Dépenser/dévorer dans le monde gréco-romain

Antony and Cleopatra once made a bet: who would give the most expensive, extravagant feast? Cleopatra won by throwing an invaluable pearl into a glass of vinegar, which she emptied in one sip. The anecdote, as told by Pliny the Elder, highlights the close link between spending and devouring in Greece and Rome: just as wealth manifests itself through food, the consumption of wealth is seen as an ingestion. Gluttony and prodigality turn out to be mirror images, frequently associated to a wide range of excessive behaviours: tyranny, lust, greed, talkativeness. However, ancient attitudes are complex and ambivalent: in Hellenistic Greece, as well as in the Roman world, lavish expenditures and food luxury are inseparable from the exercise of power. The papers collected in this volume explore this contiguity of economic and alimentary norms in the ancient imagination, and the way they intersect in political, ethical, medical or rhetorical discourses of the Hellenistic and imperial periods.