Living the Iranian dolce vita: Herodotus on wine drinking and luxury among the Persians

Commensal behaviour, and in particular wine consumption, is an important field to which strategies of self-identity can be applied. The ethnographic surveys of the Ionian historian Herodotus focus on the cultural and social differences that he believes separate other peoples from the Greeks. This paper examines in what ways he associates wine drinking among the Persians with cultural sophistication, luxury and the good life in general. The dominant view among Greek writers of the Classical period was that luxury was reducible to decadence, and Herodotus is no exception. His detailed accounts of excessive Persian wine drinking and a decaying Persian society are the outcomes of his idea of historical causation, which predominantly is applied to the Achaemenid Empire. Even if he is inclined to explain cultural differences by reference to climate, geography and political system, analysing how these differences arise and change with time, he resorts to literary images and stereotypes about Persian society. This narrative feature, which ultimat- ely derives from his background as oral performer, prevents him from grasping the ideological dimensions of the Persian display of luxury