Roman Agora
Food in Ancient Greece
Delphi bit into her cake and felt the familiar but perfect taste of honey flood her tastebuds. She chewed happily for a few seconds then swallowed. She grinned and watched the market sellers, as the cake became history.
The honey swirled around her mouth. It was moments like this that Athens really did seem the best place in the world. Children generally grow up with the sense that what is normal for them is best for everyone. Delphi believed to her very bones that there was nowhere quite like Athens.
She assumed that Athens would be this way forever.
She was of course, perfectly right and spectacularly wrong.
Roman Agora: Fact box
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This was built during Roman times, so a long time after Delphi’s time in Athens, but there would have been other markets around the city as well as the central Agora.
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The Roman Agora became the city’s main marketplace during the Roman period, after the main Ancient Agora had become damaged and more of a tourist attraction! The Romans invaded Athens in 168 BC, almost 300 years after the Parthenon was built. The Roman Agora was built around 11 BC and remained in use for almost two thousand years after that.
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Both Ancient Greeks and Romans ate a reasonably wide range of food. The usual diet was made up of bread, vegetables like cabbages, carrots, onions and olives, fish and some meat, although roasted meat like beef or lamb was usually only eaten as part of religious ceremonies. Their favourite drink was wine - they loved it so much that Dionysus, the god of wine, was one of the most important gods in the city!
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Honey cakes are the closest thing that Delphi could get to having sweets! Sadly, they were usually made to be an offering to the gods and wouldn’t have been given to the children very often. Even today, honey cakes, doughnuts and sweets are very popular in Greece.