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Greek lines, Murray’s expanded English spans, narrator or speaker, interpretation and limits.
Open 73 scenes →The poem makes eating a question of hospitality, ownership, divine warning and return. These records describe narrative situations; they do not prescribe a modern diet or a universal list of permitted species. · 食物的许可取决于具体情境。
73selected scenes
37food-related types
12qualified syntheses
24books represented
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Compare ordinary feasts, forbidden cattle, fish, hunger, lotus, drugs and wine with other Homer collections.
Explore food evidence →Check the sources
Edition fingerprints, scholarly notes with printed-page citations, known textual controls and reusable data.
Sources and method →Food catalogue · 食物类型
Bread and generic cereal food
Ordinary sustenance and hospitality; distinguish bread from unspecified accompaniments.
Barley / barley meal
Provision, ritual grain and potion ingredient; the same substance has several uses.
Wheat
Named in fields, an abundance simile and animal feeding; these loci do not narrate a wheat dish.
Zeiai (Murray: spelt)
Named as a landscape cereal; modern species identification is uncertain and no human serving is described here.
Unspecified other foods / provisions
Retain indeterminacy: eidata and opsa must not be silently converted to a fixed list of vegetables or meats.
Cattle / beef
Ordinary edible livestock in many feasts; Helios's particular animals are prohibited.
Sheep
Food animals and ritual victims; the warning also covers Helios's sheep, not just cattle.
Goats / goat meat
Wild goats are hunted; domestic goats appear in the suitors' preparation; a goat paunch is prepared.
Swine / pork / boar
Accepted meat in hospitality and sacrifices; status differs between small piglets and honour portions.
Stag / venison
A hunted stag sustains the crew; no full sacrificial sequence is narrated.
Innards / entrails
Edible roasted animal innards and human entrails in cannibalism must remain distinct.
Fat and honour portions
Fatty chine portions mark honour; fat is also used in offerings and filled paunches.
Blood-filled paunch
Prepared animal blood is a named food; ritual blood for shades and human cannibalism are different contexts.
Marrow-bearing bones
Explicit in Polyphemus's consumption of humans; not an ordinary human marrow dish in this dossier.
Milk / dairy liquids
Dairy production, Polyphemus's drink and ritual mixture; milk is not declared forbidden to people.
Cheese
Actually eaten by Odysseus's men; also a potion ingredient and a mythic nourishment.
Honey
Potion, libation, mythic nourishment and funeral use; honey-sweet lotus is a descriptor, not proof of added honey.
Wine
Ordinary drink, libation, gift, intoxicant and drug vehicle; mixing and restraint matter.
Water
Drinking provision, libation, ritual substitution and denied drink; separate washing water from drinking water.
Salt
Mentioned through cultural contrast and an idiom of minimal generosity; no Greek salt prohibition follows.
Pears
Cultivation, inaccessible underworld fruit and remembered orchard; not a narrated human fruit serving here.
Pomegranates
Orchard abundance and Tantalus's unreachable fruit; explicit consumption is not described in these loci.
Apples
Cultivation, punishment and home recognition rather than an explicitly eaten dish.
Figs
Fruit availability and memory; no dried-fig serving is inferred.
Olives
Orchard and inaccessible fruit; olive timber or an olive tree shelter elsewhere is not automatically food evidence.
Grapes / vineyard produce
Grapes are grown, dried and trodden in Book 7; wine is separately explicit. Raisins served at table are not established.
Oil / unguents
Stored oil, bathing oil and funeral unguents; these loci do not establish ordinary culinary oil use.
Fish
Human procurement and prosperity imagery occur; separate fish-like human victims and a corpse simile. No general fish ban is stated.
Birds
Birds are sought under hunger; dream geese are a different evidence class. No species-specific crew meal is given.
Lotus eaten by the Lotus-Eaters
A dangerous food because it diverts return; botanical identification is unresolved.
Lotus / galingale in horse country
Landscape and fodder context; do not equate these with the dangerous lotus meal.
Onion
An onion skin comparison names the plant; a human onion meal is not narrated at this locus.
Mast, acorns and cornel fruit
Swine fodder offered to transformed men; neither ordinary human approval nor universal inedibility follows.
Ambrosia and nectar
Actual food of divine characters; distinguish Polyphemus's metaphor for wine.
Unidentified drugs
Effects and intentions are described; neither chemical identity nor modern edible dosage is established.
Moly
God-given protective herb with black root and white flower; not a securely identified modern ingredient.
Human flesh
Monstrous predation turns guests and sailors into food; no human dietary endorsement is present.
Eating and its limits · 饮食的情境
R01 · Eat to sustain life and receive or offer hospitality
qualified synthesis / interpretation
Bread, meat and wine repeatedly sustain accepted hospitality. Hunger can justify asking to eat and sharing with a needy visitor.
This is a synthesis of scenes and speeches, not a modern nutrition prescription or an explicit universal command.
R02 · Permission depends on whose resources are consumed
qualified synthesis / interpretation
The suitors' fault concerns consuming another household's wealth without proper reciprocity. The same food types can be legitimate elsewhere.
Penelope, Telemachus and Eumaios have distinct rhetorical situations; their words are not an independent legal code.
R03 · Do not harm Helios's cattle or sheep
qualified synthesis / interpretation
This is the clearest explicit food-related prohibition: named divine herds, repeated warnings, an oath and destruction after the breach.
Other cattle are eaten in accepted feasts. Hunger explains the crew's reasoning but does not cancel the warning in the plot.
R04 · Avoid food that diverts the return home
qualified synthesis / interpretation
The lotus makes its eaters want to remain; Circe intends her drugs to erase homeland memory. Continued pleasant feasting can also delay return.
Lotus effect, Circe's intention and the men's retained minds are separate propositions; delay is not identical to poisoning.
R05 · Do not become a host who consumes the guest
qualified synthesis / interpretation
Monstrous human consumption reverses hospitality. Eumaios's welcome supplies a positive contrast.
This is a narrative ethical inference; no prose dietary code is recited by the poet.
R06 · Wine is permitted, but its effects and manipulation matter
qualified synthesis / interpretation
Wine supports meals and ritual, but intoxication and adulteration create dangers. Antinous's warning is about excessive drinking.
The poem supplies no health-safe quantity, alcohol percentage or blanket ban on wine.
R07 · Ritual performance does not authorize forbidden acquisition
qualified synthesis / interpretation
The crew perform sacrificial actions on animals they were told to spare. Ritual vocabulary and roasting cannot make that act legitimate.
Calling the meal anti-sacrifice is scholarly interpretation. No general rule against all substitutes for barley or wine is independently established.
R08 · Fish are marginal in banquet scenes, but not prohibited
qualified synthesis / interpretation
Fish are sought under hunger and included in an image of just prosperity. No general command forbidding fish is found in the cited evidence.
These loci do not reconstruct an everyday fish menu; metaphoric fish and monster prey must be excluded from actual human consumption counts.
R09 · Keep human food, divine food, ritual substances and fodder distinct
qualified synthesis / interpretation
Ambrosia and nectar, blood for the dead, swine fodder and funeral honey have different consumers or uses.
Do not turn every named substance into an approved mortal menu or infer a gender-based prohibition from Calypso's meal.
R10 · Distribution and labour are part of the food system
qualified synthesis / interpretation
Honour portions, preparation, service and household stores explain who receives food and who enables the feast.
The narrative privileges visible feasts; silence about other household diners is not proof they never ate those foods.
R11 · A plant name or simile does not establish an eaten dish
qualified synthesis / interpretation
Crop descriptions, metaphors, dreams and inaccessible fruit are food-related evidence with weaker consumption status than an actual meal.
Modern species identification and recipes must remain unresolved where the poem does not decide them.
R12 · Read food geography as literary evidence with historical limits
qualified synthesis / interpretation
Food helps organise civilised, divine and monstrous settings, and ties return to a functioning household.
Structural readings are useful but do not turn all first-person travel stories, a fabricated Cretan tale or miraculous gardens into archaeological facts.