a beverage and a meal. It was a barley gruel, to which water and herbs were added. In the Iliad, the beverage also contained grated goat cheese. In the Odyssey, Circe adds honey and a magic potion to it. In the Homeric Hymn to Demeter, the goddess refuses red wine but accepts a kykeon made of water, flour, and pennyroyal. Used as a ritual beverage in the Eleusinian Mysteries, kykeon was also a popular beverage, especially in the countryside: Theophrastus, in his Characters, describes a boorish peasant as having drunk much kykeon and inconveniencing the Assembly with his bad breath. It also had a reputation as a good digestive, and as such, in Peace, Hermes recommends it to the main character who has eaten too much dried fruit. Ancient writers Timachidas the Rhodian wrote 11 books with dinner recipes. Noumenios, Matreas the Pitanean, Hegemon the Thasian, who was called Lentil-soup, Artemidoros, who was called the Pseudoaristophanean, and Philoxenos, son of Leukadios, wrote cookbooks. In addition, some flat-cakes took their names from Philoxenos and were called Philoxenean (Φιλοξένειοι πλακοῦντες). Zopyrinus (Ζωπύρινος) was an author of a work on cookery. Cultural beliefs about the role of food Food played an important part in the Greek mode of thought. Classicist John Wilkins notes that "in the Odyssey for example, good men are distinguished from bad and Greeks from foreigners partly in terms of how and what they ate. Herodotus identified people partly in terms of food and eating". Up to the 3rd century BC, the frugality imposed by the physical and climatic conditions of the country was held as virtuous. The Greeks did not ignore the pleasures of eating, but valued simplicity. The rural writer Hesiod, as cited above, spoke of his "flesh of a heifer fed in the woods, that has never calved, and of firstling kids" as being the perfect closing to a day. Nonetheless, Chrysippus is quoted as saying that the best meal was a free one. Culinary and gastronomical research was rejected as a sign of oriental flabbiness: the inhabitants of the Persian Empire were considered decadent due to their luxurious taste, which manifested itself in their cuisine. The Greek authors took pleasure in describing the table of the Achaemenid Great King and his court: Herodotus, Clearchus of Soli, Strabo and Ctesias were unanimous in their descriptions. In contrast, Greeks as a whole stressed the austerity of their own