| Sumario: | This paper is concerned with Archestratos' Hedypatheia , a mid-fourth-century BCE text that stands at the head of a rich tradition of Greek gastronomic literature. The first section is concerned with changing definitions of Greek identity in the fourth century and argues that Archestratos' work imagines a core Greek world extending from Sicily to the northern Aegean. This definition of a Greek world marked by taste should be seen as complementary to discussions of Greek identity focused on descent and language. The central section develops the argument that gastronomy emerges as a hallmark of Greek cultural identity by demonstrating that Archestratos' descriptions of fish, a luxury item that enjoyed a unique status in the foodways of the Greeks, is paired with sex. This both reflects the commodification of women in Greek culture and is also an early example of an Alexandrian aesthetic, according to which the reader's ability to tease out recondite and obscure lexical and sexual allusions marks the reader as culturally Greek. Getting the joke is proof that one is Greek.
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