Taste and the ancient senses / edited by Kelli C. Rudolph.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 244-279) and index.

Introduction: On the tip of the tongue : making sense of ancient taste / Kelli C. Rudolph -- Tastes of Greek poetry : from Homer to Aristophanes / Sarah Hitch -- Tastes of reality : epistemology and the senses in ancient philosophy / Kelli C. Rudolph -- Tastes in ancient botany, medicine and science : bitter herbs and sweet honey / Laurence B. Totelin -- Tastes of Homer : Matro's gastroaesthetic tour through epic / Mario Telo -- Tasting the Roman world / Emily Gowers -- Tastes from beyond : Persephone's pomegranate and otherworldly consumption in antiquity / Meredith J. C. Warren -- Tastes of Roman Italy : early Roman expansion and taste articulation / Laura M. Banducci -- Tastes and digestion : archaeology and medicine in Roman Italy / Patricia Baker -- Tastes of meat in antiquity : integrating the textual and zooarchaeological evidence / Michael MacKinnon -- Tastes in the Roman provinces : an archaeobotanical approach to socio-cultural change / Alexandra Livarda -- Tastes of wine : sensorial wine analysis in ancient Greece / Thibaut Boulay -- Tastes of the extraordinary : flavour lists in imperial Rome / John Paulas -- Tastes of danger and pleasure in early and late antique christianity / Beatrice Caseau.

"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"--Publisher description.