Here is a thing about the ancient Greeks that nobody tells you.

They weren't particularly bothered about the food.

Not really. Not compared to the Romans, who built entire rooms facing the best garden view and developed a fish sauce so powerfully good it survived two thousand years and lives on quietly in your Worcestershire sauce. Not compared to the Egyptians, who packed food for the afterlife and hosted annual feasts beside the tombs of their dead.

The Romans didn't just eat outside. They thought very hard about it. They had opinions about it. They wrote letters complaining about friends who didn't show up to it. They built entire architectural wings of their villas specifically for it, angled to face the garden, the sea, or the best view of the Apennine hills. They had rules about who sat where, which wine you mixed with how much water, and whether it was vulgar to eat lying down.

(It was not. Lying down was, in fact, mandatory. More on this shortly.)

You thought picnics started with Mrs Beeton and a wicker hamper, didn't you.

I did too. For a while.

Then I started pulling at the thread — really pulling — and found myself four thousand years back, standing on the west bank of the Nile, watching an entire city pack up food, cross a river by boat, and sit down to eat beside their dead.