece were constructed and adorned upon standards so
beautiful as this, the most celebrated of them all, or that
the forerunners of Gil Bias and Casanova, when down on
their luck, lodged habitually in sumptuous quarters such
as these* The name Leschai must have undergone some
changes in meaning between the Homeric age and that in
which Pausanias wrote. The term was applied to any
place in which people gathered to gossip or to talk serious
ly. The agora and its colonnades, the gymnasia, the
GREECE & HOME 35
shops of the various artisans and tradesmen* especially
the smiths whose shops were frequented in winter because
they were warm, all came under this heading. In Sparta
these club-rooms were the scene of the deliberations of the
elders on the welfare of the state and it was to them that
new-born children were brought, there to pass physical
examination for the purpose of determining whether the
child should be reared or exposed to die, vide, Plutarch,
Lycurgus, 16, 25.
In Athens, on the contrary, there were no less than
three hundred and sixty such club-rooms. This differ
ence had its cause in the inherent and national character
of the Spartans, which was not so volatile, not so sprightly
and talkative as that of the Athenians and Corinthians*
Nor must one also overlook the other features of their
public and private life features of such a nature as to
make such institutions almost superfluous. As is well
known, the Spartans lived their life entirely in common.
With them individual initiative, except in the field, was
discouraged, and in some cases punished; such ambitions
were always looked upon with suspicion. From boyhood
to old age, the Spartan underwent the discipline of mass
action. He was a cog in the wheel of a well oiled machine.
He played, ate, fought, and slept in a common brotherly
companionship. As a natural consequence, all classes,
whatever their condition in life, and they were all rel
atively poor, felt no social urge for changed conditions and
even discouraged the visits of Greeks from other parts of
the country. The almost patriarchal state of society,
with its military glamour, filled every need, social or
physical. Sparta was never a commercial community nor
was it adorned with magnificent edifices and temples.
Nor were there any wonderful collections of art to
attract outsiders. The stay of strangers in their city was
rendered short and difficult by special legislation, and
36 THE INNS OF
the comparatively small number of aliens who succeeded
in evading their immigration laws found adequate shelter
and care in the homes of individual families, or, if they
chanced to be official representatives of other states, they
were cared for by royal arrangement, as the king always
placed matters of this sort in the hands of designated
individuals who were responsible to him and to the state.
GREECE & ROME 37
CHAPTER IV.
Feast tendered Telemachus by Menelaus Ardor of hospitality
passes mth the Trojan War Tokens of hospitality, of copper, of brass,
of ivory, issued in the Middle Ages The origin of luggage checks
Tokens of credit Vitruviu& s description of apartments for guests and
entertainment afforded Origin of the proxy The sumptuous inns
of Persia.
After what we have just said of the Spartans we are
impelled in justice to them to introduce Homer s descrip
tion of the entertainment and hospitality tendered Tele
machus by Menelaus. We shall find that in that age,
the standards were the same.
"And they came to Lacedaemon lying low among the
caverned hills, and drave to the dwelling of renowned
Menelaus. Him they found giving a feast in his house
to many friends of his kin, a feast for the wedding of his
noble son and daughter ... So they were feasting
through the great vaulted hall, the neighbors and the
kinsmen of renowned Menelaus, making merry; and
among them a divine minstrel was singing to the lyre,
and as he began the song two tumblers in the company
whirled through the midst of them.
"Meanwhile those twain, the hero Telemachus and the
splendid son of Nestor, made halt at the entry of the
gate, they and their horses. And the lord Eteoneus came
forth and saw them, the ready squire of renowned Mene
laus; and he went through the palace to bear the tidings
to the shepherd of the people, and standing near spake
to him winged words:
" Menelaus, fosterling of Zeus, there are two strangers,
whosoever they be, two men like to the lineage of great
Zeus. Say, shall we loose their swift horses from under
38 THE INNS OF
the yoke, or send them onward to some other host who
shall receive them kindly ?
"Then in sore displeasure spake to him Menelaus of
the fair hair: Eteoneus son of Boethous, truly thou wert
not a fool aforetime, but now for this once, like a child
thou talkest folly. Surely ourselves ate much hospitable
cheer of other men, ere we twain came hither, even if in
time to come Zeus haply gave us rest from affliction.
Nay go, unyoke the horses of the strangers, and as for
the men, lead them forward to the house to feast with
us/
"So they loosed the sweating horses from beneath the
yoke, and fastened them at the stalls of the horses, and
threw beside them spelt, and therewith mixed white barley,
and tilted the chariot against the shining faces of the
gateway, and led the men into the hall divine. . . .
"But after they had gazed their fill, they went to the
polished baths and bathed them. Now when the maidens
had bathed them and anointed them with olive oil, and
cast about them thick coats and doublets, they sat on
chairs by Menelaus, son of Atreus. And a handmaid
bare water for the hands in a goodly golden ewer, and
poured it forth over a silver basin to wash withal; and
to their side she drew a polished table, and a grave dame
bare food and set it by them, and laid upon the
board many dainties, giving freely of such things as she
had by her, and a carver lifted and placed by them
platters of divers kind of flesh, and nigh them he set
golden bowls. So Menelaus of the fair hair greeted the
twain and spoke:
" Taste ye food and be glad, and thereafter when ye
have supped, we shall ask what men ye are; for the blood
of your parents is not lost in you, but ye are of the line
of men that are sceptered kings the fosterlings of Zeus;
for no churls could beget sons like you/
GREECE & ROME 39
"So spake he, and took and set before them the fat
ox-chine roasted, which they had given him as his own
mess by way of honor/ 5
And in the first canto of the Odyssey we read of the
welcome extended to the unknown goddess by Tele-
machus:
"But now I pray thee, abide here, though eager to
be gone, to the end that after thou hast bathed and had
thy heart s desire, thou mayest wend to the ship joyful
in spirit, with a costly gift and very goodly, to be an
heirloom of my giving, such as dear friends give to
friends/*
In the third canto of the same poem, when Telemachus
and Pallas were entertained by Nestor, we find no in
quiries until after food and drink have assuaged the
weariness and hunger and thirst:
"But when they had put from them the desire of meat
and drink, Nestor of Gerenia, lord of chariots, first spake
among them:
" Now is the better time to inquire and ask of the
strangers who they are, now that they have had their
delight of food. Strangers, who are ye? Whence sail
ye over the wet ways? On some trading enterprise, or
at adventure do ye rove, even as sea-robbers over the
brine? 5 55
Athenaeus comments very pleasantly on that usage
so dignified and so in keeping with sturdy ideals:
"A guest was received, 55 says he, "he was invited to
drink, and lastly he was interrogated, and, his drunken
ness aiding his sincerity, he sometimes told more than he
wished. 55 Thus speaks the spiritual disciple of Epicurus;
but he did well; that liberal confidence, that hospitality
open to all, the house of the father of the family was
sanctuary and asylum, a shelter where the wayfarer knew
a welcome awaited him, lodgings for parent or friend,
40 THE INNS OF
it is certainly one of the most beautiful aspects of the
Greek civilization of the heroic age and is entitled to the
most sincere reverence which after ages can lavish upon
it, if, as is said, imitation is the most sincere form of
flattery.
Some men, more ardent in their humanity, sought to
outdo even that pagan age with an 61an more prompt to
bestow the benefits of an evangelical charity and even
went so far in their desire to confer hospitality upon all
as to erect such places for this purpose. Among these
was Axilos, son of Theutranus, native of Arisbe in Troad,
who was slain by Diomedes.
"He had opened on the public road/* says Homer,
"a house in which he gave asylum to all who passed."
We should bear in mind that example of practical
hospitality and its benefits as shown by the heroic age,
also, as it has a vital bearing upon our subject and, as
Pouqueville has very justly remarked, "It would be
necessary to cite all antiquity to make known the im
portance .which attached to hospitality in those times/*
Still it should not be believed that this great ardor
for hospitality was always general throughout and that
sometimes it did not cease to function, for cause.* When
we reach the period of the Trojan War, the Golden
Fleece, and the age of Theseus, that is to say, the end
of the heroic age, this beautiful devotion begins to
break down. That fraternal bond which had formerly
seemed to unite all men even as though in one great
family, that fraternal chain, let us call it, seemed little
by little to break under the strain. All arms were no
longer open to the wayfarer. We enter upon an epoch
less primitive and more defiant wherein hospitality
deserts the villages and seeks its shelter in the country,
where Zeus and Hermes, driven away by an entire popu
lation hardened and haughty, could find no asylum except
GREECE & ROME 41
in such a cottage as that of Philemon and Baucis, Tt
is nothing if not a complete break with the ancient tradi
tion and no longer would it be as under the ancient
regime, that one saw the face of his host for the first
time when that host gave the wayfarer food and shelter;
hospitality came to have its preferences and to have also
its exceptions and reserves. In the cult of Zeus Xenios
one might place his faith, but he would be better served
were he to rely upon his friends and their near relations
and retainers, and the people who addressed them. There
after, hospitality flourished no longer as a general axiom,
nor was it actually accorded as a right except to such as
were deemed to have a just claim upon the host. It is
true that the question of defilement did not at that time
enter into the question as it had amongst the Egyptians
and Hebrews (it will be remembered that the Egyptians
could not eat with the Hebrews for such would have been
an abomination to the Egyptians, and the Jews were also
constrained by the same fetish, at least in the later periods
of their history. Daniel, for example, could not partake
of the wine and viands of the Babylonians for some dietary
reason, and many of the most savage riots between the
Roman legionaries and the Jews were probably caused by
the same considerations.
Thus, in course of time certain tokens came into circu
lation (tesserae hospitalitatis), which served to identify
the incoming stranger and enabled him to substantiate
his claim to the best the house afforded. These tokens
were issued as mandates of Zeus Xenios, although the gen
eral consideration to which he had been accustomed in an
earlier and happier age had long been atrophied. The
cabinets of Southern Europe have preserved several speci
mens and as a general thing they were of gold or silver,
broken in an irregular way, each family keeping a part
which needed the other to complete it. Sometimes they
42 THE INNS OF
were of copper or brass, ivory or even of wood, so cut that
the line of cleavage by which they were joined was diffi
cult to imitate and thus prevented fraud.
These tokens of hospitality, of which Tomassin has
transmitted to us certain likenesses, served still another
purpose during the Middle Ages, as tokens of recognition
for political purposes, and they played a sinister part in
the affair of St. Bartholomew, and earlier still in the Sicil
ian Vespers. From this system we derive hotel bills and
probably all checking systems, such as baggage checks,
and the like. When a guest parted from his host the
token was broken and each retained a piece. As no per
fect result could be attained in matching up the whole
without the actual parts, the identification was sufficient
for all purposes. Nor did their usefulness pale with the
death of either major party to the contract: they could
be bequeathed to heirs on either side and were honored
as long as there was anyone left to honor them. In the
Poenulus of Plautus, the Young Carthaginian remarks to
Agoratocles, "Thy father Antidamus was my guest; this
token of hospitality was the bond between us/ 5 and
Agoratocles immediately made answer, "And thou shalt
receive hospitality from me."
When a stranger arrived, bearing the token, the apart
ments reserved solely for guests were prepared as expe-
ditiously as possible, even as the inhabitants of the French
provinces who are still the very soul of hospitality, to this
day maintain the guest chamber (chambres de reserve) ;
the household supplies were seen to, meals planned, and,
in a word, a feast was prepared which taxed the resources
of the house to the uttermost.
It is of interest to note in connection with these tokens
of hospitality, that there was an ancient Slavic custom
which was current in Russia, Poland, Servia, Bulgaria,
and other Slavic countries, down to a period of about a
GREECE & ROME 43
hundred years ago, and by virtue of this custom, the
peasants drank on credit. The token of credit was a
stick, which the proprietor of the public house notched
with as many notches as there were days in the calendar
until their harvest of hops, barley, or wheat should be
marketed. When the account was liquidated, the stick
was broken in twain and debtor and creditor retained each
his piece. Should it happen that the account was not
liquidated as per contract, and there was no good reason
for the failure to meet the obligation, the publican would
threaten to break the stick and retain both pieces. This
was tantamount to the ruin of the credit of the debtor
throughout all the district, and furthermore, there was a
quasi-religious significance to the ceremony which terrified
the illiterate peasant to such a degree that he would even
go on his knees to prevent such an untoward happening.
The practice came to an end due to improved methods
in accounting.
Vitruvius, in his treatise on Architecture has spoken
of these special apartments, such as the owner of a house
of the better class always kept in readiness for a guest
whom Zeus Xenios might send him, and, curiously enough,
he has described one of these receptions for us:
"The peristylium, and this part of the house, is called
Andronitis, because the men employ themselves therein
without interruption from the women. On the right and
left, moreover, are small sets of apartments, each having
its own door, triclinium, and bed-chamber, so that on the
arrival of guests they need not enter the peristylium, but
are received in rooms (hospitalia) appropriated to their
occupation. For when the Greeks were more refined,
and possessed greater wealth, they provided a separate
table and triclinia and bed-chambers for their guests.
On the day of their arrival they were invited to dinner,
and were afterwards supplied with poultry, eggs, herbs,
44 THE INNS OF
fruits, and other produce of the country. Hence the
painters gave the name of Xenia to presents given to-
guests. Masters of families, therefore, living in these
apartments, were quite, as it were, at home, being at
liberty to do as they pleased therein."
It is readily seen that a host might have a certain
amount of ostentatious vanity at stake in thus welcoming
the arrival of strangers and giving them the run of his
estates. Trimalchio had it in abundance, and Nasidienus
had also his share. On this account Theophrastus has
introduced a host entertaining his guests at open table to
show their number and his own magnificence. Thus does
the Greek caricature Ostentation.
"When he is living in a hired house, he will say (to
anyone who does not know better) that it is the family
mansion; but that he means to sell it, as he finds it too
small for his entertainments."
Yet hospitable as the Greeks were, both in honest in
tention and deed, they nevertheless possessed types such
as even a Trimalchio might have envied. Theophrastus
has drawn one such to the life:
"Cool cistern- water has he at his house; and a garden
with many fine vegetables, and a cook who understands
dressed dishes. His house, he will say, is a perfect inn;
always crammed; and his friends are like the pierced
cask he can never fill them with his benefits!"
Thus have the ancient customs atrophied when we
reach the age of Theophrastus, who holds such preten
tious masquerading up to the ridicule it merits.
Prudence counseled prospective guests to see that the
house where they were to be entertained was not over
crowded lest the welcome wear thin, and what MoliSre
said of esteem might easily have been thought by them:
Esteem is founded upon preference.
This is an ancient method surviving today.
GREECE & ROME 45
In this connection let us listen to Aelian s recital of a
little anecdote in which Stratonice, the flute girl, played
a leading role, a guest disdainful of those houses too
liberally opened to hospitality:
"Stratonice, the flute girl, having been accorded a
welcome in a house which she had been invited to enter,
would have been greatly flattered by such attention which
she had found in a strange land in which she had no
reason to expect hospitality and no ties to entitle her to
that consideration.
"She presented her most graceful thanks to the host
whose kindness had prompted such attention and received
her with such good grace; but, arriving as an unexpected
guest, and perceiving that the house was open to any and
all who wished to stop and stay over; Let us go, 5 said she
to her slave, *we are like a pigeon that has taken to a
tree, what you mistook for a house of hospitality is only
an inn/ "
Again, it might happen that strangers would be ex
cluded from hospitality through a certain disdain of
ancient manners and customs, or because of certain pref
erences of citizens who refused to see a guest in a man
who did not present the token of amity. It might happen
that all the travellers recently arrived at some Greek
village would be unable to evoke any tie of friendship,
and therefore were placed under the necessity of finding
a lodging. Nor could they, as in the Hebrew villages,
go and camp in the public place. Some countries there
were, as for instance the island of Crete, where a certain
number of houses were perpetually kept in readiness for
strangers, and where tables were always kept set and
garnished.
"There were/ 5 says Athenaeus, "amongst all the
habitations of the island of Crete two houses designated
by the name of syssities; one was called the andreion,
46 THE INNS OF
the other the koimeterion, and these were the places in
which strangers were lodged. In the house set aside for
the common repasts, two tables were set; they were called
hospitalieres, and the strangers were given the first place
at these tables, the others arranging themselves thereafter
in order/ 9
In other parts of Greece they constructed near the
temples of the great gods vast shelters, veritable free
hostelries, where wayfarers found not only shelter but
also beds coiksecrated to the god adored in the nearest
temple. The hostelry which the Lacedaemonians erected
in the precinct of Hera on the ruins of Plataea we may
suppose to have been an institution of the kind just spoken
of. The passage of Thucydides in which he speaks of it
is very curious and we reproduce it here; moreover, it is
the only passage in the works of the historian in which
he speaks of the inns of that period, giving any details
as to their furnishings, style, and the like:
"They (the Lacedaemonians) afterwards razed the
whole place to the very foundations, and built near the
precinct of Hera an inn forming a square of two hundred
feet; it had two stories, and chambers all around. They
used the roofs and the doors of the Plataeans; and of the
brass and iron articles of furniture found within the walls
they made couches, which they dedicated to Hera/
The religious usage which constructed for wayfarers
places of abode in the vicinity of the temples may prob
ably have been derived from the devotional custom of
religious hospitality native to the Orient.
Lucian, in his Syrian Goddess, has a passage which
has a bearing on the question. He is speaking of the
hospitality which was the due of those coming to worship
the goddess, if they be strangers:
"When he is arrived at Hierapolis, he lodges with a
host whom he does not know, as though he were lodged
GREECE & ROME 47
with public hosts in each town, and he is received accord
ing to the country from which he comes. The Assyrians
are called tutors as they are the ones who give wayfarers
the necessary instructions/ 3
The Athenian proxenoi of whom we shall presently
speak were neither more nor less than the tutors of the
Syrian countries. In bringing up the subject of the
proxenos it may be well to discuss him and his function,
as his descendant in our times, I mean the proxy of our
boards of directors, scarcely measures up to the standard
set by the archtype of the species. The ancient proxenos
was not a "yes" man for any individual or state.
The office of proxenos grew out of public hospitality,
that hospitality which subsisted between two cities or
states, and the functions of the official closely approxi
mate those of our consuls who love their duty and do it,
in spite of political or tropical inertia. In the primitive
times when the Greek tribes were under tyrants a quasi-
public hospitality may have subsisted between the reign
ing families of the various tribes and this in turn may
have produced similar relations between their subjects.
With the abolition of the tyrants, the tradition was prob
ably carried on as a heritage of the past. Then again,
some prominent citizen of one state may have had great
interests and influence in another and thus have been able
to serve the interests of his fellow citizens in that state
as well as their interests in his own. This he would do
as a private citizen until his services were recognized and
rewarded by one or both peoples. When public hos
pitality was established between two states and no private
citizen presented himself as representative, it became
necessary that persons be appointed in each state to look
after the welfare of visiting citizens of the other, and show
them hospitality, and the officials who were thus ap
pointed were known as proxenoi. When a state appointed
48 THE INNS OF
a proxenos it could send one of its own citizens acceptable
to the authorities in the other or it could appoint a citizen
of the other state to represent its interests there* The
Spartans, in early times, held to the former, but in later
times the custom of conferring the honor of proxenos
upon a citizen of the other state with whom hospitium
publicum had been concluded seems to have gained in
strength and usage. With the exception of Sparta, the
common method of appointing a proxenos was by a show
of hands. In Sparta, the king had the right. The prin
cipal duties of the proxenos were to receive citizens com
ing from the state he represented, especially the ambas
sadors, to see that they gained admission to the assembly,
to see that they had seats in the theatre, to act as patron
to the strangers and to mediate between the two states
if any misunderstanding or dispute arose*
Should a stranger die in the state the proxenos of his
country took charge of his effects and property.
As regards the honors and privileges to which a prox
enos was entitled from the state which he served, the
different Greek states followed different principles; some
honored their proxenos with the full civic franchise, and
other distinctions besides. The right of acquiring prop
erty in the state of which he thus became a citizen does
not seem to have been general as when this was allowed
it was as the result of special legislation or authority. A
foreigner appointed in his own country as proxenos of
Athens enjoyed in his own person the right of hospitality
at Athens whenever he visited that city, in addition to
all the other privileges that a foreigner could possess
without actually becoming a citizen. Among these privi
leges, though they were not necessarily set forth in the
authority conferred upon him, were:
1. Epigamia . . . the right of additional marriage.
2, The right to acquire property at Athens.
GREECE & ROME 49
3. Exemption from payment of taxes.
4. Inviolability in times of peace and war, on land and
sea.
There were times when Athenian commerce was so
heavy that almost every citizen might have been called
proxenos (unofficially) because of the multitude of social
and commercial ties which bound them to other cities.
The proxenos 9 however, was a public character and acted
as such officially. As an example, when the representa
tives of Megara and Corinth arrived the proxenos ap
pointed by those cities lodged them in his own house,
served them as guide, lent his credit to their negotiations,
and in a word, as has been well remarked by Artaud in
a note on the Birds of Aristophanes, "He met every
demand which the strangers coming from allied cities
could make upon him." The real distinction between
our own consuls and the ancient proxenos was this: the
primary and imperious duty of the proxenos was hospi
tality: everything else came in due order; whereas hos
pitality seems to be the last duty of our own officials
who have inherited the chiton of authority under a foreign
But even this institution which embraced so many of
the needs of travelling inexperience failed to meet the
requirements of that fine old humanitarian Xenophon,
nor did it measure up to his generous ideal of what true
Athenian hospitality should comprise. It was his desire
that every foreign sailor who disembarked at Athens
should find free and clean lodgings and that every
stranger, from whatever country whatsoever, Greek or
barbarian, would always be sure of finding shelter in a
public inn. Therefore in his Treatise on the Causes of
Revenue he demands the levy of a special impost with
the proceeds of which he would construct such inns near
the harbors for the accommodation of pilots and other
50 THE INNS OF
watermen, "in addition to those already in operation/ 5
for those who should come to Athens.
All this Xenophon had seen in his residence in Persia,
where a system of inns, posts, and everything necessary
and convenient to people who travel was well organized.
There is little doubt that what he had seen in that coun
try had armed his criticism of the methods and crudities
in his native land, and as for the Cyropaedia, it is worthy
of credit. It was written at the request of a prince, but
with the unmistakable intention of amusing and instruct
ing the youth of Athens; it is not so much his desire to
describe Asia and Asiatic culture, as it is to inform his
countrymen of their own shortcomings and state of un-
preparedness, that they may remedy them. His life
among the Persians was an active one, and an observant;
what he has written of, he has seen. Before the days of
Xenophon s maturity, Herodotus had seen the Persian
system, in operation and had marveled at it.
"The first courier/ says he, te turned his dispatches
over to a second, the second to a third, and they passed
them along from one to another just as among the Greeks
the torch passes from hand to hand in the rites of Heph-
aestos. The distance traveled by a horse is called, in the
Persian language, Angareion/ " There are several other
passages in the writings of Herodotus in which he makes
mention of the Persian posting system, and hie demotes
some space to one detail which Xenophon scarcely notices;
the hostelry which the Great King maintained at each
station. He rarely mentions one without touching upon
the other.
Henricus Stephanus, in commenting upon this passage
of Herodotus, emphasizes the immense distances in the
empire of the Persians by saying that between the sea
and Susa, the capital of the Great King, there were one
hundred and eleven stations and caravanserai. The inns
GREECE & ROME 51
must have been exceedingly sumptuous, for we must re
member that the king went so far in his luxurious and
sanitary measures that he carried boiled drinking water
with him in silver tanks, in an age that knew not Lister.
Hence it must follow that when he stopped at an inn it
must have been all that comfort could require and money
could buy. Aelian also mentions these magnificent
caravanserai that were in operation throughout the
empire, from Asia Minor to Medea. Alexander stopped
at one of these places when beginning his march against
Darius: it was one of the stathmoi basilikai on the fron
tiers of Phiygia, and Mithridates also stopped at the
same caravanserai, deeming it a favorable omen as he
was thus destined, as he believed, to follow in the foot
steps of Alexander and overrun all Asia.
The Greeks, however, failed utterly to profit from the
information conveyed by Herodotus and Xenophon.
They detested the Persians so thoroughly that they
scorned to learn from them and the rapid posts and
luxurious inns of the Asiatic empire were never objects
familiar to the sight and experience of the dwellers in the
little peninsula. In many ways they were right, as the
extent of their country was infinitely small compared to
Persia, and their states were independent, whereas in the
empire there was a powerful central authority.
In place of imitating the Persian system and deriving
from it the things which might have aided their develop
ment, they gave a malignant turn to a term used by their
former enemies in their posting service. We have spoken
of the term angareion, as the distance a horse traversed;
the Greeks adopted the word, made it into a verb and
defined it as the sum of all tyrannical force well worthy
of the King of Kings, who forced citizens to run with
news at the peril of their lives. Strange destiny; that
the labors of the father of history and the disciple of
52 THE INNS OF
Plato should avail their countrymen only in adding to
the scope of the dictionary, but should, in years to come,
aid the most powerful and deadliest enemy of Hellas in
keeping the country in subjection, and should finally
contribute the most to the overrunning of occidental
civilization with the hordes of Tourania! Alexander s
messages were carried as were those of his ancestors in
the days of Agamemnon, and the institution of the
hemeradromoi lasted until the Roman Empire instituted
a post road system modeled upon that of Persia; a sys
tem from which all that have come later were derived.
In the days of the lower empire the post system reached
its greatest excellence in Greece. The course of empire
had shifted from Rome to the city of Constantine and the
centralized authority was closer to the Balkan and Asiatic
provinces, a fact which sufficiently explains the improve
ment. Thus we shall arrive at the period when through
out all Greece as in the other provinces of the empire we
shall see magnificent military roads with relays of ani
mals, and at every station a hostelry, where travelers
may lodge and where copiers may procure fresh horses.
The entire establishment shall be meant by the term
allage, which Eustathius has specifically informed us is
synonymous with stathmos, "by which, 55 writes he, in
formally, "we mean not only an inn and a stable but
also the places proper to make a halt, the stations where
travelers stay over to rest and recruit themselves/ 5 Thus
we have again the posting system of Persia, and rest
assured, that unless we have been deceived, the master
of posts will soon put in an appearance.
And as far as the term angareion is concerned, it has
not been lost; we still have it in the Latin angariare and
through low Latin in the French hangar, which conveys
accurately enough the impression of such shelters as the
stathmoi of Persia or the tillage of the lower empire.
GREECE & ROME 53
CHAPTER V.
Grecian inns of the fifth century before Christ The inn* of the
pleasure-loving Athenians The public houses, low dives, and public
stews Wine booths and dancing girls The giving of names and signs
to taverns the beginning of advertising Keepers of taverns and cabarets
held detestable and infamous Drunkenness and harlotry prevail
Diogenes a frequenter.
Inasmuch as we have only found inns complete in
needful details under the emperors, the question of
whether the Greeks of former times actually possessed
establishments where one could lodge and where his ani
mals could be taken care of, may arise. The rapid
decadence of hospitality, once it had set in, and the insti
tution of the proxenos serve but to cloud the issue, and
the unwary scholar might draw an erroneous inference
from the facts. The shelters erected for pilgrims to
religious festivals would also tend to bear out such an
inference. There are several terms in the Greek language
which denote inns, and many of these terms are classical,
some few being even ante-classical, there are also numer
ous passages in the authors, sometimes obscure and am
biguous, but which, nevertheless, offer positive evidence
that there were sumptuous establishments of the kind.
A verse in the Inachus of Sophocles, cited and commented
upon by Pollux, proves that as early as the fifth century
before Christ, hostelries were already known in Greece.
The pandokos xenostasis was an inn where guests only
were lodged; but the phatne as well as the stathmos were
used to denote a huge establishment where men and beasts
found shelter. Athenaeus cites a passage in the Peltate
of Ephippus as follows: "The place was furnished with
54 THE INNS OF
stables for beasts of burden, stalls for the horses, and
dining-rooms (gleumata). 99
It was in places such as these that great and powerful
individuals with carriages and baggage trains, such, for
example, as envoys on their way to their posts of duty in
foreign states, lodged. Such diplomats found the hos
pitality of the miserable little inns of Boeotia or Phocis
little to their tastes, and dearly bought. We know this,
thanks to a beautiful passage in the orations of Aeschines,
in which the Greek orator tells us that the Athenian
ambassadors lodged one of their companions, whom they
suspected of treason, in an inn, and among other indica
tions of their contempt, they refused to lodge or dine in
the same inn. The Jccdagogion was a very simple and
very common hostelry, as was also the Jcatalusis. Accord
ing to Pollux there were many of that sort at Athens,
and also throughout the whole of Greece, as is proved by
many references in the Greek writers. It was in such
an establishment as this that the famous case of murder
and telepathy took place at Megara, as Cicero tells us.
Secaldus, and the old man of Oree, found themselves
in a like situation in Argolis and it is there that they re
cited to one another that mutual account of their mis
fortunes which Plutarch has transmitted to our times.
People who went to consult the oracle, the devotees of
Pythia and Apollo, who departed for Delphi or Tegyre,
the place where the god was born, lodged there of their
own free will in the hostelries, as is easily inferred from
an anecdote related by Plutarch in his treatise On the
Oracles Which Are No More, and the same may be said
of certain Delians who had returned to Delphi. Had
they not overheard the words of a certain innkeeper, they
would all have been lost and would never have been able
to return to their country. "During the Peloponesian
War, the Delians having been driven from their island,
GREECE & ROME 55
they were advised by an oracle of Delphi to search out
and possess themselves of the place where Apollo had
been born, and there to make sacrifices of a certain
nature: they marveled about this and demanded whether
Apollo might not have been born elsewhere than amongst
them, the prophetess I*ythia advised them that a crow
would lead them aright. The representatives of the
Delians, on their return, passed by chance a village in
Chaeronia, and they saw a certain hostelry there with
some strangers frequented from the oracle of Tegyre to
which they wished to go, and as they were taking their
departure they heard the following conversation : * Fare
well, madame Crow/ and taking literally the response
of the prophetess, they made their sacrifice at Tegyre,
whereupon they were restored into favor and returned to
their country/ 5
But what were these hostelries, these Greek pan-
dokeia, such as were to be found in these villages, scattered
along the great roads for those travelling through the
country? How were they distributed, what was their
extent, what were the conditions in them and what were
their charges? This we do not know. The fragments
of Menander tell us that wine was sold for a few obols
the pint and that for the price paid daily to a pandar a
whole family could live in comfort for a month. The
details concerning the institution at Plataea with which
Thucydides has furnished us are happy in their fullness,
we are not so fortunate, however, in material of the same
sort which will serve to illustrate the pandok&ia, nor do
the writings of antiquity help us, in this respect. They
may have been simple caravanserai as Pouquevifle imag
ines, and might be compared with the klmns of modern
Greece, in his estimation; those vast and miserable sheds
where beasts of burden and men were herded indiscrim
inately into a hurly-burly, and of which Buchon gives so
56 THE INNS OF
piteous a description. We are of the belief that a passage
of Plutarch will prove that in those hostelries of Greece,
even as in the khans of Modern Greece, the life of the
wayfarer was identical in every respect, and, using the
expression of Buchon, "everything is done in the presence
and before the eyes of all/*
But in Athens these conditions were entirely different.
Putting aside the fact that from their very character,
pleasure-loving, witty, sprightly, and volatile, they would
naturally form a larger number and a greater variety
of social relations, they also possessed a civic life infi
nitely more cosmopolitan and sparkling. They harbored
a constant influx of strangers from the ends of the earth,
traders, merchants, brokers, all in search of business and
profit; travellers and art lovers, seeking to learn and to
enjoy, sages come to pay respect to the shrine of phil
osophy and literature. It was only natural that with
them the need for hotels and inns soon brought them into
being. In the life at Athens such institutions are often
mentioned, and the difference between conditions at
Athens and Sparta is very neatly and caustically summed
up in a witticism delivered by the philosopher Diogenes,
which Aristotle has preserved for us. This cynic once
said: "The public houses are the Phyditerien (a bagnio
where flute girls entertained and ministered to the desires
in any way requested [see Aristophanes for extended
note] ) of the Athenians." If from this witticism one
were to argue a greater frequenting of the public houses
this must be understood only of the lower and lowest
dregs of society, and therein lies the basic difference be
tween the public house of the ancient Greco-Roman
civilization and our own. There were exceptions, how
ever. When the Athenian ambassadors were sent to
negotiate with Philip of Macedon, they lodge everywhere
in inns. Dionysus (Aristoph. Ranae, 114), makes inquiry
GREECE & ROME 57
as to the quality of the inns on the road to Hell, and
what shall we say of those special provisions made by the
public to provide shelter for wayfarers coming to Athens
and Corinth to participate in the great religious festivals
and games ? In Athens, however, the better classes of the
people had nobler and finer occasions for social entertain
ment, though this was often very costly at Corinth.
Horace has remarked that not every man could afford
to pleasure there, and we have no less an authority than
Demosthenes to bear him out. The public houses had
little influence on the greater number of the upper classes
of society though these same upper classes were unani
mous in holding publicans and all their ways in contempt
not only because of the natural contempt of the aristo
crat for the underling, but also because these rogues and
scoundrels, fracturing by their very calling one of those
beautiful and sacred tenets of a semi-primitive culture
which carried out the rites of hospitality even to remote
generations and nourished the guest-friend even in the
face of war, could only be such and shelter the stranger
within their gates for gain. Then, too, the adulteration
of wine and devious methods in merchandising were only
too well known in classical times. According to Pet-
ronius, Socrates used to boast that he never had looked
into a tavern, but it is more probable that what he meant
to say was that he never looked around in one. But the
almost universal disrepute in which the aubergists were
held may be inferred from a multitude of passages in
classical literature. Among the most striking is that
passage in the Characters of Theophrastus in which
he describes an individual so lost to shame and so lacking
in intelligence that he would even be capable of con
ducting a public house. Isaac Casaubon, in commenting
upon the passage of Theophrastus cited above, hints at
the facility with which publicans lent their services in
58 THE INNS OF
the matter of pimping; and decries that zeal in the public
service which would procure service for the paying guest
who wants what he wants when he wants it. In fact,
the austere post-renaissance scholar goes so far as to sum
up the attributes of hosts who did better than serve their
patrons with a savory dish or a rare vintage, calling them
pimps and their establishments public stews. The
moralizing Socrates says somewhere that not even a slave
with a shred of respectability would risk eating in a pub
lic house. This seems somewhat exaggerated, however,
for from various passages in Aristophanes one learns
that the more common class of citizens and their wives
as well did not hesitate to enjoy themselves in such
houses. But that persons of position and dignity, on
the contrary, did not visit such places and that they
were partly constrained by law from visiting them can be
inferred from Hyperides as cited by Athenaeus, who
states that if a member of the Areopagitus had ever
entered a public house, even on a single occasion, his
colleagues would no longer have tolerated him as a
member of that assembly. As to the establishments
themselves, the Greek language defines them and places
them in different classes. First then we shall mention the
wine booths. Here wine was sold only on the street.
Then there were ale or beer houses or taprooms, at least
the lexicographer Suidas expressly differentiates the mere
wine seller from the publican. Such were the places
where Demos amused himself with flutists and lyrists
and dancing girls who were agreeable in other ways.
Whether all these wine shops also sheltered strangers, or
whether the rights and limitations of these houses were
so exactly defined and established and regulated by the
authorities is not known. This definite division does not
seem to have taken place. There is still another class of
public houses mentioned which seems to have provided
AT THE DOOE OF A TAYEEN
GREECE & ROME 59
especially for the shelter of strangers. These were known
by a characteristic name, pandokian, All Receiving, open
to all. Booths also, it seems, were sometimes connected
with these inns. Some establishments doubtless stood
somewhat higher in the scale than those mentioned, for
even if a large part or even if the greater part of strangers
stopping in Athens found shelter with hospitable friends,
there must have been a considerable number who had
no such connections and were therefore compelled by
necessity to avail themselves of a public house. How
ever, it is not at all to be expected that with the care
lessness and indifference which even yet prevails in the
Levant and Orient and even in the Latin countries, the
comfort of travelers was looked after to the same degree
as in our inns and hotels of today, especially in those of
the larger cities. That the Greeks, like ourselves, had
painted signs on such establishments may be ascertained
from a passage in Aristotle. Nevertheless, the fact that
in Aristophanes and other writers no further trace of the
use of such signs is to be met appears to weigh against
the universality of the custom, and as this usage would
have furnished many an opportunity for sarcastic com
ment, its absence is indicative of the fact that the custom
was not widespread. That the omission is accidental is
too much to suppose. The custom of giving names and
signs to inns and the like is perhaps the very beginning
of advertising as we understand it today. For instance,
we have the familiar sign of the two triangles laid one
over the other, and also the bush set up in front, both of
which go back to Graeco-Roman times, as will be shown.
The Greek innkeepers had a special patron saint just as
our publicans have theirs, in Pandolphus and Julianus.
They placed themselves under the patronage of Mercury,
who, by the way, was also the very prince of purloiners,
of whom Horace wrote:
60 THE INNS OF
Choused of lus cattle, ApoDo in a rage
Demanded restitution, with a frown;
Threatening thee gamin, impish and sage
"Who laughed, and, his impotence to crown
Didst filch his quiver with thy guile
And he could only swear and smile.
Such, then, was the manner In which the public houses
of Athens were instituted in general, and, as will be seen
from the foregoing, they were bound to differ immeasur
ably from ours in importance and in the esteem in which
they were held. Yet the writer well remembers more
than one wayside forest inn along the former bound
aries of western Russia and eastern Germany and Aus
tria which were strongly reminiscent of the standards to
which the ancients took such universal exception and he
is here tempted to enlarge upon the statement of Sir
Samuel Dill, in his Roman Society from Nero to Aurelius :
* The Roman inns, from the time of Horace to Sidonius
Apollinaris were in bad standing and even dangerous."
Had Sir Samuel journeyed through the forests of eastern
Russia he would have commented upon these inns and
harpies at some length. The inns of Greece and Asia
Minor then belonged in general to a very low place in
the social order and the need they filled was limited,
while our public houses, in their large number and
variety, our ale and beer houses (O shades of Gambrinus
and the golden age), inns, wine rooms, coffee houses,
casinos, clubs and restaurants, are patronized in the
evening by the greatest number of all those who have
become weary during the day by application to business
or even by sheer lack of all employment. The reason
for this contrast is not difficult to adduce or to under
stand, for why should a free Athenian have wished to
seek entertainment and social intercourse in such a place?
Was not all life a series of gay festivities and activities
GREECE & ROME 61
which stimulated his mind? There were the numerous
religious fiestas, venerable and national, and, almost
coaeval with his traditions, built on the very foundation
of his character and its needs, beautiful in their simplicity
and symbolism; and in addition there were the games,
the philosophical schools, folk dances, and the ever pres
ent spectre of war among themselves which kept alive the
glamour of military tradition and service.
In the theatre he saw his gods on the stage, in the
majesty and grandeur of Aeschylus and Sophocles he
heard their utterances, and the memory lingered until
the next occasion and lingers still. The greater part of
his time, however, was occupied with political duties and
activities. He presided in the popular assembly as a
magistrate or attended as a citizen, he spoke, or listened
to the speeches of others, which sometimes tended to
benefit him but often injured him, and which always en
tertained him. He elected officers and he was elected to
office, or he sat in open court as judge or as spectator.
Everywhere subjects were discussed which touched his
interests closely, and the debates were such that by their
wit and energy of expression, their brilliant rhetoric and
the exquisite artistry in the manner of their presentation,
they were then supreme and have never been surpassed
or even equalled to the present time. Aristophanes has
flayed the designing Cleon, and he was not alone in
demoralizing Demos, sycophants and subserviency often
had such plausibility that they were able to overthrow
honor and lead even the most scrupulous citizen into a
dangerous and expensive lawsuit, but when that age came
Greece was on the decline even as has always been the
case with other nations* "Men," said Aristophanes, and
after bmi Petronius, "men are lions at home and foxes
abroad."
Only the results of all this were tragic, however; in
62 THE INNS OF
the daily and ordinary activity of these institutions there
unfolded itself on the other hand, a certain strength of
mind and activity of thought, a stimulating of the facul
ties and an energy of action compared with which our
public life forms a contrast almost as marked as the dif
ference between life and death. We must be cautious in
condemning lest we condemn ourselves and our own
institutions.
One should do whatever will benefit his health, sing,
declaim, or if he so desires, walk up and down in the great
room of a hostelry, whether strangers be present or no,
"it makes no difference whether one is a passenger aboard
ship or whether he is lodged in an inn with many others,
if the attendants are inclined to laugh and make sport
it makes no difference, it is no less dishonest to eat than
it is to take one s exercise." From this passage it would
appear that no separate room was allotted to each indi
vidual traveler, and the pandokeion was a common
refectory and dormitory. Would it then follow that the
same disorder of men and beasts would have been found
there as in a modern Greek kahn? We do not think
otherwise.
We base our belief on the passage of Epphippus cited
by Athenaeus, and upon another not less curious found
in Pollux. In his precious chapter upon the settings of
a play and the decorations of Greek theatres, he informs
us that ordinarily they opened through the proscenium,
three doors; that in the middle might open upon a palace,
a cavern or grotto, or the house of a nobleman, but that
the second, on the left, invariably opened upon an
inn, whilst the one on the right led to a temple in
ruins or remained vacant. In tragedies, on the contrary,
the inn or "door of strangers/ according to his diction,
was on the right, and one discovered a prison on the left.
These details, while of interest, go far to prove that inn
GREECE & ROME 63
life was well known and was a familiar part of daily liv
ing in ancient Greece, otherwise they would never have
had a part in the drama of the times, and have been
always introduced in the scenic scheme of the theatre;
but let us give the passage in the words of Pollux: "In
the comedies, an awning was stretched over a carpet, it
was always stretched near a tavern doubtless so that those
passing might cool themselves in the hot hours of the
day, and nearby one saw the stables for the beasts of
burden, and the great gates which the Greeks called
Jclisiades, and they passed through these to enter their
carriages." Here, then we see one of those edifices of the
Greeks, great halls for the guests, near by stables for
the horses and sumpter mules, and great doors for the
carriages. But at that point our information comes to
an abrupt end.
As to the masters of these establishments, we cannot
think ourselves better informed, in fact, our information
is, if anything, even more scanty and sketchy. We only
know that, as in the case of the keeper of a tavern or
cabaret, the calling of him who conducted a pandokeion
was held detestable and infamous. Pollux has trans
mitted to our admiring curiosity the entire index expur-
gatorius of infamous callings and damaged goods and
we have good reason to suppose that the legislator was
very wisely occupied with such subjects in placing the
ban of a public scarcely less moral, all those who lodged
for the night, all the tavern keepers in the villages and
towns, or along the great routes of Hellas.
Their women were for the most part strumpets from
the lowest stratum. In absolute proof of this we need
only cite a very curious passage from the Theodosian
code, as later on we shall, that such women were absolved
from the penalties carried by the law against adultery,
so true was it thought that their hideous calling was but
64 THE INNS OF
one facet of the profession still older; a few phrases from
Theophrastus s chapter on Slander shall suffice for the
present. He tells us that the daughters of Thrace, so
numerous at Athens, many being of the nobility of their
own country, but f 
