family events were the occasion of more modest banquets. The banquet became the setting of a specific genre of literature, giving birth to Plato's Symposium, Xenophon's work of the same name, the Table Talk of Plutarch's Moralia, and the Deipnosophists (Banquet of the Learned) of Athenaeus. Syssitia The syssitia ( tà syssítia) were mandatory meals shared by social or religious groups for men and youths, especially in Crete and Sparta. They were referred to variously as hetairia, pheiditia, or andreia (literally, "belonging to men"). They served as both a kind of aristocratic club and as a military mess. Like the symposium, the syssitia was the exclusive domain of men – although some references have been found to substantiate all-female syssitia. Unlike the symposium, these meals were hallmarked by simplicity and temperance. Ingredients and dishes Grains Breads and cakes Cereals formed the staple diet. The two main grains were wheat ( sītos) and barley ( krithē). When Greece was conquered by Rome during the 3rd century B.C., commercial bakeries were well known and spread. In fact Pliny the Elder suggests that the production of bread moved from the family to the “industrial” thanks to the work of skilled artisans (according to Pliny, starting from 171 BC). Plato favored home production over commercial production and in Gorgias, described Thearion the baker as an Athenian novelty who sells goods that could be made at home. In ancient Greece, bread was served with accompaniments known as opson , sometimes rendered in English as "relish". This was a generic term which referred to anything which accompanied this staple food, whether meat or fish, fruit or vegetable. Cakes may have been consumed for religious reasons as well as secular. Philoxenus of Cythera describes in detail some cakes that were eaten as part of an elaborate dinner using the traditional dithyrambic style used for sacred Dionysian hymns: "mixed with safflower, toasted, wheat-oat-white-chickpea-little thistle-little-sesame-honey-mouthful of everything, with a honey rim". Athenaeus says the charisios was eaten at the "all-night festival", but John Wilkins notes that the distinction between the sacred and secular can be blurred in antiquity. Ancient writers mention melitoutta (), which was a honeycake. Wheat Wheat grains were softened by soaking, then either reduced into gruel, or ground into flour ( aleíata) and kneaded and formed into loaves ( ártos) or flatbreads, either plain or mixed with cheese or honey. Leavening was known; the Greeks later