The Daily Grain Consumption of Classical Greek Sailors and Soldiers

Abstract

Contemporary literary and epigraphical sources provide evidence that both one choinix of wheat and two choinikes of ἄλφιτα (barley-meal) were considered sufficient for the daily grain consumption of classical Greek sailors and soldiers. Recent studies, however, reject the ancient evidence for two choinikes οf ἄλφιτα being a usual rate of daily grain consumption on the basis of some grain milling experiments performed by L. Foxhall (L. Foxhall – H. A. Forbes, Σιτομετρεία: The Role of Grain as a Staple Food in Classical Antiquity, Chiron 12, 1982, 41–89). This article demonstrates that an error in the calculation of the weight per volume of barley-meal in these experiments means that we no longer have to reject the weight of the ancient evidence. It then builds on this to use data unavailable to Foxhall and Forbes to provide an estimate of the wheat equivalent of ἄλφιτα, which can allow us to compare the provisioning efforts of Greek military forces to those of other pre-industrial military forces. This figure for the wheat equivalent of ἄλφιτα is confirmed by an analysis of currently available data on the caloric value of wheat, the average stature and weight of classical Greek males, and human energy requirements.