In dealing with the old comedy, one reference has been already made to cooks and cookery-books. In the middle comedy they assume still more importance, and in the secondary authors of the new comedy they occupy the foreground of the picture, thanks to Athenæus. Cooks at Athens formed a class apart. They had their stations in the market, their schools, their libraries of culinary lore, their pedantries and pride and special forms of knavery. The Roman custom of keeping slaves to cook at home had not yet penetrated into Greece. If a man wanted to entertain his guests at a dinner-party, or to prepare a wedding-feast, he had to seek the assistance of a professional _cordon bleu_, and the great _chef_ ensconced himself for the day, with his subordinates, in the house of his employer. It is clear that these customs offered situations of rare comic humor to the playwright. Everybody had at some time felt the need of the professional cook, and everybody had suffered under him. In an age, moreover, which was nothing if it was not literary, the cooks caught the prevailing tone, and professed their art according to the rules of rhetoric.
#eis tous sophistas ton mageiron engraphô#[132]
exclaims one of the characters of Alexis (_Milesia_, fr. 1, p. 551), after a scientific demonstration of the sin of letting sauces cool. A paterfamilias in a play of Strato (_Phoenikides_, p. 703) complains that he has brought a "male sphinx" in the shape of a cook into his house. The fellow will not condescend to use any but Homeric language, and the master is quite puzzled. It is in vain that he takes down the Homeric glossary of Philetas. Even this does not mend matters. The cook is a more recondite scholar than the grammarian. A professor of the culinary art in a play of Nicomachus (_Eileithuia_, p. 717) explains to his employer the broad scientific basis upon which the art of cooking rests. Astrology, geometry, medicine, and natural history are all necessary. Another, in Damoxenus (_Syntrophi_, p. 697), discusses various schools of philosophy from the culinary point of view. He begins by saying that he has spent four talents and nearly three years in the school of Epicurus, and has learned that a cook who has not mastered metaphysics is worthless. He must have Democritus and Epicurus at his fingers' ends, understand the elements of fire and water, comprehend the laws of harmony, and arrive at a profound contempt for Stoical self-discipline.[133] The study of cookery-books employs as much time and demands as much enthusiasm as the study of the sages. A cook in Baton (_Euergetæ_, p. 685) shakes off sleep and trims the midnight oil that he may meditate the weighty precepts of his masters in the art.[134] Another, in Euphron (_Adelphi_, p. 679), expounds the various virtues of his predecessors, and remarks that his own peculiar merit consists in clever larceny. The same author makes a cook explain to his pupil the distinctions he ought to observe in catering for a club and for a wedding-party (_Synephebi_, p. 682). One of the fragments of Menander turns, finally, upon the art of treating guests of different nationalities to different dishes (_Trophonius_, p. 46). In this passage Menander seems to have had in mind some lines of Diphilus (_Apolipousa_, fr. 1, p. 633). Another curious extract from the latter poet (_Zographus_, fr. 2, p. 638) consists of a long harangue delivered by a master-cook to his _protégé_, a waiter, concerning the advantages and disadvantages of various houses into which he gains admittance by his art. A merchant just returned from sea, a spendthrift heir, and a leader of the _demi-monde_ are good customers because of their prodigality. On the whole, the impression left upon our minds is that, what with democracy, all-pervading pedantry, and professional pride, high life below stairs in Athens was even more difficult to tolerate than it is in England.