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Equality at the table: Amazing and frightening?
Abstract
Much of the political philosophy of Plato and Aristotle has echoed through history. More than one philosopher has aspired to be a king, and there have been kings who thought they were philosophers. Aristotle’s empirical method and his analysis of regime types have spanned the millennia. Their works continue to be studied throughout the world for insights into justice and equality. Yet the one political institution that they both recommended, and which has sometimes been implemented, is seldom even noted, still less studied. What institution is that? It is meals in common, or syssitia. While Aristotle made it a point to differ from Plato in nearly every respect, the often loquacious Aristotle concurred in a very few words with Plato’s repeated recommendation of meals in common as a central political institution, one that manifested citizen equality. For Plato and for Aristotle dining together knitted citizens ever more closely together. The equality of the table where each citizen ate the same fare and drank the same wine, laid the bedrock for justice in the polity. This paper compiles the many, scattered references to common meals in the texts of Plato and Aristotle and assesses their treatment through the secondary literature, arriving at the conclusion that common meals serve important political purposes that are instrumental, educational, and moral. The material equality in the reproduction of life through eating unites citizens, which unity is a precondition for the justice of a regime. Dining together itself does not issue justice, but it can, to some extent, limit injustice. Common meals are an important, practical instance of equality, though an instance does not resolve the many theoretical complexities of the concept of equality, but it does perhaps put them in perspective. The fact of equality at the table is touchstone for claims to and about equality. In our terms, syssitia comprised part of the civil society in the political philosophies of both Plato and of Aristotle. Differences between Plato and Aristotle in syssitia emerge when their cryptic and scattered remarks about it are assembled, none more telling than in Plato’s repeated inclusion of women. This inclusion is a proposal that Aristotle finds so far fetched that he does not comment on it. However the detail of Plato’s references to meals in common for women is striking. Though, to be sure, neither the equality of the table, nor Plato’s inclusion of women at it will satisfy contemporary sensibilities. Nonetheless, they do show that equality of welfare and the sexes topped the agendas of these two founders of political philosophy. To conclude, in recommending the meals in the Laws, Plato says some will find the practice so “amazing” and “frightening” that one might be reluctant to mention it. If that phrasing seems exaggerated, imagine today recommending that all citizens dine together in common meals! Though there are many examples of limited dining in common to be considered, e.g., such as occurs at most learned conferences.
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Introduction.
“Let one open any book of history, from Herodotus to our own day, and he will see that, without even excepting conspiracies, not a single great event has occurred which has not been conceived, prepared, and carried out at a feast”, so said Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin in the Philosopher in the Kitchen.[1] Others with greater claims as philosophers have also pondered the importance of dinner, first among them Plato followed by Aristotle. Greater philosophers yes, but not even they can better Brillat-Savarin’s axiomatic precision when he wrote: “Tell me what you eat, and I will tell you who you are”.[2] This is a proposition to bear in mind as we consider the political theory of dining.
While Plato consistently recommended common meals, syssitia (literally “eating together”), and Aristotle accepted this one feature of Plato’s political program, their respective recommendations of these public meals remain to be methodically examined.[3] As a result, secondary references to these meals are often perfunctory.[4] This essay (1) puts common meals into the context of classical Greece, (2) systematically examines Plato’s discussion of political dining, (3) assembles and reviews the treatment of these meals by subsequent commentators, starting with Aristotle, (4) considers the investigation of the common meals in more recent studies, and (5) closes with an assessment of eating together as a political practice then and now. We have all dined in common more than once – school lunches, conference dinners, college teas, the list goes on – experiences to bear in mind.
1. Syssitia.
Herodotus in his History notes that common meals were a Spartan practice based on military training and experience, though there are also references to Homeric times.[5] Aristophanes in Ecclesiazusae also remarks on the existence of common meals. Xenophon in his Constitution likewise notes the practice in book V. Later still, Plutarch, partly working from sources now lost, attributes the institution of common meals in Sparta to the reforms of the legendary King Lycurgus, one of many measures that created Spartan discipline.[6] These sources alone suffice to indicate that meals in common occurred in the world that Plato and Aristotle knew. Having these meals presupposes some method of organization to finance, prepare, and deliver them.[7]
There is ample archaeological evidence that common meals were practiced in Sparta and Crete, and elsewhere.[8] But “the state of our knowledge permits us to do little but take Aristotle’s word for” much of the detailed description.[9] Citizens took the main meal at the end of the day in communal dining halls. There were a number of these halls within polities like Sparta, and within any one given hall there were tables allocated to groups, numbering about fifteen.[10] A citizen went to a certain building and ate at a specific table in most cases always in the company of the same persons for life.[11] Sparta male citizens lived much of their lives in public and the collective surveillance that this public life brought may have been the greatest form of discipline they felt; the meals were part of that exposure.[12] Boys served at the meals from about age twelve and were gradually inducted into one table of fifteen by the age of twenty. In Sparta these groups engaged in confidential discussion about public business at these meals.[13]
Common meals were practiced in two very different locales: Sparta and Crete. The Spartan life of denial and discipline is famous, and we can expect it was reflected in an austere cuisine. (Yet Sparta held some of the richest and most productive agricultural land in Greece.) Equally renowned in classical Greece was Crete’s reputation for luxury, indolence, perversion, and indulgence, altogether more like Persia than like Sparta. There is speculation that both polities reflect a mutual influence, say perhaps Phoenicia.[14] If the practices had a similar origin, they took decidedly different turns.
We know something about the diet and halls because of the archaeological evidence, but information is fragmentary about how the meals were funded or more generally organized. We know more about the menu, than the financing and purpose of the meals.[15] But perhaps Plato and Aristotle can shed light on both of these elements when we explore their texts for details.
More important than any of the details, known or unknown, is that these meals were not practiced in Athens, where Plato and Aristotle lived. For them to recommend common meals is to invoke Sparta or Crete. Neither of these examples would be welcome to many Athenian citizens, one may suppose. Why then did these two great minds in Athens recommend the practice?
2. Plato on syssitia.
Plato in the Republic ranges over a variety of political institutions from overarching regimes like oligarchy or timarchy, to mating festivals, and the noble lie. One of the political institutions to which he gives pride of place is “meals in common” (Republic at 416e). Meals in common stayed in his mind and fifty or more years later when he composed the Laws (a book so different from the Republic that for centuries scholars did not think it was by Plato) meals in common figure even more prominently. That Plato recommends common meals as a political practice commands our attention. That he does so twice in such different books at the beginning and end of his intellectual career can but add to the compulsion.
In the Republic Plato refers to meals in common in Books III, IV, and V where the political institutions of the ideal city are gradually revealed. They are part of the communism Plato recommends. In the discussion of the rulers of the ideal city Socrates says that these guardians “will go regularly to mess together, like soldiers in a camp and live a life in common” (416e). When Adeimantus challenges Socrates, he confirms that the guardians do their duties “for food alone” (420a). Only in Book V does Socrates place common meals in the context of a general communism for the guardians, including women. Socrates says, “all of them [the guardians] will be together, since they have common houses and mess” (458d). Now of course Platonic communism and the equality of women have generated a great deal of debate over the millennia. These, at times, heated debates generally pass over common meals and concentrate either on women among the guardians or the scope of the communism. Some argue the communism applies to the whole society and not only the guardian-rulers.[16] Others say that the proposal for the equality of women cannot be taken seriously.[17] Both contentions demand attention but they are not the focus here. Here the focus will be on the meals, but it is clear that women have a place at those meals. Accordingly, I shall take Plato at his word as proposing communism only for the guardians and rulers to deepen their unity so they are not distracted by a private life, and also as advocating the equality of the best women with the best men among the guardians and rulers.
What we see in these brief mentions in the Republic is that common meals are a part of the structure of rule. The meals are part of living life in common among the rulers. And that communism is one of the foremost hallmarks of Plato’s political theory in the Republic. On that there is no dissent. But it is worth bearing in mind that in the Republic the meals are justified on arguments, and not by reference to either Spartan or Cretan practices. Communism at the table is recommended because it is useful, not because others have done it. Its use is both end and means, the end is the food, and the means is the interaction and common life of participants that dining together embodies. To be explicit, we must realize that while dining citizens will talk to each other about what they have in common, the polis.
There are even more references to meals in common in the Laws, written so much later. The Cretan and Spartan examples are explicit in the Laws because one of the three participants in the dialogue is Cretan and another Spartan, along with the Athenian Stranger. In the very first exchange the Stranger asks, “For what reason has your law ordained the common meals … (625c)?” Kleinias having already noted that a god laid down the laws for his Cretan city, says that “these practices of ours exist with a view to war” thus with “the common meals” (625e). The Athenian Stranger, in turn, affirms this observation (633a).[18] They note that any generally good practice, like physical exercise, can in some specific cases be harmful, and so it is with common meals (636a-b). The martial associations are noted explicitly but the subsequent references to common meals do not limit them to military concerns.
Moving on, the three magi then legislate on alcohol: the Athenian says “As a man approaches forty he is to share in the enjoyment of common meals … “(666b). Note that in the context of the paragraph that reference to age forty seems to relate to the enjoyment of drinking wine at the meal. After an elaborate discussion of various civic offices and the need to divide the city into twelve districts, each with its local government, the Athenian Stranger says that for the officials there “will be common meals in each of the twelve districts where all of them [the officials] must dine together” (emphasis added) for the first two years of a term. “If anyone is absent from a common meal on any day” without an official reason that absentee will be considered “as a deserter from the guard … and held in ill repute, as one who has betrayed his share in the regime” (762c). Missing a meal is nearly treason! That conclusion indicates what a serious purpose the common meals must have. On the next page the Stranger notes that this food is “humble and uncooked” (762e). This is the food of the common meals that it would be treason to miss. To describe it as number and even uncooked is to emphasize that it is not a pleasure but a duty.
A few pages later a fuller discussion of common meals occurs when the physical plant of the city is discussed. Again the voice is that of the Stranger speaking about marriage, “we are going to assert that our grooms must participate in the common meals no differently, and no less, than in the time before marriage” (780b). The Stranger notes that the creation of the institution of common meals “aroused amazement at the beginning when it was first introduced,” speculating that it might have been an emergency measure in wartime that led to common meals. Having said that, the Athenian goes to say that it would not now be so amazing or frightening to legislate common dining. Several points catch the eye in this passage. What makes common meals amazing? What makes them frightening? And even more important: Why would they no longer be so? There are no explicit answers to these questions in the Laws.