Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal: But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal: For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.
See? Actually paying employees would be halfway to condemning them to damnation;. Some fundie law shop is probably already working on a Hobby Lobby style argument that minimum wages are an unconstitutional imposition on religious liberty…
I’m no historician, but I’m with you on that. Anywhere big enough to have food supplies and groups of people who aren’t entirely involved with subsistence farming must surely generate their own CMOT Dibblers.
Great question! I have no idea. I would guess that it was common in cities where people worked as laborers, and where the food supply allowed for restaurants.
Cathy Kaufman’s Cooking in Ancient Civilizations is the one that springs to mind. She, and others, describe fried fish as something commonly sold in the streets of Ancient Greece. The Greeks say it was an Egyptian thing, which is what Ancient Greek writers said when the wanted to describe something as low-class. The Ancient Greeks saw it as something that poor people ate, likely because they didn’t have cooking hearths in their homes. The Egyptians took street food for granted, which means it’s certainly much, much older.
Maybe. I suspect @anon61221983 is correct: it’s probably a common feature of dense urban life. Not everyone would have been able to afford a home with a hearth, and laborers in general would have needed food. In Rome the poor would have been given bread each day by the government (hence the symbolism of “give us this day our daily bread”—trying to reorient people from the emperor to the Hebrew God), but for the late day main meal they’d have to get food somewhere. Street food makes sense.
