Page:Troja by Heinrich Schliemann.djvu/95

from it which passed by the name of bread (σίτος), and which in the Homeric poems we always find on the table as an indispensable accessory of all meals. The poet nowhere tells us how it was made or what was its form, nor does he ever mention ovens, which are certainly not found also in the ruins of Troy. I would suggest that the Homeric bread was probably made in the same way as we see the Bedouins of the desert make theirs, who, after having kneaded the dough, turn it into the form of pancakes, which they throw on the embers of a fire kindled in the open air, where it gets baked in a few moments. A similar mode of baking bread seems also implied by the fact that leathern bags filled with such meal (άλφιτα) were taken for use on the road in a journey; thus, for example, we see that, when Telemachus prepares for his journey to Pylos, he orders Euryclea to put him up twenty measures of this meal in leathern bags.^[1] Professor W. Helbig^[2] calls attention to the fact that, as I have stated with regard to the Trojans, there is among the inhabitants of the terramare villages no trace of any arrangement for baking bread, and he holds that we must conclude from this that, like the Germans, they prepared a sort of porridge from pounded grains. Helbig adds: "In the public Roman rite, which here, as nearly everywhere else, kept up the ancient custom, not bread was offered, but always parched spelt-grains, the far tostum, flour spiced with salt, the mola salsa, or porridge, puls. Varro^[3] and Pliny^[4] are therefore perfectly right in stating that for a long time the Romans