ANCIENT MEDITERRANEAN RELIGIONS. Religion shaped both the use and conceptualization of food in the Greco-Roman Mediterranean world. This was true of the consumption of animals, cereals, and other plants. Because of the central role that food played in exchanges between gods and human beings, and between human beings themselves, food contributed to social and group identity. Ethnographers such as Herodotus distinguished Greek sacrifice from Persian, Egyptian, Scythian, and Libyan sacrifice; others distinguished Jewish and Christian rites. Ancient Greek religion located the practitioner in Greek culture and in a particular Greek community. This was important because by the end of the sixth century B.C.E., Greek cities were found around the Black Sea, along the coast of Asia Minor, in North Africa and southern Italy and Sicily—and after 300 B.C.E. in Syria, Persia, and Egypt. Similarly, as Rome came to distinguish itself from its...