My 5-year-old asked at dinner tonight to be allowed wine, like the Trojans and Achaeans. When quizzed about it, she claimed that wine was not as strong back then (apparently I told her this) and that Hector’s son was allowed to drink wine by his mother. I explained that she had this wrong, and that it was Hector who did not want to accept wine from his mother (book 6) … but of course she was right. See 12.494-5:
τῶν δ’ ἐλεησάντων κοτύλην τις τυτθὸν ἐπέσχε·
χείλεα μέν τ’ ἐδίην’, ὑπερῴην δ’ οὐκ ἐδίηνε.
There seems to be a great deal in this 2009 article Wine and Wine Drinking in the Homeric World by Zinon Papakonstantinou.
Your kid knows their Homer! (though I think you mean book 22 not 12).
Phoenix also remembers giving baby Achilles wine in Il. 9.488-491:
πρίν γ᾿ ὅτε δή σ᾿ ἐπ᾿ ἐμοῖσιν ἐγὼ γούνεσσι καθίσσας
ὄψου τ᾿ ἄσαιμι προταμὼν καὶ οἶνον ἐπισχών.
πολλάκι μοι κατέδευσας ἐπὶ στήθεσσι χιτῶνα
οἴνου ἀποβλύζων ἐν νηπιέῃ ἀλεγεινῇ.
until I had set you on my knees, and cut little pieces
from the meat, and given you all you wished, and held the wine for you.
And many times you soaked the shirt that was on my body
with wine you would spit up in the troublesomeness of your childhood.
Yeah, sorry for the typo. The two quoted lines are post-orphaning.
She also remembered that Phoenix gave baby Achilles both wine and meat, when I asked her just now, though not the spitting up.
And look how that turned out…