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READING 3 Candice Goucher, Charles LeGuin, and Linda Walton, “My Dinner with Attila the Hun” in In the Balance: Themes in Global History (Boston: McGrawHill, 1998), 341. Abstract: This essay explores the complex cultural meanings associated with food etiquette, and the ways those meaning vary between cultures. It uses an account by the Roman Priscus detailing his dinner with Attila the Hun to demonstrate this point, for Priscus paid close attention to the unique aspects of his host’s dining etiquette. Such accounts give historians a sense of the variety of ways humans have historically shared food. My Dinner with Attila the Hun Sharing food inside the home is one of the most necessary and intimate of human social acts. Human children are born incapable of sustaining themselves independently, so eating food within a family context has served to ensure both the survival of individual offspring and the creation and maintenance of the group system in which children are socialized. In many societies, the choice and preparation of food and the organization of its consumption occur according to strict cultural rules, based on gender and place or rank within the family or household order. The customs of dinner etiquette (table manners) are more than the fussy rules of modern matrons. They reveal much about the order of social groups. Since ancient times, societies have followed strict and meaningful cultural rules when it came time for dinner, as the following excerpt from an account of Priscus (from about 450 C.E.), describing his experience of a meal with the king of the Huns, suggests: Attila invited both parties of us to dine with him about three o’clock that afternoon. We waited for the time of the invitation, and then all of us, envoys from the Western Romans as well, presented ourselves in the doorway facing Attila. In accordance with the national custom the cupbearers gave us a cup for us to make our libations before we took our seats. When that had been done and we had sipped the wine, we went to the chairs where we would sit to have dinner. All the seats were ranged down either side of the room, up against the walls. In the middle Attila was sitting on a couch with a second couch behind him. Behind that a few steps led up to his bed. . . . I think that the more distinguished guests were on Attila’s right, and the second rank on his left. . . . When all were sitting properly in order, a cupbearer came to offer Attila an ivywood bowl of wine, which he took and drank a toast to the man first in order of precedence. . . . Used by permission for Bridging World History, The Annenberg Foundation copyright © 2004 1 After everyone had been toasted, the cupbearers left, and a table was put in front of Attila and other tables for groups of three or four men each. This enabled each guest to help himself to the things put on the table without leaving his proper seat. Attila’s servant entered first with plates full of meat, and those waiting on all the others put bread and cooked food on the tables. A lavish meal, served on silver trenchers, was prepared for us and the other barbarians, but Attila just had some meat on a wooden platter, for this was one aspect of his self-discipline. . . . When the food in the first plates was finished we all got up, and no one, once on his feet, returned to his seat until he had, in the same order as before, drunk the full cup of wine he was handed, with a toast for Attila’s health. After this honour had been paid him, we sat down again and second plates were put on each table with other food on them. This also finished, everyone rose once more, drank another toast and resumed his seat. Whether or not we find king and subjects, husband and wife, or father and children eating together varies greatly across times and cultures. Whatever the nature and pattern of social interaction occurring during mealtimes, food sharing was and is a basic—perhaps the earliest—of human cultural experiences and profoundly shapes social encounters of all kinds throughout a lifetime. Used by permission for Bridging World History, The Annenberg Foundation copyright © 2004 2