Le goût et les sens antiques

Taste and the Ancient Senses

Edited by Kelli C. Rudolph

© 2018 – Routledge

312 pages

Olives, bread, meat and wine: it is deceptively easy to evoke ancient Greece and Rome through a few items of food and drink. But how were their tastes different from ours? How did they understand the sense of taste itself, in relation to their own bodies and to other modes of sensory experience? This volume, the first of its kind to explore the ancient sense of taste, draws on the literature, philosophy, history and archaeology of Greco-Roman antiquity to provide answers to these central questions. 

By examining the literary and material remains from the Archaic period to late antiquity, contributors excavate the cultural and intellectual development of attitudes towards and theories about taste. These specially commissioned chapters also open a window onto ancient thinking about perception and the body. Importantly, these authors go beyond exploring the functional significance of taste to uncover its value and meaning in the actions, thoughts and words of the Greeks and Romans. Taste and the Ancient Senses presents a full range of interpretative approaches to the gustatory sense, and is an indispensable resource for students and scholars of classical antiquity and sensory studies.