Taste and the Ancient Senses

The sense of taste is at once highly individual and deeply cultural. Taste is a functional sense, so closely tied with the physical necessity for food that it is frequently characterised among the lower, bodily sensations. Assumed to operate on a primitive, nearly instinctual level, taste requires intimate interaction with its objects of perception, which enter the mouth, pass through the throat and eventually become part of the perceiver. Taste and the Ancient Senses explores the use of taste metaphors in Graeco-Roman literature, which provides us with a window into their own theorising about taste. The values and meaning of tastes, food and eating are also revealed through cultural practices and habits which are accessible to us through the literary, historical and material record. It is in these contexts that we can examine the symbolic function and social values that surround the tastes the Greeks and Romans embrace and reject.