_Odyssey_, vii. 104; Buchholz, _op. cit._ p. 118.
De Candolle, _Origin of Cultivated Plants_, p. 357.
Bakers were as little known as butchers to Homeric folk, whose bread-making was of the elementary description practised by the pile-dwellers of Robenhausen and Mooseedorf. The corn was first ground in hand-mills[265] worked by female slaves, of whom fifty were thus exclusively employed in the palace of Alcinous.[266] The loaves or cakes, for which the material was thus laboriously provided, were probably baked on stones, like those fragmentarily preserved during millenniums beneath Swiss lacustrine deposits of peat and mud.[267] Only wheaten flour was so employed in Achæan households; but wheaten bread was indispensable to every well-furnished table, and was neatly served round in baskets placed at frequent intervals. Barley-bread was the invention of a later age; the word _maza_, by which it is signified, does not occur in the Epics.
Blümner, _Technologie und Terminologie bei Griechen und Römern_, Bd. i. p. 24.
Heer, _Die Pflanzen der Pfahlbauten_, p. 9.
They include, however, the mention of two additional kinds of grain, varieties, it is supposed, of spelt. And of these one, _olura_, is limited to the Iliad, the other, _zeia_, belongs properly to the Odyssey, occurring in the Iliad only in the traditional phrase ‘zeia-giving soil.’ The expression doubtless enshrined the memory of spelt-eating days, as did, among the Romans, the appropriation of this species of corn for the _mola_ of sacrifices.[268] But neither _zeia_ nor _olura_ served within Homer’s experience for human food; both were left to horses, whose fodder was moreover enriched by the addition of ‘white barley’ and clover, nay, in exceptional cases, of wheat and wine. With these restoring dainties the steeds of Hector were pampered by Andromache on their return from battle; while the snowy team of Rhesus shared with the ‘Trojan’ horses of Æneas, the generous wheaten diet provided for them in the opulent stables of their new master, the intrepid king of Argos.
Potter, _Archæologia Græca_, vol. i. p. 215.
One of the unaccountable Egyptian perversities enumerated by Herodotus[269] was that of rejecting wheat and barley as bread-stuffs, and adopting spelt (_olura_). The grain indicated, however, must have been either rice or millet, since spelt does not thrive in hot countries.[270] Millet, too, which was unknown in primitive Greece, was specially favoured by Celts, Iberians, and other tribes.[271] It was also cultivated with barley and several kinds of wheat, by the amphibious villagers of Robenhausen. And the discovery of caraway and poppy seeds mingled in the _débris_ of their food[272] suggests that varied flavourings were in prehistoric request. It suggests further a non-æsthetic, hence a probable, motive for the cultivation of the poppy by the early Achæans.[273] The flower was in fact actually grown in classical times for the sake of its seeds, which were roasted and strewn on slices of bread, to be eaten with honey after meals as a sort of dessert.[274]