Athenaeus, Deipnosophists

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§ 2.38 Walnuts. — Attic and other writers agree in calling all hard-shelled fruits carya ("nuts"); but Epicharmus, like us, uses the word in a particular sense: “Munching dried walnuts and almonds.” Philyllius: “Eggs, walnuts, and almonds.” But Heracleon of Ephesus says: “They used to call even almonds and what are now known as chestnuts by the name of carya.” And the tree, carya, occurs in Sophocles: “Walnut-trees and ash-trees.” Eubulus: “Beechnuts and Carystian walnuts.” Some varieties also go by the name of mostena.
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§ 2.39 Almonds. — The almonds of Naxos were often mentioned in ancient writers, and in fact they are of excellent quality on that island, as I have proved to my own satisfaction, says Athenaeus. Phrynichus: “He has knocked out all my molars, so that I couldn't crack a Naxian almond.” Excellent almonds also grow on the island of Cyprus; compared with varieties from other countries they are oblong and crooked at the extremity. Seleucus in his Dialect Lexicon says that the Lacedemonians call the nuts, when the outer skin is still soft, myceri, while the people of Tenos give that name to the nuts when sweet. But Amerias says that mycerus is a general name for almond. Almonds eaten before the symposium are very provocative of thirst. Eupolis: “Let me chew some Naxian almonds and drink wine from Naxian vines.” Now there was a variety of vine called Naxia. Plutarch of Chaeronea tells how a physician at the house of Drusus, son of Tiberius Caesar, beat all the others in drinking, until he was detected in the act of eating five or six bitter almonds before the symposium began; when prevented from taking them he could not hold out in the drinking contest in the slightest degree. The cause, therefore, was to be found in the bitterness, which produces dryness and consumes moisture. The word amygdale ("almond"), according to Herodian of Alexandria, is derived from the fact that next to the green part it has many scarifications (amychae). “An ass you are, going to the husks of sweetmeats,” Philemon somewhere says. “Beech-trees, Pan's delight,” says Nicander in Book II of the Georgics. The neuter form amygdalon also occurs. Diphilus: “A sweet, some myrtle-berries, a cheese-cake, almonds.”
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§ 2.40 With reference to the placing of the accent in the word amygdale, Pamphilus insists that in speaking of the fruit the grave accent should be used as it is in the neuter amygdalon; for the name of the tree, on the other hand, he requires the circumflex, amygdale, like rhode. So, too, Archilochus: “The fair flower of the rose-bush (rhode).” [53a] But Aristarchus pronounces both the fruit and the tree in the same way, with the acute accent, while Philoxenus puts the circumflex on both. So, in Eupolis: “You will be the death of me, by the holy almond (amygdale) you will!” Aristophanes: “Come now, take these almonds (amygdalae) and crack them on your head with a stone.” Phrynichus: “An almond (amygdale) is a good cure for your cough.” While others accent amygdale like kale ("beautiful"), Tryphon, in his Accent of Attic Greek, makes the name of the fruit (amygdale) — [53b] to which we give the neuter form amygdalon — paroxytone, but the trees he calls amygdalas, the form being possessive and derived from the name of the fruit, and therefore circumflexed. Pamphilus in the Dialect Lexicon says that nut-cracker is called by the Lacedemonians mucerobagos, equivalent to “almond-breaker,” since Lacedemonians call almonds muceri.
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§ 2.41 The so-called Pontic nuts, which some call peel-nuts, are mentioned by Nicander. But Hermonax, and Timachidas in the Dialect Lexicon, say that the Pontic nut is known as Zeus -acorn. Heracleides of Tarentum raises the question whether or not dessert should be served first, as in some places of Asia and Hellas, instead of after dinner. If, for example, it is served after dinner, when a good deal of food is in the stomach and intestines, it happens that the nuts then eaten to incite thirst mix with this food and cause winds and fermentation of the food, because they naturally remain on the surface and digest with difficulty; hence indigestion and diarrhoea result.
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§ 2.42 “Almonds,” Diocles remarks, “are nourishing and good for the bowels, and are, moreover, calorific because they contain some of the properties of millet. The green are less unwholesome than the dry, the soaked than the unsoaked, the roasted than the raw. But the Heracleot nuts, also called Zeus -acorns, are not so nutritious as almonds, and besides have a drying property and lie on the top of the stomach; if too many are eaten they affect the head. Of these nuts, also, the green are less likely to cause trouble than the dry. The Persian nuts are as apt to cause headache as the Zeus -acorns, but are more nourishing; they roughen the throat and mouth, but are less noxious when roasted. They are digested more easily than other nuts when eaten with honey. The broad chestnuts are more windy, but when boiled they give less trouble than when raw or roasted, while the roasted are better than the raw.” Phylotimus says in his work on Food: “The broad chestnut and the so-called Sardis nut are all of them hard to digest and dissolve when raw, since they are held in restraint by the phlegm in the stomach and possess astringency. The Pontic nut, also, is oily and hard to digest, the almond less so. We may, therefore, eat a rather large quantity and still feel no distress; moreover, they seem to be more fatty and produce a sweet, oily juice.” And Diphilus of Siphnos says: [54a] "'Royal' nuts cause headache, and lie at the top of the stomach. Yet when they are still tender and have been blanched, they are better, being more juicy, while those which are roasted in ovens have little nutriment. Almonds are diuretic, attenuating, cathartic, and of little nutrition. Dried almonds, however, are much more windy and apt to lie on the stomach than the green, which, to be sure, have a poor flavour and are less nourishing. But if they are blanched when still tender though full grown, they are milky and of a better flavour. Among dried almonds the Thasian and Cyprian varieties, when still tender, are more easily excreted. The Pontic nuts cause headache, but are less apt to lie on the stomach than the'royal.'"
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§ 2.43 Mnesitheus of Athens, in his work on Edibles, says: “In the case of the Euboean nuts or chestnuts (for they are known by both names) disintegration in the stomach is difficult, and the digestive process is attended with wind; but they fatten the system if one can tolerate them. Almonds and the Heracleot and Persian nuts, and others of the same kind are less wholesome than chestnuts. In fact none of these varieties should be eaten raw excepting green almonds: some should be boiled, others roasted. For some of them, like dried almonds and Zeus -acorns, are fatty by nature, while others are tough and astringent, such as beech-nuts and similar sorts. The cooking process, therefore, removes the oil from the fatty varieties, that being the most harmful element, while the tough and astringent kinds are softened when one applies a little slow heat.” But Diphilus calls chestnuts “ Sardis -acorns” also, and says that they are nourishing and well-flavoured, but hard to assimilate because they remain a long time in the stomach; and though when roasted they are less filling, yet they are more easily digested. But the boiled not only inflate less, but also nourish more than the roasted. “Lopimon ('peel-nut') and caryon the Euboeans called it, but others called it Zeus -acorn,” says Nicander of Colophon in the Georgics. But Agelochus calls chestnuts amota: “Wherever the nuts of Sinope grow, there they called the trees amota.”
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§ 2.44 Chick-peas. — Crobylus: “They were playing at cottabos, having eaten a yellow chick-pea, entirely empty. B.: That's the dessert you would give to a God-forsaken monkey.” Homer: “The black-skinned beans or chick-peas hop.” Xenophanes of Colophon, in the Parodies: “As you lie stretched upon a soft couch by the fire in the winter season, these should be your words when you have had enough of food, and are sipping sweet wine and munching chick-peas the while:'Who art thou among men, whence comest thou, how many are thy years, good sir? How old wert thou when the Mede came upon us?'” Sappho: “Golden chick-peas grew upon the shores.” Theophrastus, Plants, calls some varieties chick-pea “rams.” So, also, Sophilus: “This girl's father is easily the biggest ram chick-pea.” And Phaenias in his notes on Plants says: “In the category of dessert are pulse, beans, and chick-peas when they are still soft and tender; but when they are dried they are pretty generally served (as vegetables) either boiled or roasted.” [55a] Alexis: “My man is a pauper, and I am an old woman with a daughter and a son, this boy, and this nice girl besides, — five we are in all. If three of us get a dinner, the other two must share with them only a tiny barley cake. Sounds of wailing untuneful we utter when we have nothing, and our complexions grow pale with lack of food. The elements and the sum of our livelihood are these — a bean, a lupine, greens, and a turnip. Pulse, vetch, beech-nut, the bulb of an iris, a cicada, chick-pea, wild pear, and that God-given inheritance of our mother-country, darling of my heart, a dried fig, brought to light from a Phrygian fig-tree.” Pherecrates: “You will make the chick-peas tender forthwith.” And again: “He choked to death eating roasted chick-peas.” Diphilus says that “chick-peas are hard to digest, but purgative, diuretic, windy.” According to Diocles, they provoke fermentation in the body; but the white varieties, resembling boxwood, are superior to the black, the Milesian better than those called “rams”; the green, moreover, are better than the dried, the soaked better than the unsoaked. The use of chick-peas was revealed by Poseidon.
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§ 2.45 Lupines. — “A. Bad cess to him, and all mischief, who has been eating lupines and left the shells in the vestibule, instead of choking as he gulped them down. And more than all.... — B. I'm sure it isn't Cleaenetus, the tragedian, who ate them; he wouldn't have thrown away the peel of any vegetable. He is such an obliging man!” Lycophron of Chalcis, in a satyr-play which he wrote in ridicule of the philosopher Menedemus, from whom the sect of the Eretrians received their name, satirizes philosophers' dinners in these words: “And there danced forth the plebeian lupine in lavish abundance, that companion of the paupers' triclinium.” Diphilus: “There is no trade more execrable than the bawd's. I'd rather tramp the streets peddling roses, radishes, lupine-beans, pressed olive cakes, anything at all, than keep these strumpets.” Note the word “lupine-bean,” says Athenaeus, since it is used in this way even today. Polemon says that the Lacedemonians call lupines lysilaidae, and Theophrastus records, in Plant Aetiology, that “the lupine, bitter vetch, and chick-pea are the only leguminous plants which do not breed worms, on account of their bitterness and sourness.” “The chick-pea,” he declares, “grows black as it decays.” But the same authority, in the third book of the very same treatise, says that caterpillars occur in chick-peas. Diphilus of Siphnos informs us that lupines are purgative and filling, especially if they have been sweetened for a considerable time. Hence it was that Zeno of Citium, who was very harsh and choleric toward his acquaintances, became gentle and bland after absorbing quantities of wine; and when people asked him to explain this change of manner, he answered that he underwent the same process as the lupine; for they too are very sour before they are soaked, but when steeped they become very sweet and mild.
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§ 2.46 [56a] Calavances (Phaseloi). — Spartans at the feasts called Kopides ("Cleavers") serve as dessert dried figs, beans and green calavances. The account of it is in Polemon. Epicharmus: “Toast some calavances quickly, if Dionysus holds you dear. Demetrius: ”A fig or a calavance or something like that."
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§ 2.47 Olives. — Eupolis: “squids and over-ripe olives.” The latter are called druppae by the Romans. Diphilus of Siphnos says that olives afford little nourishment and cause headache; black olives, moreover, are worse for the stomach and oppressive to the head; those called swimmers are more wholesome and act as an astringent on the bowels, while black olives are more wholesome if crushed. The crushed olives are mentioned by Aristophanes: “Have the olives crushed.” Again: “Olives in brine are not the same as olives crushed in the press.” And a little further on: “It's better to use crushed olives than briny.” Archestratus in his Gastronomy writes: “Let them serve you with wrinkled, over-ripe olives.” — “Wherefore, in pious memory of Marathon for all time, they all put marathon ('fennel') in the briny olives,” says Hermippus. Philemon says: “The coarse variety are called'bran' olives, while'pressed olives' is the name given to the black.” Callimachus gives a list of the kinds of olives in the Hecale: “The over-ripe and the bran, and the late autumn kind, which is preserved swimming in brine when it is still light green.” According to Didymus, over-ripe olives used to be called ischades as well as gergerimoi. Moreover, without adding the word “olives” they were in the habit of using “over-ripes” substantively. Thus Telecleides: “Let him entreat me after a while to consort with over-ripes and barley cakes, and feed on sprays of chervil.” The Athenians used to call pressed olives stemphyla, while brytea was their word for what we call stemphyla, being really pressed grapes. The word brytea comes from botrys ("bunch of grapes").
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§ 2.48 Radishes. — These have their name from the ease (radios) with which they are produced. The last syllable (-is) is either long or short in Attic. Cratinus has it long: “The radishes, but not the other vegetables, have come to a decision.” Eupolis makes it short:"unwashed radishes and squids." That the word “unwashed” is to be construed with “radishes” and not with “squids” is proved by Antiphanes writing the following: “To gobble up ducks, honey-comb, nuts, eggs, honey cakes, unwashed radishes, turnips, gruel, and honey.” Properly the term “unwashed” was applied in this way to radishes which were called Thasian. Pherecrates: “We have on hand an unwashed radish, hot baths ready, stewed pickle-fish, and nuts.” The diminutive form rhaphanidion occurs in Plato, Hyperbolus: “A little lettuce leaf or bit of radish.” Theophrastus in his Plants says that there are five kinds of radish — Corinthian, Leiothasian, Kleonaian, Amorean, and Boeotian; by some, however, the Leiothasian is called Thracian; the sweetest is the Boeotian, and it is round in shape; in general, he adds, the varieties with smooth leaves are sweeter. But [57a] Callias uses the word rhaphanos of the radish. For, in explaining the antiquity of comedy he says: “Pease-porridge, fire, turnips, radishes (rhaphanoi), ripe olives, phallic cakes.” That he really means radishes is proved by Aristophanes. For he also writes about the antiquity of comedy in the Danaids, and says: “The chorus would dance wrapped up in rugs and bundles of bedding, sticking under their arm-pits ribs of beef, sausages, and radishes.” The radish, moreover, is a very cheap article of food. Amphis: “Any man who goes to market to get some delicacy and prefers to buy radishes when he may enjoy real fish must be crazy.”
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§ 2.49 Pine kernels. — Mnesitheus the Athenian physician, in his work on Edibles, calls the seeds of conifers ostracides and again he calls them cones. But Diocles of Carystus calls them “pine-nuts,” while the Myndian Alexander calls them “pine-cones.” Theophrastus gives the name peuce ("pine") to the tree, but calls its fruit “cone.” But Hippocrates in the work on Tisane, half of which is spurious (some even think the whole is), calls them coccali ("kernels"). Most authorities, however, call them pyrenes("stones"), as does Herodotus also in speaking of the Pontic nut. For he says that “this has a kernel when it is ripe.” Diphilus of Siphnos says: “These cones are nourishing, they smooth the bronchial tubes and clear the organs of the diaphragm by means of the resinous principle contained in them.” Mnesitheus, also, agrees that they fatten the body and produce no ill effects on digestion; they are also diuretic and do not inhibit the action of the bowels.
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§ 2.50 Eggs. — Anaxagoras, in the Physics, explains that the popular expression “bird's milk” means the white of an egg. Concerning eggs, compare Aristophanes: “In the beginning Night laid a wind-egg (oon). Sappho makes the word a trisyllable: ”They say, you know, that Leda once found an egg (oion)." And again: “much whiter than an egg.” But Epicharmus said oeon: “eggs (oea) of the goose and of winged fowls.” So also Simonides in the second book of his Iambic Verses: “like the egg of a Maeander goose.” Anaxandrides even extended it to four syllables when he said oaria. And Ephippus: “Little jars of date-wine, egglets, too, and many other like toys.” Alexis, I believe, speaks of slices of egg. Wind-eggs they used to call hypenemia as well as anemiaea. “What is known among us today as the upper-story (hyperoon) of a house they used to call an egg (oon),” says Clearchus in the Amatoria, explaining that since Helen was reared in an upper-story she caused the report to spread that she had sprung from an egg. But Neocles of Croton was mistaken in saying that the egg from which Helen sprang fell from the moon; for, though the moon-women lay eggs, their offspring are fifteen times larger than we are, as Herodorus of Heracleia records. Ibycus, in the fifth book of his Lyrics, says of the Molionidae: [58a] “I likewise slew the white-horsed youths, sons of Molione, equal in age and in height, with their limbs joined in one, both hatched in a silver egg.” Ephippus: “Sesame-cakes, bonbons,... honey-cakes, milk-cake, and a hecatomb of eggs — all these we nibbled at.” Sucked eggs are mentioned by Nicomachus: “My father left me a tiny bit of property, but in a few months I squeezed it up and pipped it out as dry as one would suck an egg.” And goose eggs are mentioned by Eriphus: “A. Eggs white, indeed, and large. — BB. Goose eggs, in my opinion. And yet he says that Leda laid them!” Epaenetus and Heracleides of Syracuse in the Art of Cookery say that peacocks' eggs excel all others; after them come the eggs of the fox -goose; they put hens' eggs third.
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§ 2.51 Appetizers. — After the first appetizer was drunk all round, says Athenaeus, the master of ceremonies, who was Ulpian, asked whether the word for “appetizer,” propoma, was found in any author in the sense in which we use it. While the others were racking their brains he answered, “I will tell you myself, Phylarchus of Athens (or Naucratis ), in the passage dealing with Zelas, king of Bithynia (the same who invited the leaders of the Gauls to an entertainment with treacherous designs against them, but was killed himself) says, if I have the luck to remember it:'An appetizer (propoma) was handed round before dinner, as had been the custom in the beginning.'” After delivering himself of this wisdom, Ulpian asked for a drink from the cooler, expressing great satisfaction in his ready memory. Among the ingredients used in the preparation of these “fore-drinks” Athenaeus mentions particularly the following.
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§ 2.52 Mallows. — Hesiod: “And they knew not how much virtue lies in the mallow or the asphodel.” Malache ("mallow") is the Attic form, but I have found it, he says, written with an o in many copies of Antiphanes' Minos: “eating the root of the moloche.” So Epicharmus: “I am more gentle than a moloche.” Phaenias in the work on Plants says: “In the cultivated mallow the seed mould is called placenta, being similar in appearance; for its comb-like structure may be compared to the base of the placenta, and in the middle of the placenta-like mass the central point resembles a navel. When the base is removed this mass looks like a cross-section of the sea-urchin.” The Siphnian Diphilus records that the mallow is juicy, softening the bronchial tubes and carrying off the bitter humour at the top of the stomach; it is, accordingly, a specific for irritations of the kidneys and bladder; it is also nourishing and quite easily digested, though the wild is better than the garden variety. And Hermippus, the disciple of Callimachus, also says that the mallow is an ingredient of the remedy known as alimon, also adipson, being very useful for the purpose.
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§ 2.53 Gourds. — Euthydemus of Athens, in his work on Green Vegetables, calls the gourd “Indian sikya,” because the seed was imported from India. The Megalopolitans call it sikyonia. Theophrastus says that it is impossible to put all gourds in a single category, some being better, others poorer. [59a] But Menodorus, disciple of Erasistratus and a friend of Hicesius, says that of the gourds there are the Indian, all called sikya, and the colocynth. Further, the Indian is generally boiled, but the colocynth may also be baked. Yet even to this day the colocynth is called “Indian” by the Cnidians. The Hellespontines call the long gourds sikyae, but the round gourds they call colocynths. Diocles says that colocynths grow best in Magnesia, and are, moreover, quite round, very large, sweet, and wholesome; the best cucumber grows in Antiochia, the best lettuce in Smyrna and Galatia, the best rue in Myra. Diphilus says: “The colocynth is not filling; it is easily digested, adds moisture to the system, is easily passed, and juicy. It is more wholesome when eaten with water and vinegar, and has more flavour when seasoned; more apt to cause thinness when eaten with mustard, and more digestible and more easily excreted when boiled.” And Mnesitheus says: “All vegetables which are easily affected by the action of heat, such as the cucumber, the pumpkin, quinces, sparrow-quinces, and the like, when eaten cooked, may afford but little nourishment to the body; but they are innocuous and provide moisture. Yet they are all apt to check the action of the bowels, and should preferably be eaten boiled.” Attic writers use one word, colocynth, for them all. Hermippus: “What a huge head he has! As big as a pumpkin.” Phrynichus uses a diminutive form: “A little bit of barley cake or pumpkin.” Epicharmus has the regular form: “Surely it is much more healthful than a pumpkin.”
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§ 2.54 Epicrates the comic poet has the following: “A. What about Plato and Speusippus and Menedemus? On what subjects are they discoursing today? What weighty idea, what crucial point is now debated in their school? Tell me wisely, if you've come with any knowledge, for the land's sake, tell me. — B. Why, yes, I can tell you about these fellows with certainty. At the Panathenaea I saw a troop of lads... at the playground of the Academy I heard words unutterable, extraordinary. For they were making definitions about nature, and separating into categories the ways of beasts, the nature of trees, the kinds of vegetables; and in the course of it they were seeking to determine what species the pumpkin belonged to. — A. And what conclusion, then, did they reach, and of what species is the plant? Tell me, if you really know. B. Well, then; in the first place, they all in silence took their station and with heads bowed low they reflected a long time. Then suddenly, while the lads were still bending low in study, one said it was a round vegetable, another said it was grass, a third a tree. On hearing that, a physician from Sicily could contain himself no longer, and snapped his fingers at them for a pack of lunatics. — A. They must have got awfully angry at that, I suppose, and cried out that it was a shameful insult? For to do that kind of thing in the club lounge is indecent. — B. No, the lads didn't mind it at all. And Plato, who was standing by, very mildly, and without irritation, told them to try again to define the species to which the pumpkin belongs. So they set to inquiring.”
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§ 2.55 The witty Alexis serves a complete appetizer for the discriminating: [60a] “I arrived uninvited at the moment when the affair was hurrying to a climax. Water was poured over my hands. A slave came with the table; on it lay no cheese, no assortment of olives, no dainty entrees or fol-de-rol to offer us their generous smell; on the contrary, there was set before us a platter with a marvellous smell of the Seasons, shaped like the hemisphere of Heaven's vault. For all the beauties of the constellations were on it — fish, kids, the scorpion running between them, while slices of egg represented the stars. We laid hands upon it. The man next me was busy talking to me and nodding his head, and so the whole labour devolved upon me. I never reached the end until I had dug into that platter and made it look like a sieve.”
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§ 2.56 (60b) Mushrooms. — Aristias: “With champing of champignons the stony ground resounded.” Poliochus: “Both of us broke a bit of black barley bread, with chaff mixed in the kneading, twice a day, and had a few figs; sometimes, too, there would be a braised mushroom, and if there were a little dew we'd catch a snail, or we'd have some native vegetables or a crushed olive, and some wine to drink of dubious quality.” Antiphanes: “Our dinner is a barley cake bristling with chaff, cheaply prepared, and perhaps one iris-bulb or a dainty dish of sow-thistle or mushroom or any other poor thing that the place affords us poor creatures. That is our mode of life, without heat, without excitement. Nobody eats thyme when meat is to be had, not even they who profess to be Pythagorean vegetarians.” And going on he says: “For who among us knows the future, or what any of our friends is doomed to suffer? Take then these two mushrooms gathered from the ilex and bake them quickly.” Cephisodorus, disciple of Isocrates, in his Animadversions on Aristotle (a work in four books), blames the philosopher for not having thought it worth while to collect proverbs, whereas Antiphanes wrote a whole play entitled Proverbs. From this the following verses are cited: “For if I should touch any of your food, I should feel as if I had eaten raw mushrooms or puckery apples or whatever food there is that chokes.”
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§ 2.57 Mushrooms grow on the ground, and few of them are edible. Most of them cause death by choking. Hence Epicharmus said in jest: “You are like mushrooms: you will dry me up and choke me to death.” Nicander in the Georgics gives a list of the poisonous varieties in these lines: “Deadly pains are laid up in store for the olive-tree, the pomegranate, the ilex, and the oak, the choking weight of swelling mushrooms which adhere to them.” But he also says that [61a] “when you hide deep in dung the stalk of a fig-tree and water it with ever-running streams, mushrooms will grow at the base and be harmless; from it cut not away at the root the mushroom thus grown.” (The rest was illegible.) “And at the same time you shall steam some amanita mushrooms,” says the same Nicander in the same work. Ephippus has a line running: “That I, like a mushroom, might choke you.” Eparchides says that the poet Euripides, while staying on Icaros, wrote an epigram on a woman who, with her children, two grown-up males and an unmarried daughter, ate some poisonous mushrooms in a field, and died by asphyxiation along with her children. This is the epigram: “O god of the sun, who dost traverse the eternal vault of the sky, have thine eyes ever beheld like woe? A mother and her daughter unwed, with brothers twain, dead on the same fateful day!” Diocles of Carystus, in Book I of his Health, says: “Wild vegetables fit to boil are the beet, mallow, sorrel, nettle, orach, iris-bulbs, truffles, and mushrooms.”
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§ 2.58 Marshwort. — Speusippus, in Book II of Similars, says that this grows in water and has a leaf like marsh celery. Hence Ptolemy II Euergetes, once ruler of Egypt, thought that in Homer we ought to write: “And all about soft meadows bloomed of marshwort and celery.” For marshwort, he maintained, grows where there is celery, but violets do not.
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§ 2.59 Diphilus says that mushrooms have a good taste, are laxative and nourishing, but may cause indigestion and flatulence. Such especially are those which come from the island of Ceos. “Many, however, cause death, but those seem to be proper to eat which are very thin, tender, and friable, growing on elms and pine-trees. Unfit to eat are those which are black, livid, and hard, or which become tough after boiling and serving; when these are eaten they are often fatal. A good antidote is a draught of hydromel, or honey-vinegar, or soda and vinegar. Vomiting should follow the drink. Hence mushrooms ought to be prepared in the first instance with vinegar, or with honey and vinegar, or honey and salt alone, since in this way the choking element is removed.” And Theophrastus, in the History of Plants, writes: “Such plants grow in some cases underground, in other cases on the ground; among the latter are what some call peziae ('puff-balls'), which occur among mushrooms. For they also, as it happens, have no roots; but the mushroom has a lengthy stalk like an adherescent growth, and roots extend from it.” He also says that in the region of the sea round the Pillars of Heracles, whenever it rains copiously, mushrooms grow by the sea which are turned into stone by the action of the sun. And Phaenias, also, in Book I of his Plants, says: “Other plants, again, produce not even so much as a blossom, nor is there any trace of a club-like bud containing a seed, or any seed process whatever; such are the mushroom, truffle, fern and helix-ivy.” The same author speaks of “the fern, which some call blachnum.” Theophrastus in the Plants, again: “Smooth-skinned flora, like the truffle, mushroom, puff-ball, and crane-truffle.”
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§ 2.60 [62a] Truffles. — These also grow spontaneously in the ground, chiefly in sandy places. And Theophrastus says of them: “The truffle (which some call crane-truffle) and any other underground plant.” And again: “This is also the mode of growth and the physical habit of these underground plants, such as the truffle, and the fungus which grows in Cyrene and is called misy. This is regarded as very good, and it has the odour of meat, like the oiton which grows in Thrace. Concerning these a singular fact is mentioned; it is said, namely, that they grow when the autumn rains come with severe thunderstorms; the more thundering there is, the more they grow, the presumption being that this is the more important cause. They are not perennial, but come up every year, and the proper time to use them is in the spring, when they are at their height. Nevertheless some suppose that they have a seed origin. For on the coast of Mitylene, they say, truffles do not grow until a heavy rain comes and the seed is washed down from Tiarae. Now this is a place in which they grow plentifully. And they are more apt to occur on the seashore and wherever the ground is sandy, as it is in Tiarae. They also grow in the Abarnis district near Lampsacus, in Alopeconnesus, and in Elis.” Lynceus of Samos says that “the sea produces a nettle, the dry land truffles,” and Matron the parodist, in the Banquet, has, “He brought oysters, which are the truffles of the Nereid Thetis.” Diphilus says that truffles are not easy to digest, but they are juicy and lenitive, and aid evacuation; yet some of them, like mushrooms, cause death by choking. Hegesander of Delphi says that on the Hellespont occurs neither truffle nor glauciscus nor thyme; which caused Nausicleides to remark that neither is there springtime nor friend in that region. Pamphilus, in his Dialect Lexicon, uses the term hydnophyllum of the grass which grows over truffles, by which they are detected.
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§ 2.61 The Nettle. — Among Attic writers this name (akalephe) is given both to the herbaceous plant and the weed which stings. Aristophanes in the Phoenician Women: “In the beginning grew spike-lavender, and after that rock-nettles.”
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§ 2.62 Asparagus. — The varieties of this vegetable go under the name of swamp and mountain asparagus. The finest of these do not grow from seed. They have healing power over all internal complaints. Those which are sown grow to an extraordinary size, and it is said that in Gaetulia, a district of Libya, they have the thickness of the Cyprus reed, and a height of twelve feet; in mountain regions or near the ocean they have the thickness of large fennel, and a height of about twenty cubits. Cratinus spells the name with a phi, “aspharagus.” So, too, Theopompus: “And then, spying some asparagus in a thicket...” Ameipsias: “No squill and no asparagus, no boughs of bay.” Diphilus declares that cabbage-asparagus, known by the special name of ormenos ("shooting stalk") is more wholesome and easier to pass, but is bad for the eyes. Moreover, it is bitter, acts as a diuretic, and injures the kidneys and bladder. Only Attic writers employ the term ormenos for the stalk which springs up out of the cabbage. Thus Sophocles in the Ichneutae: “The stalk shoots forth and never more pauses in its growth,” from the notion of “bursting forth” and “growing.” [63a] For the spelling with pi, “asparagus,” see Antiphanes: “Asparagus was in its glory, and pulse was in full bloom.” Aristophon:"Capers, pennyroyal, thyme, asparagus, pitch, thorn, sage, and rue."
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§ 2.63 The Snail. — Philyllius: “I'm not a cicada nor yet a snail, woman!” And again: “Sprats.... mackerel, snails, crow-fish.” Hesiod calls the snail “carry-house.” So Anaxilas: “You are very much more suspicious than snails, which in distrust carry their houses about with them.” Achaeus: “Does Aetna nourish such large horned snails?” A saying, too, which ranks as a conundrum is propounded at symposia concerning snails as follows: “Born in the wood, yet having no thorns and no blood, moving in a slimy trail.” Aristotle, in Book Five of The History of Animals, remarks: “Snails are observed to be in spawn in autumn and spring;” and further: “They are the only testaceous animals which have been seen in the act of copulating.” And Theophrastus, in his work on Animals that Live in Holes, says that “snails seek their holes even in winter, but to a greater degree in summer. Hence, also, they appear in greatest numbers during the autumn rains. Their retreat in summer is either on the ground or in trees.” Some snails soldier called sesili. Epicharmus: “A. I'll trade all this stuff for locusts, and for mussels I'll take the snail. — B. Be off to the devil!” But Apollas says the Lacedemonians call the snail semelus, while Apollodorus, in the second book of Etymologies, says that some snails go by the name of “dinner-delayers.”
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§ 2.64 Bulbs — Heracles declines to eat these in Eubulus's Amaltheia, saying: “Be it hotter or crisper or something in between, this is more important for any man than capturing Troy. As for me, I have not come here to browse on kale or silphium or sacrilegious bitter dishes or bulbs. But on what counts first as real food, promoting health and the full vigour of physical strength, I have always been wont to feed — beef boiled and unspoiled, in huge quantity, with a generous portion of foot and snout, and three slices of young pork sprinkled with salt.” Alexis, dwelling on the aphrodisiac properties of bulbs, says: “Pinnas, crayfish, bulbs, snails, buccina, eggs, extremities, and all that. If anyone in love with a girl shall find any drugs more useful than these...” Xenarchus in Bucolion: “That house perisheth whose master's fate it is to lose his virile powers, and upon which the avenging angel of the Pelopidae hath burst in full force. Impotent is that house, and even the bung-necked comrade of the goddess Deo, the earth-born bulb, so helpful to its friends when boiled, has no power to save it now; [64a] all in vain, too, does the polyp, nurtured in the dark eddies of the sea and stirring the blood to passion, when caught in the coiled constraints of the net, fill the strong-bodied hollow of the dish, daughter of the potter's wheel.” Archestratus: “Good-bye, say I, to sauce-dishes filled with bulbs and kale, and to all other cheap relishes.”
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§ 2.65 Heracleides of Tarentum, in the Symposium: “Bulbs, snails, eggs, and the like are supposed to produce semen, not because they are filling, but because their very nature in the first instance has powers related in kind to semen.” Diphilus: “Although bulbs are not easy to digest, yet they are nourishing and wholesome; further, they are purgative, they dull the eyesight, and they rouse sexual desire.” But, as the proverb has it, “A bulb will do you no good unless you have the qualities of a man.” As a matter of fact, the so-called regal bulbs, which are better than all others, do excite passion. After them come the red varieties. The white and Libyan kinds are like squills; poorest of all are the Egyptian.
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§ 2.66 Those called bulbinae are more juicy, but are not so healthful because of a rather sweetish quality; they are, moreover, very fattening, being very hard, and they are easily passed. The bulbina is mentioned by Matron in his Parodies: “But sow-thistles, that plant full of marrow, which wears its long hair in prickles, I will not mention or name; the bulbinae, too, theme of Olympian Zeus's song, which Zeus's child, the infinite rain, breeds on the dry land, whiter than snow, looking like cakes of fine meal; for these as they grow the august belly yearns.”
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§ 2.67 Nicander recommends “ Megarian bulbs,” and Theophrastus, in the seventh book of Plants, says that “in some places bulbs are so sweet that they may be eaten raw, as in the Tauric Chersonesus.” Phaenias records the same. Theophrastus adds that there is a variety of wool-bearing bulbs which grows on the sea-shore. The wool is contained underneath the first layers, between the inner edible part and the outer skin. From it are woven socks and other articles of wear; and according to Phaenias, the Indian bulb is hairy. On the mode of preparing bulbs Philemon says: “Look, if you please, at the bulb, and see what lavish expense it requires to have its reputation — cheese, honey, sesame-seed, oil, onion, vinegar, silphium. Taken by itself alone it is poor and bitter.” And Heracleides of Tarentum, restricting the use of bulbs at a symposium, says: “Too much eating must be eliminated, especially in the case of foods which contain sticky, glutinous matter, such as eggs, bulbs, beef-extremities, snails, and the like. For they stay too long in the stomach, and becoming entangled they check the flow of the humours.”
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§ 2.68 Thrushes. — Of these, as well as of other birds, whole flocks were served up in the appetizers before dinner. Telecleides: “Roast thrushes served up with milk-cakes were flying into his gullet.” Syracusans call thrushes kichelae. Thus Epicharmus: “kichelae, too, which like to eat the olives.” Thrushes are mentioned also by Aristophanes in the Clouds. Aristotle records three varieties of thrush, [65a] of which the chief and largest is about the size of a jay; it is called missel-thrush, because it eats mistletoe-berries. The second is as large as a blackbird, and is called the hairy thrush ( Turdus ericetorum). The third, smaller than the two just mentioned, is called illas. But others call it tylas, “tufted,” as Alexander of Myndus tells us; it is as fond of flying in flocks as the swallow, and builds its nest in the same way. The little epic poem ascribed to Homer, entitled Epikichlides, got this name from the fact that when Homer sang it to children he received a present of thrushes; Menaechmus records this in his work on Artists.
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§ 2.69 Alexander of Myndus records the following: “The second variety of titmouse is called by some elaios, by others pyrrhias; but it has the name of sykalis when the figs (syka) are ripe.” There are two varieties of it, the fig-pecker and the black-cap. Epicharmus: “shiny fig-peckers;” and again: “And there were also many herons with long curving necks, seed-picking pheasants, and shiny fig-peckers.” The last are caught in the fig season, for which reason the name would better be spelled with one l; for the sake of the metre Epicharmus spells it with two.
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§ 2.70 Finches. — Eubulus: "'Twas at the feast of the Amphidromia, when the custom is to toast a slice of Cherronesian cheese, to boil a cabbage glistening in oil, to broil some fat lamb chops, to pluck the feathers from ring-doves, thrushes, and finches withal, at the same time to devour cuttle-fish and sprats, to pound with care many wriggling polyps, and drink many a cup not too diluted."
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§ 2.71 Blackbirds. — Nicostratus (or Philetaerus ) says: “A. What, then, shall I buy? tell me, pray. — B. Not too extravagantly, but tidily; get some hares, if you find any, and ducklings as many as you like; thrushes, too, and blackbirds, and a lot of these wild fowl. For that will be nice.” Antiphanes also names starlings among articles of food: “Honey, partridges, ring-doves, ducks, geese, starlings, a jay, a jackdaw, a blackbird, a quail, a hen.” You demand of us a reason for everything, and we can't speak a word that you do not question. Mention of the sparrow occurs in Eubulus as well as in other authors: “Buy four or five partridges, three hares, sparrows to gobble greedily, some goldfinches and parrots, chaffinches, and kestrels, and anything else that you find.” Pigs'
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§ 2.72 Brains. — The wise would not allow us to eat these, quoting, of those who partake of them, that “to eat beans amounts to the same thing as eating” not merely the “heads of one's parents,” but the heads of anything else that is unhallowed. At any rate, none of the ancients ate pigs' brains because in them reside virtually all the senses. [66a] Apollodorus of Athens even says that none of the old writers so much as mentions them. Sophocles, for example, when he makes Heracles in The Trachinian Women throw Lichas into the sea, does not mention the brain, but only the white marrow, avoiding a word which may not be spoken: “He spilled the white marrow from the hair, when the head was split in the middle and blood spurted forth with it.” All the other horrors he expressly mentions, but nothing about the brains. Similarly Euripides, when he introduces Hecuba singing her dirge over Astyanax, who has been dashed to the ground by the Greeks, says: “Poor babe, how cruelly have these ancestral walls, the towers reared by Loxias, shorn from thy head those locks which thy mother oft tended and covered with kisses; but now from thy shattered bones grins — murder, that I may not say the shameful word.” Now the proper interpretation of both these quotations requires attention. For Philocles does use the word: “He would not even leave off eating brains;” and so does Aristophanes: “I should lose two portions of brain,” to say nothing of the other poets. Sophocles, therefore, must have said “white marrow” euphemistically, while Euripides, preferring not to set before us the loathsome and unseemly too vividly, hinted at it as seemed to him good. That people regarded the head as sacred is clear from the fact that they swore by it and did obeisance to the sneezes which came from it, as if they were sacred. What is more, even as the Homeric Zeus says: “Come now, I will bow my head in assent to thee.”
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§ 2.73 Into the appetizer these ingredients also were put, — pepper, a salad leaf, myrrh, sedge, and Egyptian perfume. Antiphanes: “If, then, a man just buys some pepper and brings it home, they denounce him as spy fit for the rack.” Again: “Now must I go round looking for a peppercorn and a blite-berry.” Eubulus: “Take, woman, a seed of Cnidian bay or pepper, pound it together with myrrh and sprinkle over the path.” Ophelion: “Libyan pepper, fragrant incense, and a lunatic book of Plato's.” Nicander in the Theriaca: “or even the downy leaves of than flea-bane — often again, chopping up fresh pepper or Median cress.” Theophrastus in the History of Plants: “Pepper is a berry, and there are two kinds of it. The one is round as a pea, with a reddish shell, the other is oblong and black, with poppy-like seeds. The latter is much stronger than the former, but both are hot and therefore serve as antidotes to hemlock.” And in the chapter On Suffocation he writes: “Their resuscitation is effected by an infusion of vinegar and pepper or nettle pounded with the pepper-berry.” We should observe, by the way, this fact, that there is no neuter noun in Greek ending in i, with the sole exception of meli ("honey"); for peperi, kommi ("gum"), and koiphi are foreign words.
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§ 2.74 Oil. — Samian oil is mentioned by Antiphanes (or Alexis ): “Here you have ten gallons of Samian oil, whitest of all.” [67a] And the Carian is mentioned by Ophelion: “He anoints himself with Carian oil.” Amyntas in the Persian Itinerary says: “The mountains produce turpentine, squills, and Persian nuts, from which much oil is made for the king.” But Ctesias says that in Carmania an oil of thorns is produced which the king uses. He also gives a list of all articles prepared for the king's table in this book of his on the Tributes paid throughout Asia, but he includes neither pepper nor vinegar, “which is the one best requirement in condiments.” But neither does Dinon in his Persian History, although he mentions the salt called ammoniac, saying that both it and Nile water were regularly sent to the king from Egypt. Another oil, the so-called “raw-pressed,” is mentioned by Theophrastus in the work on Odours, wherein he says that it is made from unripe olives and almonds. Amphis also mentions the oil produced in Thurii as being excellent: “In Thurii oil, in Gela lentil-soup.”
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§ 2.75 Pickled Fish (garos). — Cratinus has this: “Your pannier will be chock full of fish-pickle.” Pherecrates: “He has fouled his beard in the fish-pickle.” Sophocles in Triptolemus: “The pickle made of dried fish.” Plato: “They will souse me and suffocate me in rotten fish-pickle.” That the noun is masculine is proved by the masculine article which Aeschylus uses when he says: “the pickle made of fish.”
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§ 2.76 Vinegar. — This is the one condiment called by Attic writers “delight.” The philosopher Chrysippus says that the best vinegar is the Egyptian and the Cnidian. But Aristophanes in the Plutus has “diluting with Sphettian vinegar,” and Didymus, in expounding the verse says, “perhaps because the Sphettians are sharp.” Aristophanes also somewhere mentions as excellent the vinegar of Kleonai: “There are vinegar-cruets in Kleonai too.” And Diphilus: “A. He has crawled into a corner and is eating his dinner (can you imagine it?) in Laconian style: a cupful of vinegar. — B. Enough! — A. What do you mean by'enough'? — B. A vinegar-cruet such as the Kleonaians use as a measure holds just that much.” Philonides: “Their sauces have no vinegar.” Heracleides of Tarentum in the Symposium says: “Vinegar causes some things exposed to the air to curdle, and it acts similarly on the contents of the stomach; yet it also dissolves things in the mass, because of course there are different humours mingled within us.” The vinegar of Deceleia was also esteemed highly. Thus Alexis: “After compelling me to drain four cups of Decelean home-made vinegar, you now drag me straight through the market.” The word oxygaron should be pronounced with a y, like the vessel which holds it, oxybaphon. Lysias, too, in a speech Against Theopompus, the charge being assault and battery, says, “I drink oxymel.” In the same way, then, we will also say oxyrhodinon.
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§ 2.77 Seasonings are found mentioned in Sophocles: “And the nice seasonings of food.” Also in Aeschylus: “You soak the seasoning.” And Theopompus also says: “Many bushels of seasoning, many sacks and bags of books, and all other necessities of life.” [68a] The verb is also found in Sophocles: “I, being the cook, will season skilfully.” Cratinus: “It isn't given to every man to season a sea-lizard nicely.” Eupolis: “With a vile entree expensively seasoned.” The following are listed as seasonings somewhere by Antiphanes: “Raisins, salt, boiled must, silphium, cheese, thyme, sesame-seed, soda, cummin, cashew-nut, honey, marjoram, chopped acorns, vinegar, olives, young greens for sour dressing, capers, eggs, smoked fish, cress, fig-leaves, rennet.” The ancients were acquainted with the Aethiopian spice called cummin. “Thyme” and “marjoram” are masculine. Thus Anaxandrides: “Cutting some asparagus, squills, and marjoram, which, as everyone knows, when mixed with coriander, gives distinction to smoked fish.” Ion: “But he quickly hides the marjoram in his hand.” Plato, however (or is it Cantharus?), makes it a feminine word: “Or such very pungent marjoram from Arcadia.” On the other hand, Epicharmus and Ameipsias make it neuter. As for “thyme,” Nicander in Bee-Keeping treats it as masculine.
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§ 2.78 Cratinus calls melons “seeded cucumbers” in the Odysseis: “A. Where, pray, did you see the man, Laertes' dear son? — B. In Paros, buying a huge seeded cucumber,” Plato in the Laius: “Don't you see that Leagrus, scion of Glaucon's mighty race, wanders about like a silly gaping cuckoo with legs as fat as a ripe seedless melon?” Anaxilas: “His shins were swollen larger than a ripe melon.” Theopompus: “She is more luscious than a ripe melon to me.” Phaenias says: “The cucumber and the melon may be eaten raw when the outer flesh is tender and the seeds have been removed; when cooked only the outer flesh is eaten. A pumpkin is not edible when raw, but is good to eat when boiled or baked.” And Diocles of Carystus, in the first book of his work on Health, says that the wild plants fit to cook are lettuce (the dark variety being the best), cress, coriander, mustard, onion (of this there is the variety known as scallion, and also the leek), garlic, clove-garlic, cucumber, melon, and poppy. A little further on he says: “But the melon is better for the heart and stomach. The cucumber, when boiled, is tender, innocuous, and diuretic. The melon is more laxative if cooked in syrup.” Speusippus, in his Similars, calls the melon sikya, but Diocles, after mentioning the melon, omits this term, while Speusippus speaks of the sikya, but not the pepon. Diphilus says: “The melon is more juicy and astringent... is poorer in flavour and is also of little nourishment, being easily digested and easily eliminated.”
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§ 2.79 Lettuce. — Attic writers call this by the longer term thridakine. But Epicharmus uses the shorter, thridax: Lettuce with its stalk peeled off." [69a] A still longer form (thridakinis) is used by Strattis: “Ye leek-devouring grubs, which go up and down the leafy gardens in tracks made by fifty feet, and lay hold with your feet upon the long-tailed satyr-plant, winding your choral bands in and out among the leaves of basil and lettuce and fragrant celery.” Now Theophrastus says that “the white variety of lettuce is the sweeter and more tender. There are three kinds — the flat-stalk, the round-stalk, and the Laconian. The last has a leaf like that of the cardoon, but it is erect and strong-growing, and sends forth no side-shoots from the stalk. Some specimens of the flat variety are so flat-stalked that some people actually use them as gates to protect their gardens.” He also says that when the stalks have been broken the new shoots are sweeter.
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§ 2.80 Nicander of Colophon, in the second book of his Dialect Lexicon, explains the word brenthis as the Cyprian term for lettuce; in this Adonis sought refuge from the wild boar which killed him. And so Amphis in the Lamentation says: “It was among the lettuce-plants, plague take them! Why, if a man not yet sixty should eat them when he desires commerce with a woman, he might twist and turn the whole night long without once accomplishing his desires, wringing his hands against stern fate instead of acting like a man.” Callimachus, too, says that Aphrodite hid Adonis in a lettuce-bed, since the poets mean by this allegory that constant eating of lettuce produces impotence. So also Eubulus, in The Defectives, says: “Don't put lettuce on the table before me, wife, or you will have only yourself to blame. In that plant, the story goes, Kypris once laid out Adonis when he died; therefore it is dead men's food.” And Cratinus says that Aphrodite, when she fell in love with Phaon, hid him away in “fair lettuce-beds,” while the younger Marsyas declares that it was in a field of unripe barley. According to Pamphilus, in the Dialect Lexicon, Hipponax uses the form tetrakine for thridax ("lettuce"), and Cleitarchus says that this is the Phrygian term. Lycus the Pythagorean says that the naturally flat-leaved lettuce, smooth and stalkless, is called “eunuch” by Pythagoreans, but “impotent” by women; for it causes urination and relaxes desire; but it is the best to eat.
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§ 2.81 Diphilus says that the lettuce stalk is full of nutriment, and less easy to eliminate than the leaves; but the latter, while more apt to cause flatulence, are even more nutritious and eliminant. In general, however, lettuce is wholesome, cooling, a good regulatory and soporific, juicy, and checks sexual desire. And the more luxuriant plants are more wholesome and more capable of inducing sleep, but the tougher and more flabby are less wholesome and digestible, but they also cause sleep. Dark lettuce is more cooling, and is digestible as well. Lettuce grown in summer is juicier and more filling, while the autumn lettuce lacks nourishment and is less juicy. The stalk of the lettuce is supposed to cure thirst. When lettuce is cooked in a saucepan, like the stalks of kale, it is superior, as Glaucias says, to all the other boiled vegetables. Elsewhere [70a] Theophrastus says that the name epispora ("sown for a second crop") is given to the beet, lettuce, rocket, mustard, sorrel, coriander, anise, and cress. Diphilus declares that, broadly speaking, all green vegetables give little nourishment, produce no fat, are poor in flavour, remain on the surface of the stomach, and are hard to assimilate. “Summer vegetables” is a term used by Epicharmus.
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§ 2.82 The artichoke. — This is called kynara by Sophocles in the Colchian Women, but in the Phoenix he has kynaros: “The thorn of the artichoke fills all the glebe.” Hecataeus of Miletus, in the Description of Asia (granting that this book is a generous work of the historian, since Callimachus ascribes it to Nesiotes; whoever, then, the author may be), has the following: “Round the Hyrcanian Sea, as it is called, are high mountains covered with forests, and on the mountains grows the prickly artichoke.” And continuing: “East of the Parthians live the Chorasmii, possessing plain and mountain alike; and on the mountains are forest trees and the prickly artichoke, the willow, and the tamarisk.” He also says that the artichoke grows in the region of the Indus river. Scylax, too (or Polemon ), writes: “Now the country is watered by springs and aqueducts, and on the mountains grow artichokes and other herbaceous plants.” And in continuation he says: “From that point a high mountain range extends on both sides the Indus river, covered with virgin forest and with the prickly artichoke.” But the grammarian Didymus, in expounding the words “prickly artichoke” in Sophocles, says: “Perhaps he means the dog -thorn (wild rose), since that plant is prickly and rough. What is more, the Delphic priestess called it'wooden- dog,' and when Locrus received an oracle commanding him to build a city wheresoever he should be bitten by a wooden dog, he founded the city in the region where he had scratched his leg on a dog -thorn.” Now the dog -thorn is something midway between a shrub and a tree, according to Theophrastus, and its fruit is red, like that of the pomegranate. Its leaf, moreover, is like that of the willow."
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§ 2.83 Phaenias, in the fifth book of his work on Plants, speaks of a certain Sicilian plant which he calls cactus, having prickly thorns, and Theophrastus also says in the sixth book of his treatise on Plants: “The cactus, as it is called, occurs only in Sicily, and does not exist in Greece. It sends forth straight from the root stalks which spread on the ground; the leaf is flat and prickly, and what are called cacti are strictly stalks. When the peel is removed they are edible even though slightly bitter, and people preserve them in brine. But there is another kind which sends up an erect stem, called pternix, and this also is edible. And the fruit-vessel, after the downy prickles have been removed, resembles the'brain' of the palm-tree, and is likewise fit to eat. They call it askaleron ('the head').” Now who, if he accepts this description, would not confidently say that this “cactus” is what the Romans, who live near Sicily, call “cardus,” and that it is obviously what the Greeks call kinara? For by a change of only two letters cardus and cactus would be the same word. Epicharmus also plainly indicates to us that the cactus belongs among edible vegetables when he mentions it thus: “Poppy... fennel, and rough cactuses to eat among other vegetables.” Then he goes on: “If one serves it after seasoning it well, it is a pleasant dish, but alone by itself — away with it!” And again he says: [71a] “Lettuce, palm-buds, squills... radishes, cactuses.” Still again: “Another, belike, brings from the field fennel and cactuses, spike-lavender, sorrel, silphium-seed, cardoon, chicory, safflower, fern, cactus, and cotton-thistle.” And Philetas of Cos: “The cry of the fawn which breathes out its life after defending itself from the sting of a sharp cactus.”
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§ 2.84 None the less, Sopater of Paphos calls the cactus kinara just as we do. He lived in the time of Alexander, son of Philip, and was still alive in the reign of the second king of Egypt, as he himself makes clear in one of his works. Ptolemy Euergetes, king of Egypt, one of the disciples of the grammarian Aristarchus, has the same word in the second book of his Commentaries: “Near Berenice, in Libya, there is a stream named Lethon, in which are found bass, the gilt-head, and quantities of eels, including the so-called'regal' eels; these are half as large again as those of Macedonia and the Copaic Lake, and in fact the river throughout its entire course is full of a variety of fish. And in those regions grows an abundance of artichokes, which all the soldiers in our train picked and used as food, and they offered them to us, stripping off the prickles.” I also know of an island called Kinaros, mentioned by Semos.
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§ 2.85 Palm Tops. — Theophrastus, after speaking of the palm-tree, proceeds: “The process of growing from the fruit, therefore, is as I have described; but there is another method of propagation from the tree itself, by taking off the upper part containing the'head.'” And Xenophon, in the second book of the Anabasis, writes as follows: “In that place also the soldiers ate for the first time the'head' of the palm, and all the men wondered at its appearance and peculiar flavour; but it also excited violent headache. And the palm-tree, once the'head' is taken from it, withers quite away.” Nicander in the Georgics: “And at the same time they prune the suckers of the palm and fetch forth the'head,' a food which the young delight in.” And Diphilus of Siphnos records that “palm-heads are filling and contain much nourishment, but they are also heavy and hard to digest, and cause thirst and constipation.” “As for us, dear Timocrates (says Athenaeus ), it will appear that we have had'brains' up to the finish if we bring this collection of examples to a close at this point.” —
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§ 2.86 “It's a big job to be plunged into a family dinner-party, where father will take the cup and lead in the talk; and after words of advice to the young man is in jocose mood; then comes mother after him; then the old aunt mutters some nonsense aside, and a hoarse-voiced old man, the aunt's father; and after him an old woman who calls the youngster'dearest,' while he nods assent to them all.” Thus Menander. And again he says: “They first weave in the purple to make the shadow, and after the purple comes this, which is neither white nor purple, but like a tempered beam of light in the woof.” Antiphanes: “What say you? Will you bring me something here to the door to eat? If so, then like the beggars, I will sit on the ground here and eat... and everyone will see.” The same: “Make ready, then, a cooler, pan, tripod, cup, pot, mortar, three-legged kettle, and a soup-ladle.”
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§ 3.1 BOOK III. — EPITOME. [72a] Callimachus the grammarian used to say that a big book is a big nuisance. Egyptian Beans. — Nicander in the Georgics: “Of beans, sow the Egyptian, so that in summer you may make wreaths of its blossoms, but later, when the pods are ripe, you may put the beans lurking therein into the hands of the feasters, even the young men who have long been eager for them. Tubers, also, I boil and serve at the festival banquet.” By tubers Nicander means what the Alexandrians call colocasia. As the same author says: “Peeling and shredding the colocasium from its bean.” And in Sikyon there is a shrine of Athena Colocasia. But ciborium also means a kind of drinking-cup.
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§ 3.2 Theophrastus, in his work on Plants, writes as follows: “In Egypt the bean grows in swamps and marshes. Its maximum length of stalk is four cubits; it is an inch thick, and resembles a pliant, unjointed reed. Inside are separate tubes throughout its length, like a honeycomb. Upon the stalk are the head and blossom, double the size of a poppy; its colour is that of a dark rose. From the stalk grow large leaves, and the root is thicker than the root of the thickest reed, and is made up of distinct tubes, like the stalk. It is eaten boiled, raw, or baked, being used as food by all who live near swamps. It also grows in Syria and Cilicia, but does not come to maturity in those countries. It also occurs in a rather small marsh near Torone, in the Chalcidic peninsula, and here it ripen and produces perfect fruit.” [73a] And Diphilus of Siphnos says: “The tuber known as colocasium, belonging to the Egyptian bean, is tasty and nutritious, but hard to digest, being rather astringent; it is better when least woolly in consistency.” “The beans,” he adds, “which grow in the pods are not easy to digest when green; they have little nutriment, are laxative and very windy, but when dried they cause less flatulence.” As a matter of fact, there also grows from the pods a flower used for wreaths. Now the Egyptians call it lotus; but the people of my city Naucratis, says our author, Athenaeus, call it honey-lotus. From it also made honey-lotus crowns, which are very fragrant and cooling in the hot summer season.
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§ 3.3 Phylarchus says: “Never before, in any region, had Egyptian beans been sown, or, if they were, did they grow anywhere except in Egypt. But in the reign of Alexander, son of Pyrrhus, it chanced that they sprang up in a swamp near the Thyamis river in Thesprotia, a region of Epeirus. For perhaps two years, then, they bore fruit luxuriantly and spread; but when Alexander stationed a guard over them to see that no one should even approach the spot, to say nothing of gathering them at will, the swamp dried up, and not only did not produce the aforesaid fruit again, but whatever water it had contained never reappeared. The like also occurred in Aedepsus. For, not to mention other waters, a spring came to light which sent forth cold water not far from the sea. The sick who drank of it received the greatest benefit, so that many came even from great distances to use the water. Accordingly the generals of King Antigonus, desiring to be more efficient in collecting revenue, imposed a special tax on all who drank, and as a result the stream dried up. In the Troad, also, all who desired were at liberty in old times to collect salt at Tragasae. But when Lysimachus levied a tax on it, it disappeared. Surprised at this, he exempted the place from taxation, whereupon the salt increased once more.”
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§ 3.4 The Cucumber. — There is a proverb, “Munch a cucumber, woman, and keep on weaving your cloak.” Matron in his Parodies: “And I saw a cucumber, son of glorious Earth, lying among the green vegetables; and it lay outstretched over nine tables.” And Laches: “As when a cucumber grows in a watered field.” Attic writers, to be sure, make it a trisyllable (sikyos), but Alcaeus, in “may bite some cucumbers,” inflects it from the nominative sikys, like stachys, genitive stachyos ("ear of grain"). A skillet, radishes... and four cucumbers. The diminutive form sikydion occurs in Phrynichus, The Recluse: “And chew a gherkin.”
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§ 3.5 Theophrastus says there are three kinds of cucumber, Laconian, club-shaped, and Boeotian. Of these the Laconian grows better if watered, but the others grow without watering. He also says that “cucumbers are more succulent if the seed, before sowing, is soaked in milk or honey-syrup.” This he records in his Plant Aetiology. The growth is more rapid, he says, if the seed is soaked in water or milk before it is placed in the ground. Euthydemus, in his work on Vegetables, says that dracontiae, as they are called, are a kind of cucumber; and Demetrius Ixion, in the first book of the Etymologumena, says that the word sikyos comes from seuomai ("burst forth") and kio ("move"); for it is a stimulating plant. But Heracleides of Tarentum, in the Symposium, calls the cucumber hedygaion ("from a sweet soil"). Diocles of Carystus says that if the cucumber is eaten in the first course with marshwort it causes distress, because it is carried on top of the stomach, like the radish; but when eaten last it gives less trouble and is more digestible. When cooked it is also a fairly good diuretic. Diphilus, also, says: “The cucumber, because it is cooling, is hard to digest and to purge from the system; moreover, it causes chilliness, provokes bile, and inhibits coition.” Cucumbers grow in gardens when the moon is full, and their growth is as visible as that of sea-urchins.
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§ 3.6 Figs. — “The fig-tree,” says Magnus, "— for on the subject of figs I will yield to no man, even if I am to be hanged on a fig-branch, I am so extraordinarily fond of them; I will tell what occurs to me — the fig-tree, my friends, was made to be the guide of men to civilization. This is proved by the fact that Athenians call the place where it was discovered Sacred Fig-tree, while they call its fruit the Leader because it was the first cultivated fruit to be discovered. Of figs, however, there are several kinds. There is first the Attic, which Antiphanes mentions in Homonyms; for in praising Attica he says: “A. What products, Hipponicus, our country bears, excelling all in the whole world! Honey, wheat-bread, figs. — B. Figs, to be sure, it bears a-plenty.” And Istros in the History of Attica says that it was even forbidden to export figs produced in Attica, in order that the residents alone might enjoy them; and since many were caught in the act of smuggling them across the border, those who gave information to the courts about such persons came to be called, for the first time, sycophantae ("fig-detectives"). And Alexis says in The Poet: “It is not right that the name'sycophant' [74F] should be bestowed on scoundrels; for the word'figs,' when applied to a man, ought to reveal a character good and sweet. As it is, when'sweet' is attached to a rascal, it makes one wonder how this can be.” And Philomnestus, in the article On the Sminthian Festival at Rhodes, says: “For the sycophant got his name from the fact that in those days the fines and taxes, [75a] from the proceeds of which they administered public expenditures, consisted of figs, wine, and oil, and they who exacted these tolls or made declaration of them were called, as it appears,'sycophants,' being selected as the most trustworthy among the citizens.”
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§ 3.7 A Laconian fig is mentioned in The Farmers by Aristophanes, in these words: “Figs I plant — all kinds but the Laconian. For this one is a foe and given to autocratic ways. It would not be so little, did it not hate the common people violently.” He calls it little because the plant does not grow large. And Alexis, speaking of Phrygian figs in The Olynthian, says: “That God-given inheritance of our mother-country, darling of my heart, a dried fig, brought to light from a Phrygian fig-tree.” Among many comic poets, also, who mention the early “phibalis” figs, there is in particular Pherecrates, who says in the Good-for-Nothings: “Good Heavens, man! Have a fever without a care; eat some phibalis figs in the hot summer, then go to sleep at mid-day when you are stuffed with them. Have spasms, burn all over, and bawl!” So also Telecleides in The Amphictyons: “How nice, too, are phibalians!” But myrtle-berries are also called phibalian, in The Cretans of Apollophanes: “But first and foremost I want myrtle-berries on the table to chew whenever I have some plan to ponder, the phibalians, I mean, which are very fine, and twined in wreaths.” Swallow-figs are also mentioned by Epigenes in The Reveller: “Then, after a little while, comes a platter laden with dried swallow-figs.” But Androtion, or Philip, or Hegemon, in The Farmers' Handbook, makes a list of the following kinds of fig-tree: “On level ground should be planted swallow-figs, wild-figs, white-figs, and phibalians; but autumn-queens may be planted anywhere. Every variety has some utility; but the most profitable are the dwarfs, phormynians, double-bearing, Megarian, and Laconian varieties, if they are given water.”
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§ 3.8 The figs which grow in Rhodes are mentioned by Lynceus in his letters, in which he compares the best products of Attica with those of Rhodes. He writes as follows: “The wild-figs are to the Laconian, in repute, as mulberries to all figs; and I have served these not, as is the custom over there, after dinner, when the taste is perverted by satiety, but when the appetite is unspoiled, before dinner.” Yet, if Lynceus had tasted, as I have, the so-called sparrow-figs in our beautiful Rome, he would have proved himself much more sharp-sighted than his namesake, so great is the superiority of these figs over others the whole world around. But there are also other varieties of figs grown near Rome which are held in esteem, to wit, those called Chian and Livian, and further those that go under the name of Chalcidic and African, as Herodotus the Lycian testifies in his treatise on figs.
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§ 3.9 Parmenon of Byzantium, lauding in his iambic verse the excellence of the products of Canae, a city in Aeolis, says: [76a] “Far have I journeyed over the sea, bringing no freight of Canaean figs.” It is well known that the figs which come from Caunus, in Caria, are also esteemed. The acid or oxalis-figs, so-called, are mentioned by Heracleon of Ephesus and Nicander of Thyateira, who cite the following lines from a play of Apollodorus of Carystus, The Modiste's Dowry: “But the paltry wine was very sour and bad, so that I was ashamed of it; for while other farms produce acid figs, mine even has acid vines.” As for the figs on the island of Paros — for there also excellent figs grow, called by the Parians haemonia, being the same as those known as Lydian, and receiving their name from their reddish tint — Archilochus mentions them thus: “Good-bye to Paros with its fine figs and its life by the sea.” These figs, in fact, are as different from those produced elsewhere as the meat of the wild boar is superior to all other pork not wild.
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§ 3.10 The white-fig is a sort of fig-tree, and it may be that is the kind which produces the white figs. Hermippus mentions it in the Iambics thus: “The dried white-figs separately.” Wild figs are mentioned by Euripides in Sciron: “Or impale on branches of wild fig-trees.” And Epicharmus in The Sphinx: “But not in any wise like wild figs.” Sophocles, in The Marriage of Helen, called the fruit figuratively by the name of the tree, when he said: “A ripe wild-fig thou art, because, though useless for food itself, thou canst impregnate others with thy talk.” Now he really says “ripe fig-tree,” meaning “ripe fig.” Alexis, also, in The Melting-pot: “Why need we say more of those who everywhere offer figs for sale in baskets? They always put the tough and poor ones at the bottom, but the ripe and handsome ones on top. And so the purchaser, believing that what he buys are all good, pays the price, while the dealer snaps the coin in his jaw and sells wild figs, protesting with an oath that they are real figs.” Now the wild fig, that is, the tree from which come the erina ("wild-figs"), is erinos, used as a masculine. Thus Strattis in Troilus: “Have you, then, noticed that there is an erinos ('wild fig-tree') near it?” And Homer: “And on it is a tall erineos ('wild fig-tree'), in fullest leaf.” Amerias says that runty figs are called erinades.
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§ 3.11 Hermonax, in his Cretan Glossary, records the terms hamadea and nikylea as varieties of fig. and Philemon, in the Attic Lexicon, says that certain figs are called “regal,” from which arises also the term queen figs, which are dried; he notes further that ripe figs are called kolythra. Seleucus, in the Dialect Dictionary, speaks of a glykysida ("peony"), as it is called, very similar to a fig in shape, and says that women forbear to eat it because it causes unseemly windiness, as the comic poet Plato says in Cleophon. [77a] Pamphilus says that the winter figs are called kodonaea ("bell-figs") by the people of Achaea, saying that Aristophanes makes this statement in his Laconian Glossary. And Hermippus, in Soldiers, transmits the term “ crow -figs” for another sort, in these words: “Preferably the phibalian or the crow -figs.” Theophrastus, in the second book of his History of Plants, speaks of a certain variety of fig-tree which is like the so-called Aratean. And in the third book he says that in the region of the Trojan Ida there grows a bushy fig-tree with a leaf like that of the linden; it bears red figs of the size of olives, but more round, which are like medlars in taste. Concerning the fig-tree in Crete called Cyprian, the same Theophrastus, in the fourth book of the Plant History, has the following: “The fig-tree which in Crete is called Cyprian bears its fruit on the stem and the stoutest branches, sending out a small leafless shoot like a rootlet, to which the fruit is attached. The stem is large, resembling the white poplar, but the leaf is like that of the elm. It produces four crops, which is also the number of its sproutings. Its sweetness approaches that of the fig, and the inner flesh resembles that of wild-figs; in size it is like a plum.”
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§ 3.12 The so-called prodromi ("early-figs") are also mentioned by the same Theophrastus in the fifth book of Plant Aetiology as follows: “In the case of the fig-tree, whenever the atmosphere is mild, damp, and warm, it encourages sprouting; from this come the'early figs.'” Proceeding, he has this to say: “Again, some produce'early' figs, such as the Laconian, the white-navel, and several other varieties, whereas others do not.” And Seleucus, in the Dialect Dictionary, mentions the word proiterike ('early') as applied to a kind of fig-tree, because it bears its fruit early. A double-bearing tree is mentioned by Aristophanes in the Ecclesiazusae: “You, meanwhile, take some leaves of the double-bearing fig-tree.” Also Antiphanes in The Women of Tough-Town: “It is down below, right by the double-bearing fig-tree.” And Theopompus, in the fifty-fourth book of his Histories, says that in parts of Philip's domain, round about Bisaltia, Amphipolis, and Grastonia, in Macedonia, the fig-trees produce figs, the vines grapes, the olive-trees olives, in the middle of spring, at the time when you would expect them to be just bursting forth, and that Philip was lucky in everything. In the second book concerning Plants Theophrastus says that even the wild-fig bears twice in a season; others say also that it bears three times, as on the island of Ceos.
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§ 3.13 Theophrastus also says that if the fig-tree be planted in a squill-bulb it comes into bearing quicker and is not injured by worms; and in fact anything that is planted in squills grows more quickly and has a sturdier growth. Again Theophrastus says, in the second book of Plant Aetiology: “The Indian fig-tree, as it is called, although it is of surprising height, has fruit which is small and meagre, as if it had expended all its nourishment in getting its growth.” And in the second book of the History of Plants our authority says: “There is also another variety of fig-tree in Hellas, Cilicia, and Cyprus, with runty fruit, which bears a good fig in front of the leaf, but the runt behind it. Other trees there are also, which in general produce from the last year's growth, and not from the new. And this fig is the first to have ripe, sweet fruit, unlike the runty kinds among us. It also grows to be much larger than other figs, [78a] and its season of maturity is not long after the sprouting.” I know, too, of other names currently given to figs: regal, fig-regal, yellow-belly, venison, cake-fig, bitter-fig, wake-robin, dusty-white, dusty-black, fountain-fig, mill-fig, and scallion-fig.
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§ 3.14 Speaking of the name given to figs (sykon), Tryphon, in the second book of the History of Plants, says that Androtion, in the Farmers' Handbook, tells the story that Sykeus, one of the Titans, was pursued by Zeus and taken under the protection of his mother, Earth, and that she caused the plant to grow for her son's pleasure; from him also the city of Sykea in Cilicia got its name. But the Epic poet Pherenicus, a Heracleot by birth, declares that the fig was named from Syke, the daughter of Oxylus; for Oxylus, son of Oreius, married his sister Hamadryas and begot, among others, Carya (walnut), Balanus (oak-nut), Craneia (cornel), Morea (mulberry), Aegeirus (poplar), Ptelea (elm), Ampelus (vine), and Syke (fig-tree); and these are called Hamadryad ("tree") nymphs, and from them many trees derive their names. Hence, also, he adds, Hipponax says: “The black fig-tree, sister of the vine.” But Sosibius, the Lacedemonian, by way of proving that the fig-tree is a discovery of Dionysus, says that for that reason the Lacedemonians even worship a Dionysus of the Fig. And the Naxians, according to Andriscus and again Aglaosthenes, record that Dionysus is called Meilichius ("gentle") because he bestowed the fruit of the fig. For this reason, also, among the Naxians the face of the god called Dionysus Baccheus is made of the vine, whereas that of Dionysus Meilichius is of fig-wood. For, they say, figs are called meilicha ("mild fruit").
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§ 3.15 That figs are more useful to man than all other so-called tree fruits, is sufficiently proved by Herodotus of Lycia by many circumstances in his treatise on figs, and in particular he says that new-born children grow sturdy if nourished with fig-juice. Pherecrates, or whoever is the author of The Persians, says: “If any of us after long search ever spies a fresh fig, we smear it on the babies' eyes,” evidently in the belief that figs are an uncommonly good remedy. And the admirable and honey-tongued Herodotus, in the first book of his Histories, says that figs are a great boon. His words are: “O King, thou art making ready to march against men who wear trousers of leather, and the rest of their garments are of leather; they eat, too, food not such as they desire, but such as they have, because they inhabit a land that is rugged; moreover, they use not wine, but are water-drinkers; they have no figs to eat, or any other good thing.” Polybius of Megalopolis, also, in the sixteenth book of his Histories, says that at the time “when Philip, the father of Perseus, overran Asia, he was embarrassed for lack of rations for his men, and so he accepted figs from the Magnesians, since they had no grain. When, therefore, he had overmastered Myus, he gave the region to the Magnesians in gratitude for the figs.” And Ananius the iambic poet also said: “If one should lock up within the house much gold, a few figs, and two or three men, he would discover how much better than gold figs are.”
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§ 3.16 [79a] Such was the extent of Magnus's “fig plucking.” Then the physician Daphnus said: “ Phylotimus, in the third book On Food, says that fresh figs differ considerably in comparison with one another, both as regards varieties, the seasons when they are severally produced, and their effects; but speaking generally, those that are juicy, especially those that are thoroughly ripe, readily dissolve, and are digested more easily than other fruit, and do not hinder the digestion of other food. They also have the effects of moist food in being mucilaginous, sweet, and slightly alkaline, and cause an evacuation which is copious, loose, rapid, and quite painless. They also produce chyle possessing a salty acidity, when taken with salted food. They readily dissolve, as I said, because although we may eat them in large quantities, we soon become very loose. But this would be impossible if these masses remained and were not quickly dissolved. They are digested more easily than other fruit, as is shown by the fact that if we eat many times as many of them as we eat of other fruit we can dispose of them without pain; but what is more significant, if we eat more than the usual amount of other food it gives us no trouble, provided that figs be eaten first. It is clear, therefore, that if we can dispose of both, figs must be digestible themselves and do not hinder the digestion of other food. Their effects, then, are as aforesaid. The mucilaginous and the salty qualities we detect from the fact that they make the hands both sticky and clean, while the sweetness is noticed in the mouth. That they produce evacuation without cramps or disturbance, and more abundant, rapid, and mild, we think needs no further statement. Moreover, they undergo but little change in the process, not because they are hard to digest, but because we take them down quickly with no mastication, and they make the passage quickly. They produce a salty juice because it has been proved that figs possess this sodic element, and they will cause the juice to be more salty or more acid according to the nature of the other liquids drunk with them. For salted foods will increase the saltiness of the juice, whereas vinegar and thyme will increase its acidity.”
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§ 3.17 Heracleides of Tarentum, in the Symposium, asks whether it is better to take warm or cold water after eating figs. Those, he says, who advocate warm water urge it because they notice the fact that warm water quickly cleanses the hands; hence, they say, it is probable that in the belly also figs are quickly dissolved by warm water. Further, when warm water is poured on figs outside the body it dissolves their substance, and reduces them to small bits, whereas cold water solidifies them. But those who recommend the drinking of cold water argue that “taking a cold drink carries down by its weight the food lodging in the stomach; for figs do not act kindly on the stomach, since they overheat it and reduce its tone; wherefore some persons actually make a practice of drinking unmixed wine with them. After this the contents of the bowels are readily expelled.” [80a] One should take full and abundant draughts after eating figs, in order that they may not remain in the stomach, but may be carried to the lower parts of the intestines.
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§ 3.18 Other authorities say that figs should not be eaten at noon; for they are likely to bring on illness at that hour, as Pherecrates has said in The Good-for-Nothings. So Aristophanes in The Rehearsal: “Seeing him ill one summer, he ate figs at mid-day, that he, too, might have a pain.” And Eubulus in Sphinx - Cario: “Dear Zeus, yes! I was indeed ill, good sir, for the other day I ate some figs at noon.” Also Nicophon in The Sirens: “Why, if one of us easts green figs at noon and then takes a nap, straightway there comes on the run a wretched, good-for-nothing fever; then it falls upon us and makes us vomit bile.”
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§ 3.19 Diphilus of Siphnos says that fresh figs are only slightly nutritious and produce poor chyle, but are easily excreted, remain on the surface of the stomach, and are more readily assimilated than the dry. Those that mature as winter approaches and are ripened by forcing are poorer, whereas those which come at the height of their seasons are better, being ripened naturally. Those with a large proportion of acid, and those which have but little water, are, it is true, better flavoured, but are rather heavy. The figs of Tralles are similar to the Rhodian, but the Chian and all others produce a poorer chyle than they. Mnesitheus of Athens, in his book on Victuals says: “In the case of all such fruits as are eaten raw, like pears, figs, and Delphic apples, et cetera, one should carefully observe the season when the juices contained in them are neither crude nor fermented nor too dried up by over-ripeness.” Demetrius of Scepsis, in the fifteenth book of the Trojan Battle-Order, says that those who abstain from eating figs have good voices. At any rate, he says that Hegesianax of Alexandria, the historian, was at first a poverty-stricken actor of tragedies, but afterwards became a skilled actor with a voice of pleasing resonance, having tasted no figs for eighteen years. I also know of proverbs currently said of figs, such as the following: “A fig after the fish, a vegetable after the meat.” “Birds like figs, but they will not plant them.”
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§ 3.20 Apples. — These are called specifically Delphic apples by Mnesitheus of Athens in the work on Victuals. Now Diphilus says that apples, when green and not yet fully ripe, have noxious juices and are bad for the stomach, since they lie on the surface of it; moreover they generate bile, induce disease, and cause chills. Yet, when they are ripe, sweet apples have more wholesome juices and are more easily passed because they have no astringency; but sour apples have juices more unwholesome and binding. Apples which are inferior in sweetness, yet pleasant to eat, are more wholesome because of their moderate astringency. Summer apples have poor juices, but autumn apples are better in this respect. The so-called orbiculata have sweetness joined with a pleasant astringent quality, and are wholesome. The setania, as they are called, and the platania as well, [81a] have a good flavour and are easily passed, but are not wholesome. Those called Mordian grow best in Apollonia, also called Mordium, and resemble the orbiculate. And the Cydonian, some kinds of which are called struthia, are in general the most wholesome of all apples, especially when fully ripe. Glaucides says that the best of all fruits are quinces, phaulia, and struthia; and Phylotimus, in the third and tenth books on Food, says that early spring apples are much harder to digest than pears, whether we compare green apples with green pears, or ripe apples with ripe pears. Moreover, they have the effects of liquid foods: those that are sour and not quite ripe have a greater astringency and moderate acidity, producing in the body the liquid principle called “astringent.” And in general apples are less digestible than pears, as is shown by the fact that though we may eat fewer apples, we digest them less easily, whereas we may take a larger quantity of pears and digest them better. The astringent liquid produced by them, and called by Praxagoras “translucent,” is explained by the fact that foods not easily digested have thicker juices; but it has been demonstrated that, in general, apples are less digestible than pears, and that astringent substances are more apt to produce thicker juices. Thus, among winter apples, quinces produce more astringent juices, while struthia, having fewer juices, which therefore are less astringent, can be more readily digested. Nicander of Thyateira says that all quinces are called struthia, but he is mistaken. For Glaucides makes the matter clear when he says that the best fruits are the three, quinces, phaulia, and struthia.
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§ 3.21 Now quinces are mentioned by Stesichorus in the Helen in these words: “Many a quince they threw before the throne of the king, many leaves of myrtle and chaplets of roses, and wreaths of violets twined.” Alcman, too, speaks of them, and Cantharus, also, in the Tereus: “With quinces as far as the breasts.” Philemon is another writer who calls quinces struthia, in The Rustic. Phylarchus, in the sixth book of his Histories, says that quinces by their fragrance can even dull the power of deadly drugs. “At any rate,” he says, “when Phariac poison is put into a chest which still smells of the quinces that were stored therein it evanesces, retaining none of its peculiar properties. For when it had been mixed and given to persons against whom this poison had been secretly prepared, it left them quite unharmed. The cause was afterwards discovered on questioning the seller of the drug, who recognized the result as due to storing the quinces with it.”
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§ 3.22 Hermon, in his Cretan Glossary, says that kodymala is a name for the quinces. But Polemon, in the fifth book of his Answer to Timaeus, maintains that some record the kodymalon as a species of flower. Alcman identifies it with the struthium when he says “smaller than a kodymalon,” where Apollodorus and Sosibius understand the quince. But that the quince is different from the struthium [82a] is plainly stated by Theophrastus in the second book of his History. Excellent apples also grow in Sidus (which is a village belonging to Corinth ), as Euphorion or Archytas says in The Crane: “Fair as the apple which grows red on the clay slopes of little Sidus.” They are mentioned also by Nicander in Things that Change in these words: “Forthwith he cut downy apples from the gardens of Sidus or Pleistus, and carved on them the marks of Cadmus.” That Sidus is a village of Corinth is stated by Rhianus in the first book of his Heracleia and by Apollodorus of Athens in the fifth book of the Catalogue of Ships. And Antigonus of Carystus says, in Antipater, “Where my love was, sweeter far than the fair red apples which grow in wind-swept Ephyra.”
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§ 3.23 Phaulian apples are named by Telecleides in the Amphictyons, as follows: “O ye who are sometimes fine, sometimes fouler than phaulian apples.” So Theopompus in Theseus. And Androtion in the Farmers' Handbook says that “apple-trees are phaulian or struthian (the fruit of the latter does not fall off from its stalk), still others are the spring-time apples, either Laconian, or Siduntian, or with downy skins.” As for me, dear friends, I hold in greatest esteem the apples sold in Rome and called Matian, which are said to come from a village situated in the Alps, near Aquileia. Not much inferior to these are the apples of Gangra, a city of Paphlagonia. That Dionysus is also the discoverer of the apple is attested by Theocritus of Syracuse, in words something like these: “Storing the apples of Dionysus in the folds at my bosom, and wearing on my head white poplar, sacred bough of Heracles.” And Neoptolemus the Parian, in the Dionysiad, records on his own authority that apples as well as all other fruits were discovered by Dionysus. “As for the epimelis, that is a name given to a kind of pear,” according to Pamphilus. Apples of the Hesperides is a term recorded by Timachidas in the fourth book of his Banquets. And Pamphilus says that in Lacedemon these are placed on the tables of the gods; fragrant they are, and also not good to eat, and they are called apples of the Hesperides. Aristocrates, to cite another example, in the fourth book of his Spartan History speaks of “apples, too, and apple-trees called Hesperid.”
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§ 3.24 Peaches. — Theophrastus, in the second book of the History of Plants, discoursing on trees the fruit of which is concealed, writes as follows: “For of all the larger sorts the growth is visible at the beginning, as in the almond, walnut, acorn, and all similar fruits except the Persian nut; here it is by no means true; but again we see it in the pomegranate, pear, and apple-tree.” Diphilus of Siphnos, in his work on Food for the Invalid and the Healthy, says: “The so-called Persian apples (by some also called Persian plums) are fairly good in flavour and more nourishing than apples.” Phylotimus, in the third book of his work on Food, says that the Persian apple is rather fatty and mealy, also rather spongy, and when put in a press gives out a very large quantity of oil. [83a] Aristophanes the grammarian, in the Laconian Glossary, says that the Lacedemonians call plums “Persian sour apples,” being what others call adrya.
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§ 3.25 Citrus-fruit (kitrion). — About this much questioning arose among the wiseacres at the table, whether there is any mention of it in the old writers. For Myrtilus sent the anxious seekers of our company as it were among the wild she- goats, by saying that Hegesander of Delphi mentions it in his commentaries, but that he could not for the moment recall his words. In refuting him Plutarch declared: “As for myself, I am sure that Hegesander did not mean the citron at all, for I have read all his commentaries for this express purpose, since another friend of mine insisted, as you have done, that he knows of it, basing his assurance on some scholastic comments of a gentleman of no mean repute; it is, therefore, high time for you, friend Myrtilus, to look for other testimony.” Thereupon Aemilianus said that Juba, king of Mauretania and a very learned man, mentions the citron in his History of Libya, asserting that among the Libyans it is called the apple of Hesperia, whence Heracles brought to Greece the apples called, from their colour, golden. As for the so-called apples of the Hesperides, Asclepiades, in the sixtieth book of his Egyptian History, says that Earth brought them forth in honour of the “nuptials,” as it was called, of Zeus and Hera. Whereupon Democritus, with a shrewd glance at them, said: “If Juba records anything of the sort, then renounce him and all his works, his Libyan history and his wanderings of Hanno as well. I maintain that the word'citron' is not found in ancient writers, but the thing itself is described by Theophrastus of Eresus in his History of Plants in such a way that I am forced to understand his description as referring to the citron.
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§ 3.26 For the philosopher, in the fourth book of his History of Plants, has this to say:'Among many other products of the land of Media and Persia there is in particular the so-called Persian or Median apple. This tree has a leaf similar and pretty nearly equal in size to that of the wild-strawberry-tree and the walnut, and it has spines like the wild pear or white-thorn, but smooth and very sharp and strong. While the fruit is not eaten, it is very fragrant itself, and so also are the leaves of the tree; and if the fruit be placed among garments, it keeps them free of moths. It is also useful when one has by chance drunk a deadly poison (for as a dose in wine it upsets the stomach and brings up the poison), and it also sweetens the breath; for if the pulp of the fruit be cooked in broth or anything else, or squeezed and sucked into the mouth, it makes the breath sweet. The seed is taken out and sown in springtime in beds which have been carefully prepared; it is then watered every three or four days; when the plant is well up, it is transplanted in the spring to soft, moist ground not too thin-soiled. It bears its fruit at all seasons; for when some have been plucked, others are in blossom, and others again are ripening. Those blossoms which have a kind of distaff projecting from the centre are fertile, but those which have none are infertile.' Again, in the first book of the same work, he gives the facts about the distaff and the fertile blossoms. Impelled, therefore, my friends, by this description which Theophrastus gives of the colour, fragrance, and leaves, I am convinced that the citron is meant; and let none of you be surprised that he says it is not eaten, because even down to our grandfathers' time no one would eat it, [84a] but they laid it away like some precious heirloom in their chests along with the clothes.
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§ 3.27 ”Now, that this plant really came into Greece from the inland region of Asia may be found mentioned in the poets of comedy; speaking of their size, it is plain that they have the citron in mind. Thus Antiphanes, in The Boeotian Woman:'A. It is silly even to mention a dainty tid-bit to persons who are virtually insatiable. However, take these apples, my girl. — B. They are fine, indeed. — A. Fine? Ye gods, I should say so! For the seed of this fruit has only just arrived in Athens from the great king. — B. I thought, by the Goddess of Light, you were going to say these golden apples came from the Hesperides, since there are only three of them. — A. The fair is rare always, and everywhere dear.' And Eriphus in the Meliboea, after prefixing these very iambics of Antiphanes as though they were his own, continues:'B. I thought, by Artemis, you were going to say these golden apples came from the Hesperides, since there are only three. — A. The fair is rare always, and everywhere dear. — B. I'll give an obol for them, at the most. For I will count the cost. — A. And here are pomegranates. — B. How nice they are! — A. Ay, for they say this was the one and only tree that Aphrodite planted in Cyprus. — B. Worshipful Berbeia! And so you brought with you only those three? — A. Yes, for I could get no more.'
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§ 3.28 “If to this anyone objects that what is today called a citron is not meant here, let plainer testimony be cited, although Phaenias of Eresus offers us the suggestion that possibly the juniper-berry (kedron) is intended, from kedros (”cedar"). For the cedar, he says, in the fifth book on Plants, also has spines round the leaves. But that this is also true of the citron is known to all. “I am well aware, too, that when the citron is eaten before any food, dry or liquid, it is an antidote to every poisonous ingredient; I learned this from a townsman of mine who was entrusted with the governorship of Egypt. He had sentenced some convicted criminals to be the prey of wild beasts, and they were to be thrown among the creatures called asps. As they were entering the theatre assigned for the punishment of the robbers, a peddler-woman in the street gave them in pity some of the citron which she was holding in both hands and which she was eating. They took it and ate, and when, after a short time, they were thrown among those cruel and monstrous creatures, the asps, they received no injury when bitten. Perplexity seized the magistrate, and finally he questioned the soldier who guarded them to see whether they had eaten or drunk anything; when he learned that the citron had been given them, he ordered next day that a piece of citron should be given, exactly as before, to one convict, but not to the other, and the one who ate suffered no injury when bitten by the reptiles, but the other died the moment he was struck. And so, since the same result has been attested in many instances, the citron has been proved to be an antidote to every poison. [85a] Again, if one boil a whole citron in its natural state, seeds and all, in some Attic honey, it is dissolved in the honey, and anyone who takes two or three'fingers' of it in the morning will not be harmed in any way by poison.
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§ 3.29 If one doubts this, let him learn also from Theopompus of Chios, a man devoted to the truth, who has spent much money in the accurate investigation of history. He, namely, in his account of Clearchus, tyrant of Heraclea in Pontus, contained in the thirty-eighth book of his Histories, tells how he forcibly put to death many persons, giving most of them aconite to drink.'When then,' he says,'all had come to know this poisonous loving-cup of his, they never went out of doors without eating rue; for those who eat this beforehand are not in the least injured by drinking aconite, which, he says, received its name because it grew in a place called Aconae, near Heracleia.'” When Democritus had ended these remarks, most of the company expressed their wonder at the effects of the citron, and ate it up as though they had not touched any food or drink before. Pamphilus, in the Dialect Dictionary, says that the Romans call it citrus.
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§ 3.30 [85c] Following the dishes just described, there were brought in for us separately plates of oysters in quantity, as well as other testaceous foods. Most of them, practically, I find have been thought worthy of mention by Epicharmus in the Marriage of Hebe: “He brings all sorts of shell-fish — limpets, lobsters, crabs, owl-fish, whelks... [85d] barnacles, purple-shells, oysters tight-closed (to open them is no easy matter, but to eat them is easy enough), mussels, snails, periwinkles, and suckers (which are sweet to eat forthwith, but too acrid when preserved), and the long, round razor-fish; also the blackshell, to gather which brings fair profit to children; and on the other side are land-snails and sand-snails, which are held in poor esteem and are cheap, and which all mortals callandrophyctides ('man-shy'), but we gods call whites.”
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§ 3.31 But in the Muses, instead of the line “the shell, to gather which brings fair profit to children,” is written “the shell which we call tellis ('long mussel'); and its meat is very pleasant.” In what he says of the telline he probably means what the Romans call mitulus("mussel"). Aristophanes the grammarian, who mentions it in the tract on The Broken Scroll, says that limpets are similar to the so-called tellinae, and Callias of Mitylene, on the word limpet in Alcaeus, says that there is an ode in the collection of Alcaeus's works which begins, “Child of the rocks and of the hoary sea,” and at the end of it is written: “Limpet of the sea, swell the hearts of children.” But Aristophanes writes “tortoise” in place of “limpet,” and declares that Dicaearchus was mistaken in accepting “limpets” here; he adds that when children put them to their mouths, they blow into them like pipes and play tunes with them, precisely as our idle gamins play upon what we call tellinae ("sea-snails"). [86a] So also Sopater, the writer of farces, says in the play entitled Eubulus the God-man: “But stay! for suddenly a melodious sound from a sea-snail has come to my ears.” And again Epicharmus, in Pyrrha and Prometheus, says: “See now the sea-snail and the nereid, and how big the limpet is!” In Sophron conchs are called melaenides ("black-shells"): “For melaenides, you may be sure, will come to me from the little harbour.” But in the mime entitled Fisher and Farmer he calls them cherambae. Archilochus also mentions the cherambe, Ibycus, the nereid. The nereid (anarites) is also called anartas. The oyster, being a mollusk, clings to rocks like the limpet. And Herondas, in Women at work together, has “clinging like an anarites ('nereid') to the reefs.” So Aeschylus, in the Persians, has the phrase “islands where the nereids feed.” Homer mentions tethea.
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§ 3.32 Diocles of Carystus, in his Hygiene, says that the best shell-fish, for digestion and for the kidneys, are mussels, oysters, scallops, and cockles. And Archippus in The Fishes has “with limpet, sea-urchins, eschars, garfish, and scallops.” Of shell-fish the kinds more conducive to strength, Diocles says, are snails, purple-shells, and periwinkles. Concerning the last Archippus has the following: “Periwinkle, nursling of the sea, son of purple-shell.” Speusippus, in the second book of Similars, says that periwinkles, purple-shell, twisted snails, and conchs resemble each other. The twisted snails are mentioned also by Sophocles in the Camicians thus: “Of this twisted snail from the sea — if, my child, we could find someone [to string it].” Again, Speusippus enumerates in order the conchs, scallops, mussels, pinnas, and razor-fish, by themselves, and in another class, the oysters and limpets. And Araros, in The Hunchback, says: “These, then, were the tasty dainties — snails and razor-fish, and the wriggling shrimps leaped forth like dolphins.” Sophron in the Mimes: “A. What in the world, my dear, are those long cylinders? — B. They are razor-fish, to be sure, a sweet-meated shell-fish, which many widowed women eagerly desire.” The pinna is mentioned by Cratinus in the Archilochi (Satirists): “This, to be sure, is like a pinna or an oyster.” Philyllius (or it may be Eunicus or Aristophanes ), in the Island-Towns, says: “A tiny polyp and a squid, a crayfish, lobster, oyster, cockles, limpets, razor-fish, mussels, pinnas, scallops from Mitylene; bring small fry — red mullet, sargue, grey mullet, sea-perch, crow-fish.” Agias and Dercylus, in the History of Argolis, call the twisted snails astrabeli, and mention them for their usefulness in blowing as horns.
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§ 3.33 The word conch may be found either as a feminine or a masculine. Aristophanes in the Babylonians: “Every one of them began to open his mouth wide, [87a] like conchs (conchae) baking on the coals.” And Telecleides, in the Hesiods, has “a conch (concha) to crack.” So, too, Sophron in Mimes of Women: “Why! all the conchs, as at a single command, open wide for us, and the flesh of each one pokes out.” But Aeschylus has it masculine in the Sea Glaucus: “conchs (conchi), mussels, and oysters.” Aristonymus in Theseus, in the same gender: “There was a conch (conchus) like soused pipe-mussels.” In the same way Phrynichus also uses the word in the Satyrs. Hicesius, the disciple of Erasistratus, says that some cockles are called rough, others are called regal. The rough are also of poor flavour and afford little nourishment, but are easily passed; purple-fishers use them also for bait; of the smooth varieties, on the other hand, their excellence increases with their size. Hegesander, in the Commentaries, says that the rough-shelled conchs are called “sacks” by the Macedonians, but “rams” by the Athenians.
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§ 3.34 Hicesius further says that limpets are most easily digested of all the varieties of sea-food mentioned above; oysters are less nourishing than they, but are filling and rather easy to digest. “Scallops are more nourishing, but have not so good a flavour and are harder to digest. As for mussels, those from Ephesus and similar kinds are better in flavour than scallops, but are inferior to cockles; they tend to cause urination rather than loosening of the bowels. Some of them, also, are like squills, with poor flavour, and uninviting to the taste. The smaller kinds among them, and those that are rough outside, are more diuretic and better flavoured than the squill-like, but are less nourishing, partly because of their small size, and partly because of their nature. The'necks' of the periwinkle are wholesome, but contain less nutriment than mussels, cockles, and scallops; for persons with weak stomachs, who do not easily work off their food into the abdominal tract, they are useful, not being liable to fermentation. This is because foods admittedly easy to digest are, by a reverse process, alien to a constitution of this sort, since their tenderness and solubility make their fermentation easy. Hence the'livers' of these testacea, while not good for stomachs in good condition, are beneficial for weakness in the bowels. More nourishing and more enjoyable than these are the'livers' of purple-shells, but they are more quill-like in effect; in fact the whole of the bivalve has this character. A peculiarity also attendant upon them, and upon the razor-fish as well, is that they thicken the broth in which they are cooked. But even when the'necks' of purple-shells are cooked by themselves, they are good for stomach affections.” Poseidippus mentions them in the Locrian Women thus: "'Tis time to conclude; eels, crayfish, conchs, sea-urchins freshly caught, livers, pinnas, necks, mussels."
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§ 3.35 The larger barnacles are easy to digest and have a good flavour. But ear-mussels, found on the island called Pharos, opposite Alexandria, are more nourishing than all the aforesaid kinds, though they are not so digestible. [88a] Antigonus of Carystus, in his treatise on Diction, says that this shell-fish is called “ Aphrodite's ear” by the Aeolians. The “borers” are more nourishing, but have a rank smell. The tethea are similar to those just mentioned, and more nourishing. There occur also the so-called wild mollusks; these are filling, but have a rank smell and are poor in flavour. Aristotle, in the Zoology, says “the testacea comprise the pinna, oyster, mussel, scallop, razor-fish, conch, limpet, ascidium, and barnacle. Those that have locomotion are the periwinkle, purple-shell, sweet purple-shell, sea-urchin, and twisted snail. Further, the scallop has a rough shell, striated, while the ascidium is not striated, but smooth-shelled; the pinna has a small mouth, while the oyster is wide-mouthed, a rough-shelled bivalve; but the limpet is a univalve and smooth-shelled; the shell of the mussel is composed of two parts exactly alike, while that of the razor-fish and the barnacle is single and smooth; that of the conch partakes of the nature of both.” The inside of the pinna, as Epaenetus says in the Art of Cookery, is called the “liver.” In the fifth book of his History of Animals, Aristotle says: “Purple-shells spawn in springtime, periwinkles as winter draws to a close. In general (he says) the testacea appear to have what are called eggs in the spring and even in the autumn, excepting the edible urchins. The last propagate most at these seasons, but also continually at all times, and rather more at the full moon and on sunny days, excepting those in the Pyrrhaean Euripus; the others, however, are better in winter; they are small and full of eggs. It appears also that all sea-snails spawn alike at the same season.”
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§ 3.36 Proceeding, the philosopher says again: “So the purple-shells swarm in spring in the same place and produce what is termed the honeycomb. This is a kind of wax, though not so smooth, as if a large mass from the husks of white pulse were solidified. None of them has any vent, nor do purple-shells propagate from this, but they and all other testacea spring from slime and decomposition. This is a sort of excretion which occurs in them and in the periwinkles; for the latter also produce the waxy substance. They begin the process by excreting a sticky pulp, of which the husk-like parts are composed. After this is completely discharged, they let out a watery substance into the earth; here then, in the earth, are formed little purple-shells, which the adults are found to contain when caught. and if they are caught before hatching occurs, they sometimes bring forth the young in the fishermen's baskets, collecting in the same spot, and a kind of cluster is formed. There are several varieties of purple-shell; some are large, like those of Sigeium and Lectum, while others are small, as in the Euripus and on the coast of Caria. Further, those which are found in bays are large and rough, [89a] and have in most cases a dark dye; but some also have a little red. Some of the large specimens weigh as much as a pound. Those which are found on the shore and off headlands are small in size, but contain the red dye. Again, on shore facing the north they are generally dark-dyed, whereas on south shores they are red.”
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§ 3.37 Apollodorus of Athens, in his Commentary on Sophron, after prefixing the lemma “greedier than purple-shells,” explains that it is a proverb, and says that according to some authorities it is derived from the dye; for whatever it touches it draws to itself, and produces the glint of its own colour in whatever is placed beside it. But others refer it to the animal itself. “And they are caught,” says Aristotle, “in the spring, but never in the season of the Dog-star; for they do not feed at that time, but hide themselves and live in holes. The dye is contained between the liver and the neck.” “And the purple-shell as well as the periwinkle has from germination the same kind of operculum which other spiral mollusks have. They feed by thrusting out the'tongue,' as it is called, beneath the operculum. The purple-shell has a'tongue' more than an inch long, by which it feeds and bores through other shell-fish as well as its own shell. Both purple-shell and periwinkle have long lives, extending to about six years. Their growth may be discerned by the coil in the shell. Conchs, cockles, razor-fish, and scallops are produced in sandy places.”
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§ 3.38 “Pinnas grow in an upright position from the sea bottom, and contain the'pinna's guard,' [89d] which may be a small prawn or a small crab. If these are taken away, they quickly die.” Pamphilus of Alexandria, in his work on Names, says this parasite is born with them. And Chrysippus of Soli, in the fifth book on Pleasure and the Good, says: “The pinna and its guard co-operate with each other, and they cannot live separately. Now the pinna is a shell-fish, but the its parasite is a small crab. The pinna opens its shell and quietly waits for small fish to approach, while the parasite stands by and bites it as a signal when anything comes near; the pinna feels the bite and closes, and in this way they eat up together whatever is caught inside.” Some authorities also say that they are procreated together, and as it were from the same seed. Aristotle, again, says: “All testacea grow in slimy matter, oysters in mud, but conchs and the others described in sand, while ascidia, barnacles, and those that cling to surfaces, like limpets and nereid snails, grow in the hollows of the rocks.”
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§ 3.39 “Creatures which have no shells, like the actinia and the sponges, grow in the same way as testacea, in hollows of the rocks. There are two classes of actinia; one class, formed in cavities, never separate from the rocks; the other, living in smooth and level places, let go their hold and move about.” Eupolis, in the Autolycus, calls the actinia nettles, [90a] and so does Aristophanes in the Phoenician Women: “Grasp the fact, that first of all spike-lavender came into being, and after that the rock-nettles.” He mentions them also in the Wasps. Pherecrates in the Deserters: “To wear a crown of nettles for an equal length of time.” The physician Diphilus of Siphnos says: “The nettle eases the bowels, is a diuretic, and generally wholesome; but it causes the itch in those who gather them unless they first smear themselves with oil.” As a matter of fact, it does injury to those who gather them, and by them is today called nettle by a slight alteration of words. (Possibly the plant nettle gets its name from it.) By a euphemism, i.e. substitution, it is so called; for it is not gentle and quiet to the touch, but rough and disagreeable. The marine nettle, to be sure, is mentioned by Philippides in the Amphiaraus thus: “Oysters, nettles, and limpets he served to me.” But there is a play on the word in the Lysistrata of Aristophanes: “Nay, thou bravest daughter of ascidian grandmothers and motherkins who were nettles.” For tethea (ascidia) are shell-fish, but there is also a comic mixing with tethe, “grandmother,” and with “mother.”
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§ 3.40 Concerning other shell-fish Diphilus has this to say: “The rough-shelled cockles of the smaller sorts, having flesh of tenuous consistency, are called oysters, and are wholesome and digestible; but the smooth kinds, by some called regal, also giant, while nourishing, are hard to digest; they are well-flavoured and wholesome, more especially the larger ones. Tellinae are found at Canobus in large numbers and are abundant about the time when the Nile is rising. Of these the regal are more tender and light, and promote digestion; moreover they are nourishing. The river varieties are sweeter. Mussels are moderately nourishing; they promote digestion and are diuretic. The best are the Ephesian, especially when taken in the autumn. The myiscae are smaller than mussels proper, but are sweet and well-flavoured and are nourishing besides. Razor-fish, so named by some, but by others pipes, reeds, or finger-nails, contain much liquid of poor flavour and sticky. The males among them are striated and not of one colour; they are good for patients who suffer from stone or a stricture of any kind. But the females are of one colour and are sweeter. They are eaten boiled or fried, but those that are baked on coals until the shells open are better.” “Solenists” ("razor-fish catchers") was the name given to the men who gather these shell-fish, as Phaenias of Eresus records in the book entitled Tyrants killed in Revenge. He writes as follows: “ Philoxenus, surnamed the Solenist, rose from the position of demagogue to that of tyrant. At first he got his living as a fisherman and was a catcher of razor-fish; but having got together some capital he won a competence by trade on a larger scale.” “Of the scallops the white varieties are tenderer; for they are free from odour and good for the bowels. Of the dark or reddish varieties the larger and fleshy specimens have a fine flavour. In general, they are all wholesome, easily digested, and good for the bowels, when eaten with cummin and pepper.” Archippus mentions them in The Fishes: “With limpets, sea-urchins, eschars, garfish, and scallops.” [91a] “And the barnacles, which take their name from their likeness to the acorns on oaks, differ according to locality. For the Egyptian are sweet, tender, well-flavoured, nourishing, have abundant liquor, and are diuretic and good for the bowels; but others are too salty. Ear-mussels are hard to digest, although more nourishing when fried.'Borers' have a good flavour but a bad smell and liquor.
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§ 3.41 Urchins are tender, juicy, of high odour, filling, and easily digested; again, when eaten in sweet pickle, with parsley and mint, they are wholesome, sweet, and well-flavoured. Those which have a red or quince colour and are fatter are pleasanter to eat, as well as those which, when the meat is scraped, exude a milky liquor. Those which occur in Cephallenia and Icaria and the Adriatic... are in some cases rather bitter; those, again, which are found on the Sicilian cliff are laxative.” Aristotle says that there are several kinds of urchins; one is the edible kind, in which are found the so-called eggs, and there are two others, heart-urchins and brysi, as they are called. Sophron mentions heart-urchins, and so does Aristophanes in The Merchantmen, thus: “Biting, pulling to pieces, and licking my urchin down below.” Epicharmus, also, in The Marriage of Hebe says of the urchins: “Crabs have come, and sea-urchins, too, which know not how to swim over the briny sea, but alone of all creatures navigate on foot.” Demetrius of Scepsis, in the twenty-sixth book of The Trojan Battle-Order, says that a Spartan was once invited to a feast where sea-urchins were served on his table; he grasped one, but not knowing how to deal with the viand, and not even observing how his convives disposed of it, he put it into his mouth, shell and all, and tried to crack the urchin with his teeth. Since he had a hard time with the bite and did not comprehend what its rough resistance meant he cried, “You rascally morsel, I won't be soft and let you go now, nor will I ever again take another.” Now the urchins, I mean both terrestrial and marine, guard themselves against the fishers by projecting their spines like a fence of palings. This is attested by Ion of Chios, who says, in The Phoenician (or Caeneus ): “But among land animals I like the ways of the lion rather than the miserable arts of the urchin (hedgehog), which, when it perceives the hostile approach of others stronger than itself, winds its spiny body in a ball and lies still, invincible against bite and touch.”
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§ 3.42 “Of the limpet,” says Diphilus, “some are small and some also resemble oysters. They are tough, with little juice, not very pungent, of good flavour and easily digested; when boiled, too, they are tolerably well-flavoured. Pinnas are diuretic and filling, but hard to digest and assimilate. The periwinkles resemble them; for their necks are wholesome, but not readily digested. Hence for patients with weak stomachs they are proper food; but they are hard to pass, and moderately filling. The'livers' ('poppies,' so-called) are tender at the base and digestible. Hence they are fit for those who suffer from abdominal weakness. The purple-shells stand midway between the pinna and the periwinkle; for their necks have much liquor and a good flavour, while the remaining part of them is salty and sweet, readily assimilated, and good for modifying the humours. Oysters are reproduced in rivers, lagoons, and the sea. [92a] But sea oysters are the best, when a lagoon or a river is near. For then they have a good liquor, and are larger and sweeter. Those which are found on beaches or rocks and are untouched by slime or fresh water are small, tough, and biting to the tongue. The spring shell-fish, and those which come at the beginning of summer, are superior, being plump and having a sea flavour mixed with sweetness; they are wholesome and digestible. Cooked with mallow or sorrel or fish, or even alone, they are nourishing and good for the bowels.”
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§ 3.43 Mnesitheus of Athens, in his work on Victuals, says: “Oysters, cockles, mussels, and the like, contain a meat not easily digested on account of the salty liquor which they contain. Hence when eaten raw they draw down the bowels by their saltiness, whereas when cooked they lose all or most of their salt in the liquor in which they are cooked. Hence, also, the liquids in which any shell-fish are cooked stir and move the bowels, but the meat of cooked shell-fish causes rumblings when it has lost its moisture. But baked shell-fish, provided the baking be done with skill, have the least harmful effect on account of the action of the heat. Consequently they are not as indigestible as the raw, having all the liquids which disturb the bowels thoroughly dried up. And so the nourishment afforded by all shell-fish is liquid and hard to digest, and at the same time is not conducive to urination. But the nettle, the urchin's eggs, and similar food afford a nourishment which, though the liquid is slight, tends to relax the bowels and stimulate the kidneys.”
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§ 3.44 Nicander of Colophon in the Georgics makes this catalogue of the testacea: “And all the shell-fish which feed at the bottom of the ocean — sea snails, conchs, giant clams, and mussels, slimy offspring of Halosdyne — and the hiding-place of the pinna itself.” And Archestratus also has a list in his Gastronomy: “ Aenus produces large mussels, Abydus oysters, Parium crabs, and Mitylene scallops. Ambracia, too, supplies very many, and along with them monstrous... and in Messene's narrow frith thou shalt get giant whelks, in Ephesus also the smooth cockles, not to be despised. Calchedon gives oysters, but as for periwinkles ('heralds') may Zeus confound them, whether they come from the sea or the assembly, excepting one man only. That man is my comrade, his home is in Lesbos of the luscious grapes, and his name is Agathon.” Philyllius — or whoever is the author of The Island-Towns — has “cockles, limpets, razor-fish, mussels, pinnas, Methymne scallops.” The early writers used only the form ostreia for oysters. Cratinus in The Archilochi (Satirists), “like pinnas and ostreia.” So Epicharmus in The Marriage of Hebe has “ostreia clinging together.” But Plato in the Phaedrus has ostreon like orneon ("bird"): “held imprisoned like an oyster”; and again in the Timaeus: “the entire family of ostrea”; on the other hand, in the tenth book of the Republic he has: “ostreia and sea-weed cling to him.” The giant whelks received their name from the word pelorion, “monstrous.” For the creature is larger than the ordinary cockle, in fact, it is of extraordinary size. [93a] Aristotle says they occur in the sand, and Ion of Chios mentions them in his Sojournings. Perhaps these conchs derive their name (chema) from cechena, meaning “to yawn.”
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§ 3.45 Concerning the mollusks which are found in India, since the vogue of pearls makes it appropriate to include them in our mention, Theophrastus writes as follows in his work on Stones: “Among stones which are much admired is the so-called margarites, or pearl, of translucent quality; with it are made the costliest necklaces. It occurs in a shell-fish similar to the pinna, but smaller, and its size is that of a large fish eye.” Androsthenes, also, in the Voyage round India, writes as follows: “The varieties of spiral shell-fish, sea-mussels, and other cockles are numerous, and they differ greatly from those we know at home. Purple-shells, and a vast number of other shell-fish as well, occur there. One in particular, which the natives call berberi, or mother-of-pearl, is that from which the pearl comes. This is of high value in Asia Minor, and in Persia and Upper Asia is sold for its weight in gold. This mollusk looks like the scallop; its shell, however, is not grooved, but is smooth and thick; unlike the scallop, moreover, it has but one auricula, not two. The jewel occurs in the flesh of the mollusk, like the tubercle in swine, and is sometimes so very golden in appearance that when placed side by side with gold it cannot be readily distinguished from it; sometimes, again, it is silvery, and sometimes perfectly white, resembling the eye of a fish.” And Chares of Mitylene says, in the seventh part of his Tales of Alexander: “A creature similar to the oyster is caught in the Indian Sea, likewise also in the waters adjacent to Armenia, Persia, Susa, and Babylon; it is of considerable size and oblong, and contains within it a flesh which is plump and white and very fragrant. From it they extract white bones which they call pearls, from which they make necklaces, bracelets, and anklets. The Persians, Medes, and in fact all Asiatics value them far more than articles made of gold.”
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§ 3.46 Isidorus of Charax, in his Description of Parthia, says that there is an island in the Persian Gulf where pearls are found in abundance; wherefore the island is surrounded with bamboo rafts from which the natives dive in twenty fathoms of water and bring up bivalves. They say that the mollusk is most apt to teem with pearls when thunderstorms and downpourings of rain are frequent, and the pearls found then are most numerous and of good size. In winter the mollusks have a habit of entering recesses at the bottom of the ocean; but in summer they swim about, with shells open at night but closed by day. Those which cling to rocks or cliffs send forth roots and remain there while they produce the pearls. These are kept alive and nourished through the part which adheres to the flesh, and this part, which grows at the mouth of the shell, has tentacles and introduces the food. It is, in fact, similar to a little crab, and is called pinna-guard ("hermit-crab"). From this opening the flesh projects to the middle of the shell, like a root, and on this the pearl is propagated, and it grows on the tough part of the shell, receiving food so long as the oyster clings to the rock. [94a] As growth proceeds, the flesh rises under it and gradually forces its way between so as to separate the pearl from the shell, until it envelops the pearl entirely and ceases to nourish it, making it smoother and more glistening and pure. Now the purest pearls, those which are most lustrous and large, are produced in the pinna which remains on the ocean bottom, whereas the pinna which grows at the surface, emerging about the water and receiving the direct rays of the sun, is of inferior colour and of less value. Pearl-fishers run risks when they put their hands straight into an open shell; for in that case it closes up, and often severs the fingers; some even die on the spot. But if they succeeded in getting the hand under the shell sideways, they can easily tear it from the rock. Smaragdi are mentioned by Menander in The Slave: “These should be an emerald and carnelians.” The word should be pronounced without an s, because it is derived from marmairo ("sparkle"), with reference to its lustre.
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§ 3.47 [94c] Following these viands platters were passed round containing many kinds of meat prepared with water, — feet, heads, ears, jawbones, beside guts, tripe, and tongues, in accordance with the custom in shops at Alexandria called “boiled-meat shops.” “This word, Ulpian, is found in Poseidippus, in The Slave.” And while the company were further inquiring for authors who had named any of these foods, one of them said: “The edible tripes are mentioned by Aristophanes in The Knights,'I will declare that you are selling tripe untithed.' And again he says:'Why, good sir, won't you let me wash the tripe and sell my sausages instead of laughing at me?' Still again:'I'll gulp down a beef-gut and a pig's tripe, then drink up the broth, and without stopping to wipe my mouth I'll outbawl the orators and confound Nicias.' Again:'Ay, the daughter of a mighty sire gave me a piece of meat cooked in broth, and a slice of guts, of tripe, and of belly.' Cratinus mentions the jawbone in The Plutuses:'fighting for the jawbone of an ox.' And Sophocles in the Amycus says,'makes jawbones soft.' Plato, in the Timaeus, writes:'He (God) also joined together the ends of their jawbones under the conformation of the face.' And Xenophon, in the Art of Horsemanship mentions'a small, contracted jaw.' Some pronounce the word with a u (suagon) by analogy with the word for swine (sus).” Epicharmus mentions sausages, calling them oryae, a name by which he even entitles one of his plays, the Orya. Aristophanes says in the Clouds: “Let them make sausages of me and serve me up to the students.” Cratinus in the Wine-flask: “How thin, said he, is this slice of sausage!” So Eupolis in the Goats. And Alexis in Leucadia, or The Runaways: [95a] “A slice of sausage has arrived, and some mincemeat.” Antiphanes in the Nuptials: “Cutting out the middle slice of a sausage.”
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§ 3.48 Feet, ears, and the snout are mentioned by Alexis in Crateia, or The Apothecary; his testimony I will quote a little later, since it contains many of the terms under discussion. Theophilus in the Pancration-Fighter: “A. Of boiled dishes there are nearly three pounds' weight. — B. Tell us more! — A. A snout, a ham, four pigs' feet. — B. Heracles! — A. and three ox -feet.” Anaxilas in The Caterers: “A. More satisfactory to me by far than verses from Aeschylus is baking fish. — B. What's that you say, fish? You mean to make your messmates sick. How much better to boil trotters... snouts and feet.” And Anaxilas in Circe: “Having the snout of a pig, dear Cinesias; it was awful!” And in Calypso: “I realized then that I bore a pig's snout.” Ears are mentioned by Anaxandrides in his Satyrias, and Axionicus in The Chalcidian says: “I am preparing a stew by warming over a fish until it is hot, putting in morsels that have been left over and moistening them with wine, slashing in some entrails seasoned with salt and silphium, a slice of sausage, and a bit of tripe, with a snout well soused in vinegar; and so you will all agree that the next morning's fare is better than that at the wedding the night before.” Aristophanes in The Rehearsal: “Alack, I have tasted the entrails of my children; how shall I look upon that scorched snout?” And Pherecrates in Frills: “For is not this simply a swine's snout?” There is also a place called by this name, Rhynchus (Beak), near Stratus in Aitolia, according to Polybius in the sixth book of the Histories. And Stesichorus, in the Boar Hunters, has: “to hide the tip of the snout underground.” That the word “snout” is properly applied only to swine has already been explained; but that it may be applied also to other animals, and even be used jocosely of the human face, is shown by Archippus in the second edition of Amphitryo: “Although he has a snout so long.” So Araros, in Adonis: “For the god is turning his snout toward us.”
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§ 3.49 The word acrocolia ("trotters") is used by Aristophanes in the Aiolosikon: “And what is more — for I had almost forgotten it — I boiled four trotters for you until they were tender.” And in the Gerytades: “Trotters, wheat loaves, and crayfish.” Antiphanes in The Woman of Corinth: “A. And then a pig's foot to Aphrodite? Ridiculous! — B. But you don't know. In Cyprus, my master, the goddess takes such delight in swine that she keeps the beast from feeding on dung, but has forced that job upon the oxen.” As a matter of fact Callimachus (or Zenodotus ), [96a] in Historical Notes, testifies that the pig is sacrificed to Aphrodite, in these words: “The people of Argos sacrifice swine to Aphrodite, and the festival is called the Hysteria (feast of swine).” Pherecrates, in The Miners, has these lines: “There were close at hand, on platters, whole hams with shin and all, most tender, and trotters well boiled.” Alexis in The Dicers: “After we had just finished a luncheon from a bit of trotter.” So too, in The Vigil (or Toilers): “The meat is only half-done, the mincemeat is spoiled, the eel is boiled, but the trotters are not yet ready.” Pherecrates mentions boiled feet in The Slave-Teacher: A. “Tell us how the dinner is progressing. — B. Well then, you are to have a piece of eel, a squid, some lamb, a slice of sausage, a boiled foot, a liver, a rib, a vast number of birds, cheese with honey sauce, and a portion of beef.” Antiphanes in The Parasite: “A. There are smoked pigs' knuckles. — B. A nice luncheon, by the goddess of home! — A. Yes, and a lot of melted cheese was sizzling over them.” Ecphantides, in The Satyrs: “Whenever he had to buy and eat boiled pigs' feet.” The tongue is mentioned by Aristophanes in Masters of the Frying-pan: “No more anchovy for me! I am bursting with the greasy stuff I've eaten. Rather, to take the taste away, bring me a piece of liver or a glandule from a young boar, or failing that, a rib or a tongue or a spleen; or fetch me the paunch of a sucking- pig killed in the autumn, with some hot rolls.”
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§ 3.50 With so much said on these matters, the physicians present did not fail to contribute their share. For Dionysocles said: “ Mnesitheus of Athens, in his work on Victuals, remarked that the head and feet of a pig contain little nourishment or fat.” And Leonidas quoted Demon, who says, in the fourth book of his Attic History: “ Apheidas, when king of Athens, was assassinated by his younger brother Thymoetes, a bastard, who thereupon became king. In his reign Melanthus of Messenia was banished from his native land and asked the Delphic priestess where he should find a home. And she made answer,'Wherever, on being received as an honoured guest, he should have the feet and the head served to him at dinner.' And this actually happened to him at Eleusis; for when, in the course of the observance of some ancestral festival, the priestesses had consumed all the meat and only the feet and the head were left, these were sent to Melanthus.”
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§ 3.51 Next was brought in a swine's matrix (uterus), a veritable metropolis and mother to the sons of Hippocrates, who, as I know, were ridiculed in comedy for swinishness. After glancing at it Ulpian said, “Come now, my friends, in what author is the matrix mentioned? We have filled our bellies full, and it's high time that we do the talking; I urge the Cynics to be still, since they have foddered themselves without stint. But perhaps they would like to gnaw to pieces the bones of the jaw and the head; there is no objection to their enjoying that kind of food, being Dogs. For that is what they are, and they boast of the title. [97a] Moreover,'it is the custom to throw the remnants to the dogs,' as Euripides has said in The Women of Crete. In fact, they will eat and drink anything, never taking to heart what the divine Plato said in the Protagoras:'To talk about poetry would make our gathering like the symposia of common and vulgar men. For being unable, through lack of cultivation, to amuse one another in company at a symposium, by their own resources or through their own voices and conversation, they raise high the market-price of flute-girls, hiring for a large sum an alien voice — that of the flutes — and for this they come together. But wherever men of gentle breeding and culture are gathered at a symposium, you will see neither flute-girls nor dancing-girls nor harp-girls; on the contrary, they are quite capable of entertaining themselves without such nonsense and child's play, but with their own voices, talking and listening in their turn, and always decently, even when they have drunk much wine.' That is what you Cynics do, Cynulcus. When you drink — or rather when you drain — you are like flute-girls and dancing-girls in thwarting the pleasure of conversation,'Living, as Plato again describes it in the Philebus,'the life, not of a human being, but of a mollusk or some other creature of the sea which has breath, and for its body a shell.'”

Via ToposText (topostext.org), a project of the Aikaterini Laskaridis Foundation created by Brady Kiesling. Translated by Charles Burton Gulick (1868-1962). Composed ca. 228 CE. Licence: public domain. Source.