Greece
This region is very important in any discussion of dietary influences by virtue of the general cultural influence that Hellenistic Greece exerted on the Roman world. This included eating customs, recipes and other aspects of food provisioning. It is disappointing, therefore, that there are relatively few bone assemblages available to make a direct assessment of the meat diet (cf. Reese 1994). One of the reasons for this is a well-documented economic and agricultural decline in rural Greece from the Hellenistic to the early Roman period (Alcock 1993, ch. 2; Andel et al. 1997, 47-8), that possibly led to depopulation, and certainly resulted in fewer sites and archaeological deposits of this period.
Nevertheless, the data are interesting (Fig. 13) for hinting at a meat diet that trends towards high sheep and goat meat consumption, especially on rural sites. The towns have a more even balance of species. The graph can be used to support the suggestion made for southern Italy and for Marseille and its hinterland, that Greek influence were significant in these areas (see Provence), because of a similar emphasis on sheep and goats.
One assemblage is exceptional in having 94% pig bones, from Knossos (Jarman 1973). This must be a specialized, probably ritual deposit, which cannot be related to general dietary preferences in the region.