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§1
Even though the actual reach of wine interdiction for women in Greece and
Rome has been under discussion, several witnesses confirm that wine
consumption was a man’s privilege. 5 Despite its doubtful historical value, from a
cultural point of view the theory that kissing among relatives was invented so
that male family members could detect alcohol consumption of “their” women is
fully revealing.6
In Classical Greece, women had access to wine only in very specific religious
contexts, especially during the Thesmophoria. These celebrations in honor of
the goddess Demeter stood among the more universally diffused in the Greek
world.7 In Athens, the three days of the celebration marked a caesura in the
institutional order: trials were suspended, prisoners were freed, and the political
status quo was interrupted. Only in this context women were entitled to meet in
a central location of the polis and organize themselves socially under the
leadership of their own árchousai.8
2
this abnormal and somewhat artificial context showed how women’s access to
wine was an alarming sign of crisis, and how, in the right order of things, wine
should be kept in the men’s exclusive domain.
This is further confirmed by the cultural meaning of opposite drinks. Milk and
honey, in polar opposition with wine, clearly fall into the sphere of female and
child. As shown by Fritz Graf (1980), milk and honey constitute the liquid marks
of marginal groups or situations, in contrast with the supreme values of
civilization that wine substantiates… whenever mixed with water! This polarity
worked both within the community and outwards. Milk consumption is attributed
to marginal sects in the polis, such as the Pythagoreans, but also to peoples
such as the Scythes or the Massagetai, epitomes of the barbarian “other”. 11
The symbolic power of wine in Greek anthropology is even more rich and
complex: its cultural centrality and “normality” does not preclude some threats
or fears. Moderation is essential, because wine can lead to foolish promises,
unattainable challenges, ungrounded quarrels and futile skirmishes. For good or
evil, wine is the door to an alternative reality, a means to widen the meager
boundaries of the hic et nunc. Together with theatre, wine becomes a rich
« source of illusion, a way out from normal life and a momentary expansion of
the individual horizons ».12 In the Olympic family, the god who promotes wine
consumption, Dionysus, is nothing less than a xénos, a Greek word that can
mean stranger but also strange, bizarre, just as the German fremd and the Latin
alienus.13 Seen as a Dionysiac product, wine emerges as the dividing line
between spheres, as a powerful shaper of social spaces. But above all, wine is
the expression of an eccentric and centrifugal movement that flies away from
the sphere of intimacy and the sphere of everyday life. So besides being gender
markers, wine and milk play a crucial role in defining spaces and spheres, in
shaping intimacy and eccentricity.
Here we need to stress that some authors have questioned the use of notions
such as “everyday life” or “intimacy” when applied to pre-modern societies. In
their view, those notions were not common among the ancient Greeks, but
modern contructions that we should not project back to ancient communities.
Acording to this, one would tend to think that only capitalist alienation gave way
to a zealous keeping of a domain of intimacy 14. On the contrary, it can be
argued that the notions of “day” and “daytime” and the thinking about what kind
of life the individual can lead in accordance with a daily routine, largely
precedes the rise of capitalism.15 On the other hand, ancient religions appear as
a coherent corpus of feasts and celebrations that interrupt and articulate
11
See Graf (1980). Cf. Hartog (2001, 267 ff.).
12
See Henrichs (1993, 14). Not surprisingly wine has been considered in its « sakrale
Funktion als Mittler zwischen profaner und heiliger Welt, zwischen Menschen und Göttern »
(Spode, 2001, 49). Also not suprisingly, authorities eventually needed to control rituals related to
wine consumption and to Dionysiac religion. In Rome, the senatus consultus de Bacchanalibus
(in 186 BCE), which prohibited under penalty of death meetings of initiates in mystery bacchic
cults, represents an extreme case.
13
The modern construction of Dionysus as the conceptualization of the “other” is a product of
the Parisian équipe —pioneered by Marcel Detienne and Jean-Pierre Vernant (notwithstanding
their debt to Louis Gernet; cf. Henrichs, 1993, 31 ff.).
14
See in particular Lefebvre (1968).
15
See on this issue the appraisals by Giulia Sissa and Marcel Detienne (1989, 13 ff.).
3
everyday life all year long. Even if they do not always signal a breaking of the
rules or an upturning of order, feasts always constitute a momentary gap that
inaugurates a new social code, different from the one that rules normal activity
in a given group.16 Be as it may, wine consumption in a Dionysiac context
should be seen as an expression of dissolution or of shifting of the limits of
everyday experience.17
§2
Indeed, the Hochkulturen know, from the very onset, a strong opposition
between beer and wine. In the fourth millennium BCE, Sumerians and
Egyptians produced a kind of drink similar to modern wine. But much more
widespread than wine was beer. Wine was reserved for the elites and, most of
all, consecrated to religious cult. 20 That was only the beginning of an ever-
lasting story of cultural cleavages involving wine and beer. With time, this
oppositon was instrumented for political reasons. In Europe, such a dispute
opposing wine drinkers and beer drinkers has experienced periodic
resurgences up to the present day. Attempts have been made to draw a clear
borderline enclosing wine producing and wine consuming areas, as a territory
sharing common values and a common background. According to this view, the
divide would revive the old Roman limes. To some, this is no less than
recognition of the contradictory nature of civilized sophisticated Mediterranean
peoples, as opposed to Northeners of Germanic descent.
16
Cf. Calame (1982-1983). Finally, as Jean-Pierre Vernant has shown, Greek religious
thought is entirely capable of conceptualizating notions of movement and permanence, from the
firmness of the hearth to the centrifugal departure from the oikos (cf. Vernant, 1991 [orig.
1963]).
17
As for the religious experiences undertaken by the followers of Dionysus, see Henrichs
(1993, 14-15).
18
For the Greek world, and the constructions of its/their identity/identities, we cite a single
work only, for its massive impact: Hartog (2001; orig. 1981). See also Hall (1997).
19
The notion of ‘otherness’, with its philosophical ramifications (Martin Buber, Emmanuel
Lévinas), has reached several academic spheres. For the construction of the Oriental ‘other’,
and the mirroring of the Occidental identity, see Saïd (1978).
20
« Die getreidenreichen Bewässerungskulturen entschieden sich für das Bier —Traubenwein
war den Reichen und dem Kultus vorbehalten » (Spode, 2001, 47).
4
In this dynamics of indentity-building, France stands out as a case in point: the
ideological power of wine as a national product is shown with clarity. As Barthes
has argued, in the French imaginarium, wine expresses conviviality within the
group and virility in the individual but, above all, shows the boundaries of the
national character.21 Nothing reflects more closely the essential frenchness of
red wine as the public commotion provoked by Mr. Coty when taking office as
the country’s Prime Minister: he dared to show himself in press photographies
with a bottle of beer at home, instead of “mandatory” red wine.
§3
The mystery about the dry martini is how it can be both elitist (only the initiated
drink it, in exquisite loneliness, at the end of a hectic day) and “national”
(strangers just don’t know how to mix a dry martini). Both class divide and
“national” consensus are cointained in the dry martini. Dry martini drinkers may
be despised by American uninitiated individuals but hardly anyone would deny
that the dry martini is a milestone of American heritage, its true knowledge
being banned to strangers. The dry martini develops as a symbol throughout
the 20th century, and the roots of its unusual combination of characters can be
found in the theories of individualism that spread since the second half of the
19th century —such as the Nietzschean superman and related schools of
thought. They reconcile egocentrism and community engagement in a single
message. In American culture, cosmopolitan leadership and down-to-earth
melting pot form a whole that one can even drink.
The right proportions of gin (of Dutch origin), vermouth (French or Italian) and
olive (Greek) result in a genuine American product. At first sight, a combination
of foreign products is behind the dry martini, but its independent character and
potential for self-representation were evident from the beginning. 22 Cocktails,
and especially dry martini, became statesmen’s and diplomats’ favourite drink
between 1930 and 1960. Some American presidents were aware of the value of
dry martini as an ideological tool as well as a means to stage world dominance
21
See Barthes (1970).
22
Cf. DeVoto (1951, 22): « [The martini is the] supreme American gift to world culture ».
5
in meetings abroad.23 Somehow, by its both simple and sophisticated formula,
as well as by the evolving proportion of its ingredients tending to a chimeric
dryness, the dry martini appears as a compendium of cosmopolitan American
culture and politics in the 20th century world.
At the same time, though, the dry martini’s contribution to American identity
entails detachment and competition vis-à-vis other nations. 24 The telling of
uncountable anecdotes strenghtens this reality by stressing the nightmares of
any American who insists on ordering a dry martini when abroad. 25 As a matter
of fact —conventional wisdom would claim— the secrets of a perfect dry martini
are not accessible to foreign would-be connoisseurs.
On the other hand, like wine in ancient Greece, the dry martini is a product
perfectly integrated into the male sphere.26 As a male drink, the cocktail projects
itself outwards, in accordance with the eccentric tendencies that it sparks. But
also, like ancient Greek wine, it is much more than a gender marker in society.
With female alcohol consumption increasing since the turning of the 19th
century, a phenomenon of reversal could be at work. 27
23
Cf. Edmunds (1998, 3): « American presidents wielded the Martini in meetings with their
Soviet counterparts in the 1940s and 1950s ». US presidents consumers of dry martini: Hoover,
Roosvelt, Nixon, Ford and G. Bush.
24
See above n. 19.
25
Cf. Edmunds (1998, 3-7): « The Martini is American –it is not European, Asian, or African ».
26
Cf. Edmunds (1998, 18-22): « The Martini is a man’s, not a woman’s, drink ».
27
Cf. Edmunds (2002, 53): « Women’s moderate at-home drinking was to set the pattern for
alcoholic consumption in the twentieth century ». As shown by, C. G. Murdock (1998, 105),
female alcohol at home consumption in Victorian America, « legitimized as no other beverage
could alcohol consumption within the home ».
6
Bibliography
7
Versnel, H. S. (1987). “Greek Myth and Ritual: The Case of Kronos”, in J.
Bremmer (ed.), Interpretations of Greek Mythology, London.
—— (1994). “The Roman Festival for Bona Dea and the Greek Thesmophoria”,
in Transition and Reversal in Myth and Ritual. Inconsistencies in Greek
and Roman Religion II, Leiden-New York-Köln (ps. 228-288).