Ambrosia and Nectar — Greek Mythology

Food in fiction

What it is

Ambrosia and nectar are the food and drink of the Olympian gods in Greek mythology — the substances that sustain divine life and that are categorically unavailable to humans. Ambrosia (from ambrotos — immortal, not mortal) is the food; nectar (from nek- — death + -tar — to overcome, i.e., "that which overcomes death") is the drink. Together they constitute a divine diet that is specifically opposed to the human diet: gods eat ambrosia, humans eat grain.

The source work

The Iliad, the Odyssey, and the Homeric Hymns (8th-7th century BCE) are the primary literary sources. Ambrosia and nectar appear throughout Greek literature from Homer through the later classical period.

How it works — the theological logic:

In Greek mythology, the distinction between humans and gods is partly metabolic. Gods do not eat grain (sitos — the Greek word for grain, especially barley and wheat); they eat ambrosia. Gods do not drink wine; they drink nectar. This dietary distinction is part of the ontological distinction between mortal and immortal: to be human is partly to be grain-eating, to be divine is to eat the divine substance.

The specific theological logic is elaborated across numerous myths:

When the gods wish to preserve a human body, they anoint it with ambrosia to prevent decay. Thetis anoints the body of Patroclus with ambrosia when it is in danger of corruption (Iliad 19.38-39). The same is done for Hector's body at Zeus's command (Iliad 23.185-187). Ambrosia, in this usage, is not food but a preservative — the divine substance that opposes the human processes of death and decay.

When Tantalus steals ambrosia from the gods and gives it to humans (in one version of his myth), his punishment is tantalizing — the eternal hunger and thirst while surrounded by food and drink that recedes when he reaches for it. The word "tantalizing" in English derives directly from this myth: Tantalus (Tantalos) undergoes a punishment calibrated to the crime of attempting to feed humans on divine food.

When Calypso offers Odysseus immortality (and presumably divine food) if he will stay with her, he declines — choosing mortality and the human world over divine existence. This choice is partly a dietary choice: to become immortal would mean abandoning the human foods of the mortal world.

The infant Achilles is allegedly fed ambrosia instead of human food by his mother Thetis in some accounts — which is one of the explanations for his near-divine invulnerability.

The real-world candidates — what ambrosia might have been:

Food historians and classical scholars have proposed numerous real substances as the likely real-world basis for the mythological concept:

Honey is the most widely supported candidate and deserves serious consideration. Honey was described as "the food of the gods" in numerous ancient cultures, including Greece, India (where honey appears in the Vedic madhu, a sacred honey mead), Egypt (where bees were associated with the divine and honey was placed in tombs for the afterlife), and Mesopotamia. Honey has several properties that support divine associations: it does not spoil (honey from ancient Egyptian tombs has been found still edible after 3,000 years); it is extraordinarily sweet, unlike any other naturally available sweetener; it is produced by insects in a manner that seemed miraculous to ancient observers; and it has genuine medicinal properties, including antibacterial activity. In ancient Greece, honey was used in ritual libations, in the preparation of the dead, and as a component of sacred foods.

Mead — fermented honey — is a related candidate. Mead is the oldest known fermented beverage in the world; evidence of mead production has been found at sites dating to approximately 7000 BCE in China. In Indo-European mythological traditions, the divine drink is frequently a fermented honey beverage: the soma of the Vedic tradition (which may be an early reference to mead before the term was transferred to a psychoactive plant preparation), the mead of Norse mythology (Odin's mead of poetry, which conferred the gift of poetic inspiration), and possibly the nectar of Greek mythology are all fermented honey drinks in their original contexts.

Psychoactive plant preparations have been proposed by scholars who note that the effects described for ambrosia and nectar — which include not merely sustenance but the conferral of an altered state, of divine insight, of temporary transcendence — are consistent with psychoactive substances. This argument connects to the parallel hypothesis about the kykeon of the Eleusinian Mysteries discussed above.

Olive oil is a less-common but interesting candidate: in Greece, olive oil was associated with the divine (the olive tree was given to Athens by Athena as her founding gift), and olive oil was used for ritual anointing in the same ways that ambrosia is described as being used.

The word "ambrosia" in English:

The word "ambrosia" has survived in English as an adjective (ambrosial) meaning "deliciously fragrant or sweet" — the linguistic inheritance of the myth, stripped of its theological content. An ambrosial scent is a divine scent; an ambrosial taste is a divine taste. The word has also been applied to a specific American dessert: "ambrosia salad," a mixture of canned mandarin oranges, pineapple chunks, coconut flakes, miniature marshmallows, and sour cream or whipped topping, popular in the American South and Midwest from the mid-20th century onward. This modest preparation — a sweet salad of canned fruit — has been given the name of the food of the gods, in one of the more cheerfully irreverent acts of culinary naming in the American tradition.

Nectar in modern language:

Nectar has been applied to the sweet secretion of flowers that bees collect to make honey — a word choice that connects the mythological nectar to the bee-honey candidate for the original substance. "Nectar" in English also means any exceptionally delicious drink, and is used commercially in juice products (fruit nectar) to indicate a sweetened and thickened juice preparation.

Cultural legacy

The theological framework of ambrosia and nectar — the idea that there is a categorically different food for a categorically different order of being — has had remarkable persistence in Western thought. It appears in the eucharistic theology of Christianity (the bread and wine of communion as divine food that transforms the human eater); in the alchemical tradition (the elixir vitae or philosopher's stone that confers immortality); in fairy tale (the magic food that transforms those who eat it); and in modern science fiction (the various alien foods and substances that cannot be safely consumed by humans). The specific logic — that eating the food of a different order of being binds you to that order, or transforms you into it — runs through the Persephone myth, the Eden story, and numerous later narratives.

Reference notes

See: Honey (Cuisinopedia — Fermented & Preserved Foods, honey and mead traditions)
See: Mead (Cuisinopedia — Fermented & Preserved Foods, fermented beverages)
See: Olive Oil (Cuisinopedia — Oils & Fats)
See: Greek Cuisine traditions (Cuisinopedia — regional entries)

---