Food and Parties: Seduction, Erotic and Sexual Metaphors in Greek Comic Fragments

It is possible to notice the role of the food in general and of the fish in
particular in Greek comic fragments to persuade people from an erotic point of view.
As Athenaeus (IX 402d) puts it: «the accounts of dinner parties offered by the comic
poets provide more pleasure for one’s ears than one’s throat» (tr. Olson 2008). The
metaphor is thus played on two levels: firstly, the lists of foods have the specific role
to persuade people to take part in these comic gatherings; the food often hides double
entendres for male and female genitalia or is explicitly aphrodisiac. Secondly, the comic
fragments linked to the food show a wide range of sexual metaphors, which are the
perfect surround for these descriptions. An example is Mnesimachus’ fr. 4 K.–A., the
longest (together with Anaxandrides’ fr. 42 K.–A.) comic list of food at 65 lines. I will
start from this fragment to show all the aspects that I have listed above (persuasive
power of the food, metaphors linked to the food – fish and meat in particular – and
the other sexual metaphors that stud the whole text), giving examples and loci similes
from other comic fragments about the tantalizing power of food.