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From The Inns of Greece & Rome, and a history of Hospitality from the Dawn of Time to the Middle Ages, by W. C. Firebaugh, with an Introduction by Wallace Rice and Illustrations by Norman Lindsay, Chicago: Pascal Covici; 1928; pp. 37-52.
THE INNS OF GREECE AND ROME
37Feast tendered Telemachus by Menelaus — Ardor of hospitality passes with the Trojan War — Tokens of hospitality, of copper, of brass, of ivory, issued in the Middle Ages — The origin of luggage checks — Tokens of credit — Vitruvius’s description of apartments for guests and entertainment afforded — Origin of the proxy — The sumptuous inns of Persia.
After what we have just said of the Spartans we are impelled in justice to them to introduce Homer’s description of the entertainment and hospitality tendered Telemachus by Menelaus. We shall find that in that age, the standards were the same.
“And they came to Lacedaemon lying low among the caverned hills, and drave to the dwelling of renowned Menelaus. Him they found giving a feast in his house to many friends of his kin, a feast for the wedding of his noble son and daughter . . . So they were feasting through the great vaulted hall, the neighbors and the kinsmen of renowned Menelaus, making merry; and among them a divine minstrel was singing to the lyre, and as he began the song two tumblers in the company whirled through the midst of them.
“Meanwhile those twain, the hero Telemachus and the splendid son of Nestor, made halt at the entry of the gate, they and their horses. And the lord Eteoneus came forth and saw them, the ready squire of renowned Menelaus; and he went through the palace to bear the tidings to the shepherd of the people, and standing near spake to him winged words:
“ ‘Menelaus, fosterling of Zeus, there are two strangers, whosoever they be, two men like to the lineage of great Zeus. Say, shall we loose their swift horses from under 37 the yoke, or send them onward to some other host who shall receive hem kindly?’
“Then in sore displeasure spake to him Menelaus of the fair hair: ‘Eteoneus son of Boethous, truly thou wert not a fool aforetime, but now for this once, like a child thou talkest folly. Surely ourselves ate much hospitable cheer of other men, ere we twain came hither, even if in time to come Zeus haply gave us rest from affliction. Nay go, unyoke the horses of the strangers, and as for the men, lead them forward to the house to feast with us.’
“So they loosed the sweating horses from beneath the yoke, and fastened them at the stalls of the horses, and threw beside them spelt, and therewith mixed white barley, and tilted the chariot against the shining faces of the gateway, and led the men into the hall divine. . . .
“But after they had gazed their fill, they went to he polished baths and bathed them. Now when the maidens had bathed them and anointed them with olive oil, and cast about them thick coats and doublets, they sat on chairs by Menelaus, son of Atreus. And a handmaid bare water for the hands in a goodly golden ewer, and poured it forth over a silver basin to wash withal; and to their side she drew a polished table, and a grave dame bare food and set it by them, and laid upon the board many dainties, giving freely of such things as she had by her, and a carver lifted and placed by them platters of divers kind of flesh, and nigh them he set golden bowls. So Menelaus of the fair hair greeted the twain and spoke:
“ ‘Taste ye food and be glad, and thereafter when ye have supped, we shall ask what men ye are; for the blood of your parents is not lost in you, but ye are of the line of men that are sceptered kings the fosterlings of Zeus; for no churls could beget sons like you.’
38“So spake he, and took and set before them the fat ox-chine roasted, which they had given him as his own mess by way of honor.”
And in the first canto of the Odyssey we read of the welcome extended to the unknown goddess by Telemachus:
“But now I pray thee, abide here, though eager to be gone, to the end that after thou hast bathed and had thy heart’s desire, thou mayest wend to the ship joyful in spirit, with a costly gift and very goodly, to be an heirloom of my giving, such as dear friends give to friends.”
In the third canto of the same poem, when Telemachus and Pallas were entertained by Nestor, we find no inquiries until after food and drink have assuaged the weariness and hunger and thirst:
“But when they had put from them the desire of meat and drink, Nestor of Gerenia, lord of chariots, first spake among them:
“ ‘Now is the better time to inquire and ask of the strangers who they are, now that they have had their delight of food. Strangers, who are ye? Whence sail ye over the wet ways? On some trading enterprise, or at adventure do ye rove, even as sea-robbers over the brine?’ ”
Athenaeus comments very pleasantly on that usage so dignified and so in keeping with sturdy ideals:
“A guest was received,” says he, “he was invited to drink, and lastly he was interrogated, and, his drunkenness aiding his sincerity, he sometimes told more than he wished.” Thus speaks the spiritual disciple of Epicurus; but he did well; that liberal confidence, that hospitality open to all, the house of the father of the family was sanctuary and asylum, a shelter where the wayfarer knew a welcome awaited him, lodgings for parent or friend, 39 it is certainly one of the most beautiful aspects of the Greek civilization of the heroic age and is entitled to the most sincere reverence which after ages can lavish upon it, if, as is said, imitation is the most sincere form of flattery.
Some men, more ardent in their humanity, sought to outdo even that pagan age with an élan more prompt to bestow the benefits of an evangelical charity and even went so far in their desire to confer hospitality upon all as to erect such places for this purpose. Among these was Axilos, son of Theutranus, native of Arisbe in Troad, who was slain by Diomedes.
“He had opened on the public road,” says Homer, “a house in which he gave asylum to all who passed.”
We should bear in mind that example of practical hospitality and its benefits as shown by the heroic age, also, as it has a vital bearing upon our subject and, as Pouqueville has very justly remarked, “It would be necessary to cite all antiquity to make known the important which attached to hospitality in those times.”
Still it should not be believed that this great ardor for hospitality was always general throughout and that sometimes it did not cease to function, for cause. When we reach the period of the Trojan War, the Golden Fleece, and the age of Theseus, that is to say, the end of the heroic age, this beautiful devotion begins to break down. That fraternal bond which had formerly seemed to unite all men as though in one great family, that fraternal chain, let us call it, seemed little by little to break under the strain. All arms were no longer open to the wayfarer. We enter upon an epoch less primitive and more defiant wherein hospitality deserts the villages and seeks its shelter in the country, where Zeus and Hermes, driven away by an entire population hardened and haughty, could find no asylum except 40 in such a cottage as that of Philemon and Baucis. It is nothing if not a complete break with the ancient tradition and no longer would it be as under the ancient regime, that one saw the face of his host for the first time when that host gave the wayfarer food and shelter; hospitality came to have its preferences and to have also its exceptions and reserves. In the cult of Zeus Xenios one might place his faith, but he would be better served were he to rely upon his friends and their near relations and retainers, and the people who addressed them. Thereafter, hospitality flourished no longer as a general axiom, nor was it actually accorded as a right except to such as were deemed to have a just claim upon the host. It is true that the question of defilement did not at that time enter into the question as it had amongst the Egyptians and Hebrews (it will be remembered that the Egyptians could not eat with the Hebrews for such would have been an abomination to the Egyptians, and the Jews were also constrained by the same fetish, at least in the later periods of their history). Daniel, for example, could not partake of the wine and viands of the Babylonians for some dietary reason, and many of the most savage riots between the Roman legionaries and the Jews were probably caused by the same considerations.
Thus, in course of time certain tokens came into circulation (tesserae hospitalitatis), which served to identify the incoming stranger and enabled him to substantiate his claim to the best the house afforded. These tokens were issued as mandates of Zeus Xenios, although the general consideration to which he had been accustomed in an earlier and happier age had long been atrophied. The cabinets of Southern Europe have preserved several specimens and as a general thing they were of gold or silver, broken in an irregular way, each family keeping a part which needed the other to complete it. Sometimes they 41 were of copper or brass, ivory or even of wood, so cut that the line of cleavage by which they were joined was difficult to imitate and thus prevented fraud.
These tokens of hospitality, of which Tomassin has transmitted to us certain likenesses, served still another purpose during the Middle Ages, as tokens of recognition for political purposes, and they played a sinister part in the affair of St. Bartholomew, and earlier still in the Sicilian Vespers. From this system we derive hotel bills and probably all checking systems, such as baggage checks, and the like. When a guest parted from his host the token was broken and each retained a piece. As no perfect result could be attained in matching up the whole without the actual parts, the identification was sufficient for all purposes. Nor did their usefulness pale with the death of either major party to the contract: they could be bequeathed to heirs on either side and were honored as long as there was anyone left to honor them. In the Poenulus of Plautus, the Young Carthaginian remarks to Agoratocles, “Thy father Antidamus was my guest; this token of hospitality was the bond between us,” and Agoratocles immediately made answer, “and thou shalt receive hospitality from me.”
When a stranger arrived, bearing the token, the apartment reserved solely for guests were prepared as expeditiously as possible, even as the inhabitants of the French provinces who are still the very soul of hospitality, to this day maintain the guest chamber (chambres de reserve); the household supplies were seen to, meals planned, and, in a word, a feast was prepared which taxed the resources of the house to the uppermost.
It is of interest to note in connection with these tokens of hospitality, that there was an ancient Slavic custom which was current in Russia, Poland, Servia, Bulgaria, and other Slavic countries, down to a period of about a 43 hundred years ago, and by virtue of this custom, the peasants drank on credit. The token of credit was a stick, which the proprietor of the public house notched with as many notches as there were days in the calendar until their harvest of hops, barley, or wheat should be marketed. When the account was liquidated, the stick was broken in twain and debtor and creditor retained each his piece. Should it happen that the account was not liquidated as per contract, and there was no good reason for the failure to meet the obligation, the publican would threaten to break the stick and retain both pieces. This was tantamount to the ruin of the credit of the debtor throughout all the district, and furthermore, there was a quasi-religious significance to the ceremony which terrified the illiterate peasant to such a degree that he would even go on his knees to prevent such an untoward happening. The practice came to an end due to improved methods in accounting.
Vitruvius, in his treatise on Architecture has spoken of these special apartments, such as the owner of a house of the better class always kept in readiness for a guest whom Zeus Xenios might send him, and, curiously enough, he has described one of these receptions for us:
“The peristylium, and this part of the house, is called Andronitis, because the men employ themselves therein without interruption from the women. On the right and left, moreover, are small sets of apartments, each having its own door, triclinium, and bed-chamber, so that on the arrival of guests they need not enter the peristylium, but are received in rooms (hospitalia) appropriated to their occupation. For when the Greeks were more refined, and possessed greater wealth, they provided a separate table and triclinia and bed-chambers for their guests. On the day of their arrival they were invited to dinner, and were afterwards supplied with poultry, eggs, herbs, 44 fruits, and other produce of the country. Hence the painters gave the name of Xenia to presents given to guests. Masters of families, therefore, living in these apartments, were quite, as it were, at home, being at liberty to do as they pleased therein.”
It is readily seen that a host might have a certain amount of ostentatious vanity at stake in thus welcoming the arrival of strangers and giving them the run of his estates. Trimalchio had it in abundance, and Nasidienus had also his share. On this account Theophrastus has introduced a host entertaining his guests at open table to show their number and his own magnificence. Thus does the Greek caricature Ostentation.
“When he is living in a hired house, he will say (to anyone who does not know better) that it is the family mansion; but that he means to sell it, as he finds it too small for his entertainments.”
Yet hospitable as the Greeks were, both in honest intention and deed, they nevertheless possessed types such as even a Trimalchio might have envied. Theophrastus has drawn one such to life:
“Cool cistern-water has he at his house; and a garden with many fine vegetables, and a cook who understands dressed dishes. His house, he will say, is a perfect inn; always crammed; and his friends are like the pierced cask — he can never fill them with his benefits!”
Thus have the ancient customs atrophied when we reach the age of Theophrastus, who holds such pretentious masquerading up to the ridicule it merits.
Prudence counseled prospective guests to see that the house where they were to be entertained was not overcrowded lest the welcome wear thin, and what Molière said of esteem might easily have been thought by them:
Esteem is founded upon preference.
This is an ancient method surviving today.
45In this connection let us listen to Aelian’s recital of a little anecdote in which Stratonice, the flute girl, played a leading role, a guest disdainful of those houses too liberally opened to hospitality:
“Stratonice, the flute girl, having been accorded a welcome in a house which she had been invited to enter, would have been greatly flattered by such attention which she had found in a strange land in which she had no reason to expect hospitality and no ties to entitle her to that consideration.
“She presented her most graceful thanks to the host whose kindness had prompted such attention and received her with such good grace; but, arriving as an unexpected guest, and perceiving that the house was open to any and all who wished to stop and stay over: ‘Let us go,” said she to her slave, ‘we are like a pigeon that has taken to a tree, what you mistook for a house of hospitality is only an inn.’ ”
Again, it might happen that strangers would be excluded from hospitality through a certain disdain of ancient manners and customs, or because of certain preferences of citizens who refused to see a guest in a man who did not present the token of amity. It might happen that all the travellers recently arrived at some Greek village would be unable to evoke any tie of friendship, and therefore were placed under the necessity of finding a lodging. Nor could they, as in the Hebrew villages, go and camp in the public place. Some countries there were, as for instance the island of Crete, where a certain number of houses were perpetually kept in readiness for strangers, and where tables were always kept set and garnished.
“There were,” says Athenaeus, “amongst all the habitations of the island of Crete two houses designated by the name of syssities; one was called the andreion, 46 the other the koimeterion, and these were the places in which strangers were lodged. In the house set aside for the common repasts, two tables were set; they were called hospitalieres, and the strangers were given the first place at these tables, the other arranging themselves thereafter in order.”
In other parts of Greece they constructed near the temples of the great gods vast shelters, veritable free hostelries, where wayfarers found not only shelter but also beds consecrated to the god adored in the nearest temple. The hostelry which the Lacedaemonians erected in the precinct of Hera on the ruins of Plataea we may suppose to have been an institution of the kind just spoken of. The passage of Thucydides in which he speaks of it is very curious and we reproduce it here; moreover, it is the only passage in the works of the historian in which he speaks of the inns of that period, giving any details as to their furnishings, style, and the like:
“They (the Lacedaemonians) afterwards razed the whole place to the very foundations, and built near the precinct of Hera an inn forming a square of two hundred feet; it had two stories, and chambers all around. They used the roofs and the doors of the Plataeans; and of the brass and iron articles of furniture found within the walls they made couches, which they dedicated to Hera.”
The religious usage which constructed for wayfarers places of abode in the vicinity of the temples may probably have been derived from the devotional custom of religious hospitality native to the Orient.
Lucian, in his Syrian Goddess, has a passage which has a bearing on the question. He is speaking of the hospitality which was the due of those coming to worship the goddess, if they be strangers:
“When he is arrived at Hierapolis, he lodges with a host whom he does not know, as though he were lodged 4 with public hosts in each town, and he is received according to the country from which he comes. The Assyrians are called tutors as they are the ones who give wayfarers the necessary instructions.”
The Athenian proxenoi of whom we shall presently speak were neither more nor less than the tutors of the Syrian countries. In bringing up the subject of the proxenos it may be well to discuss him and his function, as his descendant in our times, I mean the proxy of our boards of directors, scarcely measures up to the standard set by the archtype of the species. The ancient proxenos was not a “yes” man for any individual or state.
The office of proxenos grew out of public hospitality, that hospitality which subsisted between two cities or states, and the functions of the official closely approximate those of our consuls who love their duty and do it, in spite of political or tropical inertia. In the primitive times when the Greek tribes were under tyrants a quasi-public hospitality may have subsisted between the reigning families of the various tribes and this in turn may have produced similar relations between their subjects. With the abolition of the tyrants, the tradition was probably carried on as a heritage of the past. Then again, some prominent citizen of one state may have had great interests and influence in another and thus have been able to serve the interests of his fellow citizens in that state as well as their interests in his own. This he would do as a private citizen until his services were recognized and rewarded by one or both peoples. When public hospitality was established between two states and no private citizen presented himself as representative, it became necessary that person be appointed in each state to look after the welfare of visiting citizens of the other, and show them hospitality, and the officials who were thus appointed were known as proxenoi. When a state appointed 48 a proxenos it could send one of its own citizens acceptable to the authorities in the other or it could appoint a citizen of the other state to represent its interests there. The Spartans, in early times, held to the former, but in later times the custom of conferring the honor of proxenos upon a citizen of the other state with whom hospitium publicum had been concluded seems to have gained in strength and usage. With the exception of Sparta, the common method of appointing a proxenos was by a show of hands. In Sparta, the king had the right. The principal duties of the proxenos were to receive citizens coming from the state he represented, especially the ambassadors, to see that they gained admission to the assembly, to see that they had seats in the theatre, to act as patron to the strangers and to mediate between the two states if any misunderstanding or dispute arose.
Should a stranger die in the state the proxenos of his country took charge of his effects and property.
As regards the honors and privileges to which a proxenos was entitled from the state which he served, the different Greek states followed different principles; some honored their proxenos with the full civic franchise, and other distinctions besides. The right of acquiring property in the state of which he thus became a citizen does not seem to have been general as when this was allowed it was as the result of special legislation or authority. A foreigner appointed in his own country as proxenos of Athens enjoyed in his own person the right of hospitality at Athens whenever he visited that city, in addition to all the other privileges that a foreigner could possess without actually becoming a citizen. Amongst these privileges, though not necessarily set forth in the authority conferred upon him, were:
1. Epigamia . . . the right of additional marriage.
2. The right to acquire property at Athens.
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3. Exemption from payment of taxes.
4. Inviolability in times of peace and war, on land and sea.
There were times when Athenian commerce was so heavy that almost every citizen might have been called proxenos (unofficially) because of the multitude of social and commercial ties which bound them to other cities. The proxenos, however, was a public character and acted as such officially. As an example, when the representatives of Megara and Corinth arrived the proxenos appointed by those cities lodged them in his own house, served them as guide, lent his credit to their negotiations, and in a word, as has been well remarked by Artaud in a note on the Birds of Aristophanes, “He met every demand which the strangers coming from allied cities could make upon him.” The real distinction between our own consuls and the ancient proxenos was this: the primary and imperious duty of the proxenos was hospitality: everything else came in due order; whereas hospitality seems to be the last duty of our own officials who have inherited the chiton of authority under a foreign flag.
But even this institution which embraced so many of the needs of travelling inexperience failed to meet the requirements of that fine old humanitarian Xenophon, nor did it measure up to his generous ideal of what true Athenian hospitality should comprise. It was his desire that every foreign sailor who disembarked at Athens should find free and clean lodgings and that every stranger, from whatever country whatsoever, Greek or barbarian, would always be sure of finding shelter in a public inn. Therefore in his Treatise on the Causes of Revenue he demands the levy of a special impost with the proceeds of which he would construct such inns near the harbors for the accommodations of pilots and other 50 watermen, “in addition to those already in operation,” for those who should come to Athens.
All this Xenophon had seen in his residence in Persia, where a system of inns, posts, and everything necessary and convenient to people who travel was well organized. There is little doubt that what he had seen in that country had armed his criticism of the methods and crudities in his native land, and as for the Cyropaedia, it is worthy of credit. It was written at the request of a prince, but with the unmistakable intention of amusing and instructing the youth of Athens; it is not so much his desire to describe Asia and Asiatic culture, as it is to inform his countrymen of their own shortcomings and state of unpreparedness, that they may remedy them. His life among the Persians was an active one, and an observant; what he has written of, he has seen. Before the days of Xenophon’s maturity, Herodotus had seen the Persian system in operation and had marveled at it.
“The first courier,” says he, “turned his dispatches over to a second, the second to a third, and they passed them along from one to another just as among the Greeks the torch passes from hand to hand in the rites of Hephaestos. The distance traveled by a horse is called, in the Persian language, ‘Angareion.’ ” There are several other passages in the writings of Herodotus in which he makes mention of the Persian posting system, and he devotes some space to one detail which Xenophon scarcely notices; the hostelry which the Great King maintained at each station. He rarely mentions one without touching upon the other.
Henricus Stephanus, in commenting upon this passage of Herodotus, emphasizes the immense distances in the empire of the Persians by saying that between the sea and Susa, the capital of the Great King, there were one hundred and eleven stations and caravanserai. The inns 51 must have been exceedingly sumptuous, for we must remember that the king went so far in his luxurious and sanitary measures that he carried boiled drinking water with him in silver tanks, in an age that knew not Lister. Hence it must follow that when he stopped at an inn it must have been all that comfort could require and money could buy. Aelian also mentions these magnificent caravanserai that were in operation throughout the empire, from Asia Minor to Medea. Alexander stopped at one of these places when beginning his march against Darius: it was one of the stathmoi basilikoi on the frontiers of Phrygia, and Mithridates also stopped at the same caravanserai, deeming it a favorable omen as he was thus destined, as he believed, to follow in the footsteps of Alexander and overrun all Asia.
The Greeks, however, failed utterly to profit from the information conveyed by Herodotus and Xenophon. They detested the Persians so thoroughly that they scorned to learn from them and the rapid posts and luxurious inns of the Asiatic empire were never objects familiar to the sight and experience of the dwellers in the little peninsula. In many ways they were right, as the extent of their country was infinitely small compared to Persia, and their states were independent, whereas in the empire there was a powerful central authority.
In place of imitating the Persian system and deriving from it the things which might have aided their development, they gave a malignant turn to a term used by their former enemies in their posting service. We have spoken of the term angareion, as the distance a horse traversed; the Greeks adopted the word, made it into a verb and defined it as the sum of all tyrannical force well worthy of the King of Kings, who forced citizens to run with news at the peril of their lies. Strange destiny; that the labors of the father of history and the disciple of 52 Plato should avail their countrymen only in adding to the scope of the dictionary, but should, in years to come, aid the most powerful and deadliest enemy of Hellas in keeping the country in subjection, and should finally contribute the most to the overrunning of occidental civilization with the hordes of Tourania! Alexander’s messages were carried as were those of his ancestors in the days of Agamemnon, and the institution of the hemeradromoi lasted until the Roman Empire instituted a post road system modeled upon that of Persia; a system from which all that have come later were derived. In the days of the lower empire the post system reached its greatest excellence in Greece. The course of empire had shifted from Rome to the city of Constantine and the centralized authority was closer to the Balkan and Asiatic provinces, a fact which sufficiently explains the improvement. Thus we shall arrive at the period when throughout all Greece as in the other provinces of the empire we shall see magnificent military roads with relays of animals, and at every station a hostelry, where travelers may lodge and where couriers may procure fresh horses. The entire establishment shall be meant by the term allage, which Eustathius has specifically informed us is synonymous with stathmos, “by which,” writes he, informally, “we mean not only an inn and a stable but also the places proper to make a halt, the stations where travelers stay over to rest and recruit themselves.” Thus we have again the posting system of Persia, and rest assured, that unless we have been deceived, the master of posts will soon put in an appearance.
And as far as the term angareion is concerned, it has not been lost; we still have it in the Latin angariare and through low Latin in the French hangar, which conveys accurately enough the impression of such shelters as the stathmoi of Persia or the allage of the lower empire.
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