By Joel Denker
Young men should be wary of women “whose feet abide not in their home” and who invite them back to their cinnamon-scented beds. These temptresses, the Hebrew proverb says, offer an amorous evening: “Come, let us take our fill of love until the morning.” In the ancient world, cinnamon and its lower-status sister, cassia, were prized for their aromatic powers. (When I can reasonably pinpoint which of the two spices is referred to, I will use their different names. Otherwise I will use the generic term cinnamon). But it was rarely used in this age to season food and only then to flavor wine.
The Bible’s Song of Solomon called the Eastern spice “one of the chief perfumes.” “Your robes are redolent of myrrh, aloeswood and kasia,” an anonymous poet addressed a royal bride. In addition, cinnamon played spiritual and ceremonial roles. The Lord commanded Moses to anoint the holy tabernacle with the oil of cinnamon. Gold-encased cinnamon, the Roman naturalist Pliny wrote, adorned his city’s temples. Sappho, the Greek poet, evoked the atmosphere of a wedding in Troy: “Myrrh, cassia and frankincense rose in smoke … all the old women wailed and the men raised a fine cry.”
The ancients embalmed the dead with cinnamon and it was burned at funerals. After the Roman emperor Nero’s pregnant wife died (from being kicked in the stomach by her husband), Nero ordered that all of the city’s cinnamon be gathered and then burned in the funeral pyre.
Cinnamon could also be a cosmetic. The elegant men of Rome massaged their faces and perfumed their hair with malabathrum, an oil drawn from the leaves of tajpat, a cinnamon tree relative.
Cinnamon was also avidly sought because of its medicinal reputation. The spice was a key ingredient, the Greek physician Galen noted, in the antidotes for treatment of poisonous bites. The compounds evolved into all-purpose drugs.
So coveted was cinnamon that the spice became a luxury item. Pliny estimates it was worth fifteen times as much as silver. Since spices were so magical, many believed that they emanated from an Edenic place. “Rare cinnamon,” the Roman poet Prudentis claimed, originated in Paradise.
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To learn more about cinnamon, see The Carrot Purple and Other Curious Stories of the Food We Eat, coming in October from Rowman & Littlefield: https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781442248861/The-Carrot-Purple-and-Other-Curious-Stories-of-the-Food-We-Eat.
