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DAVID RIDGWAY

NESTOR’S CUP AND THE ETRUSCANS

In memory of Stuart Piggott

Summary. Bronze cheese-graters have been found in three 9th-century

warriors’ graves at Lefkandi in Euboea. The presence of a similar item in a

socially elevated male (and military) context is attested in the Iliad (xi, 628–

643), when it is used in the preparation of a kykeon (mixture) in Nestor’s depas

(cup) that apparently revives a wounded hero. ‘Nestor’s cup, good to drink

from’ is mentioned in an inscription from a grave ( c. 725–700) at Euboean

Pithekoussai on the Bay of Naples; and a number of bronze (occasionally

silver) graters occur in 7th-century Orientalizing princely graves along the

Tyrrhenian seaboard. Unlike that of the better-known 8th-century Euboean

‘pre-colonial’ skyphoi there, the distribution of 7th-century graters extends as

far north as the metal-bearing area of Tuscany. It is suggested that a particular

kind of ‘heroic’ drinking may have been introduced to the local Etruscan

‘princes’ by Euboeans negotiating for supplies of the Tuscan ores that are

known to have been used at Pithekoussai; the presence c. 700–690 of a high-

ranking Etruscan xenos (guest) at nearby Cumae, recently postulated on

epigraphic grounds, may be significant in this respect.

The reports on recent excavations in the

Toumba cemetery at Lefkandi in Euboea

have provided summary details of three 9th-

century cremation burials accompanied by

weapons and by a simple device of bronze

that is reasonably identified as a cheese-

grater: 1

TOMB 79B (niche): S[ub]-P[roto-]

G[eometric] II ( c .875–850); Popham and

Lemos 1995, 154 fig. 6 (the cremation of

‘a Euboean warrior-trader’ 2 ); Popham and

Lemos 1996, pls. 78, B2 and 146d. 16

6.5 cm.

alii 1982, 229 no. 8, pl. 28 no. 8; Popham

and Lemos 1996, pl. 48 no. 8. Two large

non-joining fragments, each 6.5 5 cm.

PYRE 14: SPG IIIa ( c .850–800); Popham

et alii 1989, 118 fig. 2 (‘a warrior who had

been cremated with his sword’); Popham

and Lemos 1996, pls. 87 no. 18 and 146c.

c .16 7 cm.

One early 9th-century association of a

grater with weapons could mean anything or

nothing, and two need be no more than a

coincidence. Now that there are three, how-

ever, it is legitimate to enquire if there is any

PYRE 13: SPG II ( c .875–850); Popham et

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NESTOR’S CUP AND THE ETRUSCANS

particular use, custom or tradition that re-

quired the contents of the 9th-century war-

riors’ graves listed above to include this

humble utensil. In the Classical and later

periods, literature and archaeology combine to

suggest that, very much as we should expect,

the proper place for a cheese-grater is the

kitchen: 3

Cooking utensils are enumerated by Ana-

xippus in The Harp-singer thus: ‘Bring a

soup ladle, a dozen skewers, a meat hook,

mortar, small cheese scraper [sic: turok-

nestin ], skillet, three bowls, a skinning

knife, four cleavers. First bring, won’t you,

you abomination in the eyes of the gods,

the small kettle and the things from the

soda shop. Late again, are you? Bring also

the axe and the rack of frying-pans.’

THE CONTENTS OF NESTOR’S CUP

Cheese is grated on a bronze grater at a

crucial juncture in the grim and violent

narrative of Iliad xi. Amidst the general

Achaean rout, Nestor rescues the wounded

Machaon and takes him to his hut. They are

eventually joined there by Patroclus (who

will die before the day is out), and meanwhile

Nestor’s lovely companion Hecamede duti-

fully prepares what is clearly regarded by

those present as refreshment appropriate to

the circumstances:

She first moved up a table for them, a

beautiful polished table with feet of dark

blue enamel, and on it she placed a bronze

dish with an onion as accompaniment for

the drink, and fresh honey, and beside it

bread of sacred barley-meal. Next a most

beautiful cup, which the old man had

brought from home — it was studded with

rivets of gold, and there were four handles

to it: on each handle a pair of golden doves

was feeding, one on either side: and there

were two supports below. Another man

would strain to move it from the table

when it was full, but Nestor, the old man,

could lift it with ease. It was in this cup

that the woman, beautiful as the god-

desses, mixed them their drink out of

Pramnian wine, over which she grated

goat’s cheese on a bronze grater , and

sprinkled white barley : and when the toddy

was prepared, she told them to drink. Now

when both had drunk and quenched their

parching thirst, and were enjoying the

pleasure of their conversation . . .

Athenaeus, Deipnosophistae iv, 169b–c

tr. C.B. Gulick (Loeb vol. 2, 1928, 267–69)

In earlier centuries, however, the presence

of graters in military and/or socially elevated

male contexts is by no means confined to SPG

Lefkandi. It is attested in Homer; and a

number of graters have long been known

along the Tyrrhenian seaboard of Italy, where

they are first encountered in the Orientalizing

‘princely’ and other rich tombs of the 7th

century. The following notes have been

compiled in the hope that these relatively

familiar instances may shed light not only on

the life-style of 9th-century Euboean warriors,

but also, and more particularly, on certain

wider issues that are of considerable current

interest. Throughout, I am assuming that the

function of the graters treated here corre-

sponds to that of the Homeric knestis (see

below) and of the later Greek turoknestis : and

that accordingly, when they occur in the

archaeological record, these intriguing arte-

facts denote the real (or conceivably sym-

bolic) activity of grating cheese.

Iliad xi, 628–643

tr. M. Hammond (Penguin Classics 1987,

209; emphasis added)

Nestor’s depas , as ‘the only cup accorded a

detailed description in Homer’ (Lorimer

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DAVID RIDGWAY

1950, 328), has attracted a good deal of

attention for a variety of reasons that need

not concern us here. Its typology and precise

function — mixing bowl and drinking cup?

krater and depas ? 4 — are less important to

our present purposes than what it contained

by the time Hecamede had finished with it.

Attempts to convey in English translation

some idea of the recipe she uses have been

too many and too varied to inspire much

confidence. The most recent translation that I

have consulted (above) calls the end product

‘toddy’; the most recent commentary cites

‘frumenty or furmity’ ( ` la mode de Caster-

bridge ), ‘ potage ’, and ‘stimulating porridge’

(Hainsworth 1993, 293); and it would

probably not be difficult to extend this list

of more or less appetizing Hyperborean

regional beverages. The actual word that

Homer uses is kykeon , which need mean no

more than ‘mixture’:

fungal growth, that it might acquire psy-

choactive and/or hallucinogenic properties —

a possibility that has indeed been extended to

the Homeric passage above (Tsavella-Evjen

1983, 188; so too Hijmans 1992, 31).

It has been remarked that, after their fast,

the initiates at Eleusis might have needed

simply to be soothed, refreshed and sustained

for what lay ahead, and that this effect could

have been achieved by modern peppermint

tea (Richardson 1974, 345). Machaon’s

circumstances, on the other hand, surely call

for something stronger. He is a hero (who is

also a healer himself and therefore capable of

appreciating his own condition); a terrible

battle is raging, and he has been wounded in

it. His injury, caused by a three-barbed arrow

in the shoulder, is probably not in itself life-

threatening, but it is bound to be extremely

painful — and when he has been assisted to

Nestor’s hut, Hecamede can probably guess

(even if he cannot) that he must also steel

himself for a lecture; in the event, it was

Nestor’s longest. Like any good hostess, she

saw instantly that this was not an occasion

merely for light refreshment (or an aperitivo ,

as Blanck 1987, 113): and we are surely

meant to infer that the mixture she prepared

instead had the desired effect. It is not clear

whether that effect was literally halluci-

nogenic, narcotic or otherwise psychoactive:

we are simply told that it was thirst-

quenching, and we are surely justified in

assuming that it was also analgesic. It may be

relevant to note that Machaon’s wound is not

even washed until the beginning of Iliad xiv

(1–8), when Nestor goes back to the battle-

field to see what has been going on while he

has been lecturing.

More than anything else, in fact, the

mixture that Hecamede prepared for Ma-

chaon seems to have the characteristics of an

effective pain-killer; and it seems most likely

that in terms of liquid volume its principal

any form of mixture of grain ( alphi ) and

liquid (water, wine, milk, honey, oil),

often seasoned with herbs (pennyroyal,

thyme, mint, etc.). It belongs to an

intermediate stage between that of eating

the grains (or offering them to the gods)

whole, and the introduction of fine milling

and baking (Richardson 1974, 344).

The same word is used by a number of later

writers, and often denotes a mixture with

medicinal properties (references and com-

ments: Richardson 1974, 344–48); it is

interesting to see that the medical aspects of

the Iliad passage cited above were empha-

sised by Plato. 5 Most notably, perhaps

(although not necessarily relevant here),

kykeon is the word used to denote the sacred

potion imbibed by the initiates at Eleusis

(Delatte 1955). In this connection, there have

been suggestions that the barley-meal com-

ponent was fermented; or, if afflicted by

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NESTOR’S CUP AND THE ETRUSCANS

ingredient was Pramnian wine. ‘Pramnos’ is

not attested as a toponym, which is all the

stranger in view of the fact that its wine had a

certain reputation throughout antiquity. An

anthology of comments compiled c .200 AD

tells us that Pramnian wine is

neither sweet nor rich, but dry, hard, and

of extraordinary strength . . .

matter does ‘an onion as accompaniment’ (or

relish: Dalby 1996, 22–24): but both invari-

ably make their presence felt in one way or

another, and in ancient terms had the obvious

virtue of being at least as readily available

as, say, barley — cheese also keeps well, and

is easy to carry. Whether anyone, ancient or

modern, would find the taste of the resulting

mixture to be pleasant is a moot point: but if

this kykeon was ‘strong’ in the basic

alcoholic sense, one can imagine that the

effects might be perceived as on the whole

very pleasant. So much so, in fact, that some

might wish to indulge for purposes other

than the strictly medicinal. Nestor himself is

a case in point: he has not been wounded,

and he carries on drinking until the begin-

ning of Iliad xiv. But then, as Andrew

Sherratt has recently reminded us,

. . . the availability of psychoactive pro-

ducts is a constant temptation to ‘misuse’

— a term that implies less a medical

judgement than a social one, in the sense

of an unrestricted (and possibly habit-

forming) hedonism. Few cultures allow

this privilege to more than a fraction of

their members, whether this fraction is

defined by gender, status, wealth, or a

combination of all three (A. Sherratt 1995,

15).

We might recall, too, that on another

memorable Homeric occasion, precisely the

same mixture as that prepared in Nestor’s hut

was so welcome to some of Odysseus’

companions that Circe could use it as the

vehicle for the sinister pharmaka that enabled

her to change Eurylochos’ group into pigs

( Odyssey x, 229–243, esp. 234f). We are not

told that Circe used a grater: is this simply

the luck of the poetic draw, or would it have

been out of place for her to possess a utensil

associated in the audience’s mind with the

field of battle rather than the kitchen? In

Pramnian wines, which contract the eye-

brows as well as the bowels . . .

[it is] called by some ‘medicated’ . . .

the vine which bears the Pramnian of

Icaros . . . is called by foreigner ‘sacred’,

but by the natives of Oenoe ‘Dionysias’ . . .

Didymus declares that Pramnian gets its

name from a vine called Pramnia; others

say that it is a special term for all dark

wine, while some assert that it may be

applied in general to all wine of good

keeping qualities, as if the word were

paramonion (‘enduring’); still others ex-

plain it as ‘assuaging the spirit’ ( pra¨non-

ta ), since drinkers of it are mild tempered.

Athenaeus, Deipnosophistae i, 30b–e

tr. C.B. Gulick (Loeb vol. 1, 1927, 133–35)

These and other ancient comments (Dalby

1996, 100f.; 254 note 51) leave us with the

impression of a drink that, although ulti-

mately derived from the grape (like brandy

and grappa ), nevertheless has properties

quite unlike those of, say, the Lemnian that

the Achaean troops were able to purchase on

at least one occasion ( Iliad vii, 472), or the

Thracian vin ordinaire that was being

shipped in to them daily ( Iliad ix, 72). The

taste was probably its worst feature: but this

could be mitigated by the addition of other

strongly flavoured elements. Grated goat’s

cheese clearly does not spring to the modern

mind for this purpose, 6

and neither for that

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DAVID RIDGWAY

either case, it is worth remembering that, as

Susan Sherratt has pointed out, it is compara-

tively rare in Homer for wine to be mixed

with other substances, psychoactive or other-

wise: and that although men drink the results,

the mixtures are invariably concocted by

foreign or ‘strange’ women — Hecamede is a

Trojan captive, Circe (Hijmans 1992) is the

daughter of Helios. 7 I agree that this might

imply a connection between such potions and

a non-Greek cultural ethos — indeed, I think

it almost certainly does; but the combination

of exotic females and unusual (doctored?)

drinks is also one that young seafarers and

soldiers have been warned against by their

fathers since the beginning of time, and

surely were at the outgoing and cosmopolitan

centre that was 9th-century Lefkandi.

At this point, it seems reasonable to ask,

and to attempt to answer, the ‘chicken or egg’

question: which came first? On the restricted

front treated here, does the presence of

bronze cheese-graters among the grave goods

of 9th-century Euboean warriors at Lefkandi

mean that life is copying Homer, or that

Homer is copying life? I am aware both that

similar questions have been discussed else-

where (e.g. Whitley 1991, 34–39; Hurwit

1993), and that in recent years the idea of a

special relationship between Euboea and the

Homeric epics has gained a good deal of

ground:

audience that fits more closely what we

can infer from the poems than the affluent,

seafaring Euboians . . . Homer’s tale of

international warfare waged on a plain

would have special meaning to men who

fought the first historical war in Greece,

on the Lelantine Plain . . . The Odyssey ’s

theme of longing for home after dangerous

adventure in the far West would also have

special relevance to men who actually

travelled to the far West . . . (Powell 1991,

231; and see Powell 1993).

. . . la rotta di Ulisse pare proprio disegnare

la mappa archeologica dei siti di ritrova-

menti euboici sulla rotta dell’occidente

(Braccesi 1993, 15).

The Euboeans who settled on Ischia (and

soon afterwards founded Cumae on the

mainland) were the carriers of a powerful

virus — the Ionian (and now panhellenic)

epic tradition (Wiseman 1995, 35).

And so on. There is undoubtedly a certain

charm in the thought of real-life warriors (or

warrior-traders) at Lefkandi packing graters

into their kit bags after hearing a recitation of

Iliad xi: but, as in the better known case of

the Lefkandi horse-burials (Popham 1993,

22), this degree of deliberate imitation of

Homeric practice is not really convincing. It

is, I believe, much more likely that the bards

who recited the Homeric poems at home and

abroad made it their business to capture and

keep their audiences’ attention by means of

references to the material circumstances and

traditions of their own time. 8 In other words,

the version of the Homeric poems that has

come down to us will contain allusions that

could have been formulated at any time in the

Bronze and Early Iron Ages, as in the case of

iron and iron tools (E.S. Sherratt 1994, 78–

80; and note too the appearance at Iliad xviii,

[i]f there was anywhere where eastern

mythological poetry might have run up

against Greek in the generations before

Homer, it was Euboea — just where . . .

the old Greek heroic tradition was entering

a marvellous new creative phase between

the late tenth and the mid eighth century

(M.L. West 1988, 170f.; cf Winter 1995,

261f.).

It would be hard to find an historical

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