Athenaeus, Deipnosophists

ToposText · Athenaeus · 1,421 sections

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§ 8.45.1 Victorious over his competitors in Sikyon, he dedicated in the Asclepieion a trophy with the inscription:'Dedicated by Stratonicus from the spoils of bad harp-players.' After a certain singer had finished his song he asked whose tune that was. Receiving the reply,'It is by Carcinus,' he said,'Indeed it must be; no man could have written it.' He used to say that in Maroneia they never had summer, but simmer. In Phaselis the bath-tender got into a quarrel with Stratonicus's slave over the fee, it being the custom to charge foreigners a higher price for a bath. He said,'You foul slave, you have nearly made me into a Phaselite by the turn of a paltry farthing.' To the man who praised him in the hope of getting something he said that he was a bigger pauper himself. While giving lessons in a small city he said,'This is no city; it is a pity.' Going up to a well in Pella he asked if the water was drinkable. When the drawers said,'We, at least, drink it,' he answered,'Then it can't be drinkable.' For it so happened that the men had jaundiced complexions.
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§ 8.45.16 Listening to The Birth-pangs of Semele, by Timotheus, he remarked:'If she were bearing a theatrical manager instead of a god, what screeches she would be letting forth!' When Polyidus was boasting because his pupil Philotas had carried off the prize instead of Timotheus, Stratonicus said,'I am surprised that you don't know that Philotas merely makes decrees, while Timotheus makes laws.' To the harper Areius, who was boring him, he said,'Sing yourself to the devil.' In Sikyon he replied to a currier who had insulted him and called him a cur,'You cur-rier!' The same Stratonicus, observing that the Rhodians were lascivious and given to hot drinks, used to say that they were Cyrenaeans with white skins. Rhodes, therefore, he called a city of suitors; for while he thought that the Rhodians differed in colour, but not in prodigality, from the Cyrenaeans, he also likened their city to the suitors in its proneness to pleasure.
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§ 8.46 In respect of these repartees Stratonicus tried to emulate the poet Simonides, according to Ephorus in the second book of his work On Inventions; he says, too, that Philoxenus of Cythera had the same ambition. The Peripatetic Phaenias, in the second book of his treatise On Poets, says:' Stratonicus of Athens, it is agreed, was the first to introduce multiplicity of notes in simple harp-playing; he was also the first to receive pupils in harmony, and to compile a table of musical intervals. Nor in the matter of humour did he fail to hit the mark.' In fact they say that his outspoken jesting cost him his life at the hands of Nicocles, king of Cyprus; he was compelled to drink poison for poking fun at the king's sons.
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§ 8.47 352D ”As for Aristotle's minuteness in details, I am lost in admiration of it, my good Democritus. These wiseacres have had him constantly on their lips, and even you revere his words as you do those of the other philosophers and orators. When did he learn it all? From what Proteus or Nereus, rising out of the deep, did he learn what fishes do, or how they go to bed or pass the day? Indeed, the things he has recorded are such as to be what the comic poet calls'Marvels for simpletons.' He says, namely, that periwinkles and all testacea are, as a class, non-copulating, and that the purple-shell and the periwinkle are long-lived. How could he know, in fact, that the purple-shell lives six years? Or that the viper remains the longest time in the act of copulation, that the ringdove is the largest of the doves, and next comes the rock-pigeon, while the turtle-dove is the smallest? How does he know, too, that the stallion lives thirty-five years, whereas the mare lives more than forty? He even declares that one lived for seventy-five years! He records that from the copulation of lice nits are generated; that from the transformation the grub comes the caterpillar from which is formed the silk-cocoon, and from this, what is termed the'necydallus.' What is more, he says that bees live as much as six years; some, even seven. No bee or drone, he declares, has ever been seen in the act of copulating, hence it is impossible to tell which of them are males, which females. How, again, does he know that men are inferior to bees? The latter, indeed, maintain the even course of their lives, never changing, always accumulating, and they do this untaught. But men are inferior to bees, and are as full of false opinion as bees are of honey. Where did he observe that? Again, in the treatise On Longevity, he says that a fly has been seen to live six or seven years. What is the proof of this, really?
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§ 8.48 Where has he seen ivy growing from a stag's horn? Owls, he asserts, and ravens, are unable to see by day; hence they hunt their food by night, and not all night either, but during nightfall; and their eyes are not alike in appearance, for some have dark grey eyes, some black, others light-grey. That the eye of man varies in all sorts of ways, and that differences in character are associated with their eyes, is another assertion. For men with goat -like eyes are well endowed with sharpness of eyesight and have the most upright characters. In the case of other men, some have their eyes projecting, others sunk in, others are intermediate. Those whose eyes are set in are the most sharp-sighted, those with projecting eyes have the most evil dispositions, those with eyes intermediate, Aristotle says, are good men. Some, again, are given to blinking, others to staring, others are midway between. The blinkers are fickle, the starers are impudent; those which are midway between are of the best characters. Man, moreover, is the only animal which has the heart on the left side, all others having it in the centre. Males have more teeth than females. This, he says, has been observed I think of the sheep, the hog, and the goat. No fish that grows ever has testicles, nor does either fish or bird have breasts; the dolphin alone has no gall-bladder. Some fishes, he says, have the gall-bladder, not next the liver, but close to the intestines; such are the elops, the synagris, the lamprey, the swordfish, and the flying-fish. The amia has a gall-bladder which extends the entire length of the intestine; the hawk and the kite have the gall-bladder close to the liver and the intestines; the horned owl has it close to the liver and the stomach. As for pigeon, quail, and swallow, some have it close to the intestines, some, close to the stomach.
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§ 8.49 Soft-skinned creatures, testacea, selachians, and insects copulate a long time. The dolphin and some of the other fishes copulate while resting side by side; the intercourse of dolphins is a slow process, while that of (other) fishes is rapid. Moreover, the lion, Aristotle says, has hard bones, and when they are struck sparks blaze forth as if from stones; and though the dolphin has bones and no spine, the selachians have both cartilage and spine. As for fish... Some creatures live on land, some in the water, some are born of fire. There are also some which are called ephemera and live but a single day. Amphibians are such as the hippopotamus, crocodile, and otter. All animals have two guiding feet; the crab has four. All red-blooded animals, he says, either have no feet, or two feet, or four feet; but all that have more than four feet are bloodless. Hence, all animals that have motion move by the notation four: man, by two feet and two hands; bird, by two feet and two wings; eel and conger-eel, by two fins and two flexures. Further: some animals have hands, like man; others only seem to have them, like the monkey. For no dumb animals give or receive, these actions being just what hands, as instruments, are given for. Again, among animals some have joints, like man, the ass, the ox, while others are inarticulate, like snakes, oysters, and the pulmonary molluscs. Many animals do not show themselves at every season, for example, those which hibernate underground; and those which do not hibernate are not seen at all times, for example, swallows and storks.
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§ 8.50.1 [353] “Though I have still much to say about the nonsense which this apothecary has uttered, I forbear. And yet I am aware that Epicurus, the ardent devotee of truth, has said of him, in his letter On Vocations, that after he had devoured his inheritance he entered the army, and on meeting with poor success in the campaign he betook himself to drug-selling. Afterwards, Epicurus says, Plato opened his school, and Aristotle went so far as to hazard himself there, and attended the lectures, being no dullard, and gradually assumed the contemplative habit. I am aware, too, that Epicurus is the only one that has said these things against him, and not Eubulides as well; nor has Cephisodorus, even, ventured to say that kind of thing against the Stageirite, although both he and Eubulides have published tracts against the man. In the same letter Epicurus says also that Protagoras the sophist, from being a porter and wood-carrier, became the private secretary of Democritus. For the latter, struck by something peculiar in the way in which Protagoras piled wood, gave him his first start by adopting him into his household. He then taught reading and writing in some remote village, and from this branched out into the sophist's profession. And so I, fellow-banqueters, will branch out from this long discussion into the immediate practice of belly-stuffing.”
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§ 8.50.23 [354] Because of this long feast of words, somebody ordered the cooks to continue to see to it that the dishes they served should not get cold; for no one can eat cold viands. And Cynulcus said: “To quote Milcon, by the comic poet Alexis:'I (he says)... even if they don't serve hot dishes. Plato declares that the Good is everywhere good. Do you understand me? What is pleasing is in all cases pleasing, both here and yon.' Again, that was not an unwitty remark of Sphaerus, who studied under Cleanthes at the same time with Chrysippus. Having been summoned to Alexandria by King Ptolemy, when some fowls made of wax were served at dinner, he stretched forth his hands to take them, but was restrained by the king on the ground that he was assenting to a falsehood. But he neatly explained by saying that he did not assent to the proposition that they were birds, but that it was probable that they were birds. The realizable presentation of sense differs from the probable — for the former is free from deception whereas the probable might turn out otherwise. And so in our own case let's have even some wax food served, so far as the realizable presentation of sense is concerned, so that, even though we may be capable of erring in visit, at least we may not spend all our time in silly talk.”
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§ 8.51 [355] Again we were just on the point of dining, when Daphnus told us to stop, appropriately quoting the iambic verse from The Blockhead (or Breezes) of Metagenes. “Whenever we dine, you know, that is the time when we all babble most.” “I, too, assert that the discussion about fish has been defective, since the sons of the Asclepiadae have had much to say about them; I mean Philotimus in his work On Food, Mnesitheus of Athens, and also Diphilus of Siphnos. The last, in his book On Food for Sick and Well, says that, of the salt-water fish, the rock-fishes are easily digested, very juicy and purgative, but unsubstantial and of little nourishment; but those caught in deep water are less easily digested, very filling, hard to assimilate. Again, as to rock-fish, the forked hake, male and female, are very tender small fishes, free from smell and easily digested; the sea-perch has resemblance to them, yet differs slightly according to locality. Gobies are like the perch; the small white ones are tender, free from smell, juicy, and easily digested; the yellow (also called stalk-fish) are dry and lean. The cannas have tender meat, yet are tougher than the perch. The parrot-fish has tender meat, flaky, sweet, light, easily digested and assimilated, loosening the bowels. But when recently caught the parrot-fishes should be eaten with caution, since they hunt and feed on the sea-hares. Hence their inner parts may cause cholera morbus. The fish called ceris has tender meat, loosens the bowels, and is wholesome. The cyle from it gently moistens and purges. The sea-perch (orphos or orphos) has healthy and abundant juices, is viscous, not easily digested, very filling, and diuretic. That is, the parts next its head are viscous and easily digested, while the meaty parts are hard to digest and heavier. The cut by the tail is more tender. This fish is likely to cause clammy humours and to be hard to digest. Hammer-fish are more nourishing than conger-eels. The lake-eel is more tasty and nourishing than the sea-eel. The gilt-head has qualities resembling those of the black-tail. The yellow deep-sea sculpins are more nourishing than the large ones caught in lagoons by the shore.
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§ 8.52 The gilt-head is acrid, tender-fleshed, free from smell, of good taste, and is diuretic; when boiled it is digestible, but when fried, it is hard to digest. The red mullet has a good taste, but is rather astringent, tough-fleshed, hard to digest, and checks the action of the bowels, especially when baked over coals; but the fried mullet is also heavy and hard to digest; in general, all mullets have the effect of secreting blood. The synodon and pole-fish belong to the same family, but the pole-fish is superior. There is, to be sure, a pagrus caught in streams, but the sea-pagrus is better. The boar-fish is called also mouse-fish; it has a bad smell and is tough, and harder to digest than the turbot. Yet it has a skin which tastes good. The tailor — or needle-fish (also called ablennes) is hard to digest, yet watery and easy for the bowels. The anchovy and its allied types, herring and sardine, are easily assimilated. The barbed mullet occurs in the ocean, in lakes, and in streams. This fish, Diphilus says, is also called sharp-snout. The crow-fish is the special product of the Nile. The black is inferior to the white, the boiled to the baked. For the latter is good both for stomach and bowels. The salpa is tough and unpalatable; but the salpa found in Alexandria is better, as well as that which comes in autumn; for it exudes something watery and white which is not, however, of bad odour. The gryllus resembles an eel, but is unpalatable. The hawk-fish has tougher meat than the cuckoo-fish, but resembles it in other respects. Also the crow-fish is tougher than the hawk-fish. The star-gazer, also called the sacred fish, or even the beauteous-name, are too rich. The box, when boiled, is easily digested and assimilated, gives out moisture and eases the bowels. Baked on coals, it is sweeter and tenderer. The bacchus has good and plentiful juices and is nourishing. The male sprat is unpalatable, indigestible, and smelly. Plaice and flounders are nourishing and pleasant. Like these is the rhombus, The white mullets, the cephali, grey mullets, slime-fish and chellones are alike in their value as food, but the grey mullet is inferior to the cephalus, the slime-fish is still poorer, and the chellon ranks last.
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§ 8.53 The tunny (both thynnis and thynnus) are rich and filling. The sea-bass called acarnan is sweet and astringent, also filling and easily eliminated. The anchovy is rich and hard to digest. The white variety is called cobitis. The hepsetus, that very tiny fish, belongs to the same class. Of the selachians the cow-fish is fleshy, but the Dogfish, especially that called stellata, is superior. The thresher shark (fox-fish) resembles the land animal in taste, whence it got is name. The ray is tasty, but the stellated ray is tenderer and juicy. The smooth-ray is more costive, and is smelly. The electric ray, in general hard to digest, has parts near the head which are tender and wholesome and even digestible, but the other parts are not; the small ones are superior, especially when cooked plainly. The file-fish, another selachian, is digestible and light. The larger is also the more nourishing. In general, all the selachians are windy and meaty and hard to digest, and when eaten too plentifully they dull the eyesight. The cuttle-fish even when boiled is tender, tasty, and digestible, and also eases the bowels. The chyle from it is adapted to thinning the blood and assisting purgation when that is obstructed by piles. The squid is more digestible and filling, especially when small. But the boiled squid is tougher and not tasty. The polyp, while it is an active aphrodisiac, is tough and indigestible. The larger sized is more nourishing. When cooked for a long time it gently moistens the bowels and settles the stomach. Alexis in Pamphila makes plain the usefulness of the polyp when he says:'What is better for a man in love, Cteson, than the things which I have brought with me here? There are periwinkles, scallops, bulbs, a large polyp, and fine large fish.' The palamyde is filling and rich, diuretic also and hard to digest; but when smoked like the cube tunny it eases the bowels and is attenuating. The larger-sized is called synodontis. The chelidonias tunny, though resembling the palamyde tunny, is tougher. The flying-fish that resembles the polyp produces a liquid which promotes a good complexion and stirs the blood. The horse-mackerel is miry; the larger sort resembles the chelidonias tunny in point of toughness, but the slices from under its belly and the shoulder-bone are tasty and tender. The so called costae, when smoked, are of moderate value. The yellow tunny is to a certain degree unsavoury; it is tenderer than the horse-mackerel. This, then, is what Diphilus has to say.
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§ 8.54 [356] ” Mnesitheus of Athens, in his work On Victuals, says that among the larger fishes there is a kind called by some sliced, by others deep-sea, such as the gilt-heads, the grey-fishes, and the pagruses. They are hard to digest, yet when digested they afford many times more nourishment. Then there is the kind known as scale-less fishes, such as tunnies, mackerel, female tunny, congers and the like, which, as it happens, are gregarious. Those kinds which neither appear solitarily nor yet run in schools are more digestible, such as congers, sharks, and the like. The gregarious kinds among these fish afford eating which is delightful (for they are rich), but heavy and hard to digest. Hence they are best adapted to smoking, and of all preserved fish these are the best kinds. But they are good when baked, since their rich fat is then melted. The kinds called darta are in general those which have a rough top-growth on the skin, not scales, but the kind deified on rays and file-fishes. All these, to be sure, are digestible, but not of good odour; they also furnish the body with moist nutriment, and purge the bowels better than all other boiled fish; for those which are baked are inferior. The mollusc class, such as polyps, cuttle-fishes, and the like, have a flesh which is not easily digested; hence they are adapted to stimulating sexual desire. For they are in themselves of the nature of breath, and the sexual crisis requires a bodily state which is full of breath. Molluscs are better when boiled, since the liquids which they contain are poor, as may be seen, at least, from those which they exude when they are washed. These liquids, then, are elicited from the meat by boiling. For if the heat is applied gently, together with the water it acts as a cleansing process. Baking, on the other hand, tends to dry up these liquids; and further, since their meat is naturally tough, it is to be expected that they should become so (when baked).
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§ 8.55 [357] Small fry, anchovies, young herrings, and all other fish whose bones we eat as well as the meat, produce a windy digestion in all cases and yield a moist nutriment. Since the process of digestion here is not even, but the meat is very quickly digested while the bones are dissolved slowly (for small fry, undressed, are full of bones), the digestive process is impeded in the case of each by the other. The result is that digestion causes winds, while the food causes humours to arise. And so they are better when boiled, and their purgative action on the bowels is uneven. The so called rock-fish, gobies, sculpins, plaice, and the like, yield our bodies a nutriment which is dry (they have compact flesh, are filling and digest quickly, and do not leave behind much refuse), and they are not productive of winds. Every kind of fish is more easily digested when it is prepared for the table in a simple manner; in fact rock-fishes taste better when dressed simply. Like these are the class called soft-fleshed, thrushes, blackbirds, and so on. They are, to be sure, more liquid than rock-fishes, but afford more enjoyment in the process of assimilation. They are more purgative and diuretic than rock-fishes because their flesh is more liquid and abundant than that of the aforesaid. If one desires to purge the bowels, he should boil them before giving; if, however, the bowels regular, they are nourishing even when baked. For diuretic purposes, they are useful when prepared in both ways.
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§ 8.56 As for the places in the sea where streams and lakes have outlets in it, or again where there are large lagoons and bays of the sea — in these places all fish are more liquid and more rich; and while they are pleasanter to eat, they are poorer in digestive and nourishing qualities. On the other hand, on the shores facing deep seas, or very much exposed, most fish are tough, thin, and wave-battered. In places where the sea is deep inshore, and not oppressed by strong gales, especially if there are any towns near — in such places, I say, most kinds of fish are uniformly the best, whether in respect of flavour, or ease of digestion, or nourishment of the body. But those sea fishes which migrate from the sea into streams and lakes are hardest to digest and heaviest, such as the mullet, and, in a word, all fishes which have the power of living in both kinds of water. Of those which live entirely in rivers or marshes, the river fish are the better; for a marshy place is the putrefaction of water. And of the river fishes, in turn, those are best which are found in the most rapid streams, especially the fiery-spots, for these are not found except when a stream is rapid and cold, and they are supreme among river fish in digestibility.
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§ 8.57 [358C] “Here, gentlemen, you have our offering of food, contributed as healthfully as our powers permitted. For, as Antiphanes says in The Parasite:'I have not, to be sure, spent too much effort in purveying your food, nor, on the other hand, have I cut my labours too short, so that a man who has, anyhow, lost his head by drinking, could lay on me the blame for a headache a la grecque.' Nor, again, am I so fish-loving as the man in the same poet's Butalion, which play is a revision of one of those entitled The Farmers. For he says:'A. Today, let me tell you, I am going to give you a feast. You, Pistus, take some money and go to the market for us. P. Not me! For anyhow I don't know how to buy profitably. A. Tell me then, Philumenus, what kind of fish do you like? PH. I like'em all! A. Yes, but explain in detail, what kind of fish would you like to eat. PH. Well, once a fishmonger came into the country with a load of sprats and mullets, and Zeus is my witness, he became very popular with all of us. A. Then do tell me, would you eat some of them now? PH. Yes, and if there be any other small kind. For I hold that all these large fishes are man-eaters. A How's that, dear friend? Man-eaters! What do you mean? P. He means, of course, what a man would eat. But these are Helen's food that he speaks of, sprats and mullets.' Now in The Farmer he had said that sprats and mullets were Hecate's food. Ephippus also speaks contemptuously of the small kinds of fish in Philyra:'A. Daddy, won't you run to the market and buy me — B. Tell me, what? A. Fish, daddy, with some sense in them; don't bring me infants! B. Yes, but don't you know that money is worth its weight in — money?'
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§ 8.58 [359] ”Most entertaining is the young man, in The Obeliaphoroi of the same poet, who speaks depreciatingly of all kinds of food and says:'A. See that you buy economically; for anything will do. B. Explain, master. A. Not sumptuously, but simply; whatever is required for piety's sake. We'll be satisfied with some little cuttle-fish or squidlets; if you can get a crayfish, one or two will be enough to grace the table. Small eels sometimes come from Thebes; get some of them. A cockerel, a dovelet, a tiny partridge, and such like. If a rabbit comes to market, bring that. B. How stingy you are! A. Yes, but you are too extravagant; and anyhow, we have plenty of meat. B. Has anybody sent some to us? A. No, but the lady has just offered sacrifice; we'll dine tomorrow on Corone's calf.' Again, the Peevish Man, who was a terrible miser in the play of that name by Mnesimachus, says to the young man who leads a spendthrift life:'Nay, I entreat you, don't exact too many things from me, your own uncle — things which are too cruel, too overlaid with money. Make your demands moderate. B. But good Heavens, man, how could they be more moderate? A. How? Fool me by using diminutive terms. Call fishes little fishes; if you speak of any other dainty, call it a little dainty. Then I shall die more happily, by far.'
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§ 8.59 [360] Inasmuch as we happened to quote it in the citations above, tell me, dear Ulpian, or you too, sons of the scholastics, what Ephippus had in mind in the afore-mentioned verses when he said:'We'll dine tomorrow on Corone's calf.' I, for my part, think there must be some story connected with it, and I am eager to hear it." Whereupon Plutarch said: “It is a story told in Rhodes, which I cannot at this moment repeat by heart, because it is a very long time since I have seen the book which contains it. I know however, that Phoenix of Colophon, the iambic poet, mentions certain men who took up a collection for the' Crow,' and that he says this:'Kind friends, give a handful of barley to the Crow, Apollo's daughter; or a plate of wheat, a loaf of bread maybe, or a farthing-bit, or whatever you please. Give to the Crow, good sirs, something of what each of you has on hand. She will accept a lump of rock-salt; yes, she likes very much to feast on that. Who gives salt now will give honey comb another day. Boy, push back the door! Abundance has heard us, and a maid brings figs for the Crow. Ye gods, may the girl prove to be blameless in every way, and may she find a husband rich and famous; I hope she may lay a son in the arms of her old father, and a girl baby on the lap of her mother — her own offspring to be nurtured as a wife for one of her kinsmen. As for me, wherever my feet carry me, I go in turn and sing at the door with tuneful muse, whether one gives or does not give more than I ask.' And at the end of the iambics he says:'Nay, good sirs, hand out some of the wealth which your pantry hoards. Give, master, and you too, lady bride, give It is the custom to give a handful to the Crow when she begs. That is the refrain I sing. Give something, and it will be enough.' Those who took up collections for the Crow were called Coronists, as Pamphilus of Alexandria says in his work On Names; and the songs sung by them are called Coronismata, as Hagnocles of Rhodes records in the article Coronists.
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§ 8.60 Another ceremony of collecting is called among the Rhodians'Playing the Swallow;' of this Theognis speaks in the second book of his Rhodian Sacrifices. He writes:'There is a sort of collecting the Rhodians call Playing the Swallow, which occurs in the month Boedromion. The term ”swallowing" is used because of the custom of singing in refrain: “The Swallow has come, has come! She brings fair weather, fair weather and fair seasons. Her breast is white, her back is black. You there! Trundle out some pressed fruit from your rich store, a cup of wine, a tray of cheeses. A wheat-cake, too, and pulse-bread, the swallow does not spurn. Are we to go away (satisfied), or shall we grab something for ourselves? If you give us something — Otherwise, we won't let you be. We'll carry off your front door, or the lintel over it, or the good wife sitting within. She's a little thing, we can easily lift her. So if you give us anything, make it something big! Open, open the door to the Swallow. Indeed we are not old men, but little boys.” This mode of collection was instituted first by Cleobulus of Lindus, when the need of collecting money once arose in Lindus.'
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§ 8.61.1 [361] Since we have mentioned Rhodian stories, I am now going to do some fish-collecting for you from fair Rhodes on my own account, because the entertaining Lynceus says that Rhodes is well supplied with fish. Now Ergias of Rhodes, in History of My Native Land, after prefacing some remarks on the Phoenicians who settled the island, says that Phalanthus and his followers occupied a very strongly fortified city in Ialysus called Achaea; and having control of the water-supply, they were able to hold out a long time against the siege laid by Iphiclus. In fact, they also had a prophecy divinely given in an oracle, which said that they would hold the country until crows became white and fishes appeared in their mixing-bowls. Since, then, they were confident that this would never happen, they became more lax in carrying on the war. Iphiclus learned from some source about the oracles given to the Phoenicians; so he intercepted by means of an ambush a trusted follower of Phalanthus, named Larcas, as he was going to get water, and having exchanged pledges with him, he caught some small fish in the spring, and placing them in a water-jar he gave it to Larcas, and told him to take this water and pour it into the mixing-bowl from which Phalanthus was accustomed to have his wine dispensed. This Larcas did. Then Iphiclus caught some crow, and having smeared them with gypsum, he let them go. Phalanthus saw the crows and then went up to the mixing-bowl; and when he saw the fish as well, he reasoned that the country was theirs no longer and made overtures through heralds to Iphiclus, proposing that he should be allowed to retire with all that were with him, under the protection of a truce. Iphiclus agreed to this, but Phalanthus devised a trick, as follows: he slaughtered and disembowelled some sacrificial victims, and tried to carry out his gold and silver money in their bellies. But Iphiclus was apprised of the trick and succeeded in preventing it.
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§ 8.61 And when Phalanthus reproached him with the oath which he had sworn, that he would allow to be carried out'whatsoever they carried in their belly,' he answered the quibble by giving them boats for their departure, to be took away the rudders, the oars, and the sails, saying that he had sworn to supply boats, but nothing else. In despair the Phoenicians buried a large quantity of their money, marking the hiding-places in order that they might recover it if they ever came back later; but a large part they abandoned to Iphiclus. In this manner, then, the Phoenicians departed from the country, and the Greeks got control of affairs. The same facts are recorded also by Polyzelus in his History of Rhodes. He says that the trick of the fishes and the crows was known only to Phacas and his daughter Dorcia. She had fallen in love with Iphiclus, and having through her nurse become engaged to marry him, she persuaded the man who carried the water to take the fish and put them into the mixing-bowl, while she herself white-washed the crows and let them go.
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§ 8.62 [362] Creophylus, in Chronicles of the Ephesians, says that the founders of Ephesus, after suffering many hardships because of the difficulties of the place, finally sent to the oracle of the god and asked where they should place their city. And he declared to them that they should build a city'wheresover a fish shall show them and a wild boar shall lead the way'. It is said, accordingly, that some fishermen were eating their noonday meal in the place where are the spring today called Oily and the sacred lake. One of the fish popped out with a live coal and fell into some straw, and a thicket in which a wild boar happened to be was set on fire by the fish. The boar, frightened by the fire, ran up a great distance on the mountain which is called Trecheia (Rough), and when brought down by a javelin, fell where today stands the temple of Athena. So the Ephesians crossed over from the island after living there twenty years, and for the second time settled Trecheia and the regions on the slopes of Coressus; they also built a sanctuary of Artemis overlooking the market-place, and a sanctuary of Pythian Apollo at the harbour."
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§ 8.63.1 [363] While much talk of this nature was still going on, right then was heard all through the town the sound of flutes, the crash of cymbals and the beating of drums, accompanied by voices in song. It so happened that it was the festival of the Parilia, as it used to be called, though it is now called the Roman Festival, instituted in honour of the Fortune of the city, when her temple was erected by that best and most musical of emperors, Hadrian. That day is celebrated annually as especially glorious by all the residents of Rome and by all who happen to be staying in the city. Therefore Ulpian said: “What is that, gentlemen?'Is it a solemn banquet, or a wedding? For surely this cannot be a dinner to which all men bring their share.'” And when someone explained that everyone in town was dancing in honour of the goddess, Ulpian said with a laugh: “Now what Greek ever called dancing by the name of ballismus, when the proper verb is comazo or choreuo or some other common expression? But you have purloined a word from the slums, and have utterly spoiled the wine by pouring water on it.”
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§ 8.63.20 Then Myrtilus said: “Nevertheless, I will prove to you, Master Critic, that the word is more in accord with Greek usage. For though you try to muzzle us all, you have not convicted any of us of ignorance, whereas you proclaim yourself more empty than a serpent's slough. You surprise me indeed; for Epicharmus in The Pilgrims mentions'ballismus' as the word for dancing, and Italy is not far from Sicily. Well, in this play the pilgrims inspect the votive offerings at Delphi, and in their enumeration of them all in turn, they say:'Cauldrons of bronze, mixing-bowls, spits. Look! On the supports are children dancing — a marvellous work!' And Sophron also, in the mime entitled Busied with the Bride, says:'Thereupon he took it and stood forth, and the others danced.' And again:'Dancing, they filled the room with ordure!' What is more, Alexis also says in The Hairdresser:'Look, I can see a crowd of fellows coming to revel, evidently with the idea that here are assembled the elite. I hope it may not be my lot to meet you alone in the dark after you have had a high time at the ball, for in that case I never carry home my cloak, unless I grew wings.' I know of the word in other places, too, and after thinking them over I will produce them.
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§ 8.64.1 But you who have just cited these lines from Homer:'What feast, what throng is this? What hast thou to do with it? Is it a solemn banquet, or a wedding? For surely this cannot be a dinner to which all men bring their share' — you are the right man to tell us how these terms differ. But since you keep silence, I will explain. For, just as the Syracusan poet says:'That which it took two men to say before me, I can answer sufficiently alone.' All sacrifices and the more elaborate feasts were called eilapinae by the ancients, and those who participated in them, eilapinastae. But eranoi are dinners got together from food contributed by the diners, the word being derived from eran (love), because all mutually love and contribute. The same kind of dinner may be called either eranus or thiasus, and the members who come together eranistae or thiasotae. Again, the noisy crowd which follows in the train of Dionysus is a thiasus, as Euripides says:'And I saw three troops (thiasi) of women in revel bands.' Now the thiasi were so called from the word theos (god). And (if you object that it has an i instead of an e), the Lacedemonians call the gods sioi. But eilapinae are so called from the elaborate preparation and expense connected with them, since laphytto and lapazo mean to empty out, to spend; hence the poets use alapazo even of sacking a town, and the loot which is carried away is called laphyra because of the greed for spoiling (laphyxis).
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§ 8.64.24 And all such feasts are called eilainae by Aeschylus and Euripides, because one is completely emptied (lapatto) of his store. Again there is a verb lapto meaning to digest food, to become loose by emptying; hence, from the word meaning loose (lagaros) comes lagon meaning flank, as also laganon, a thin wafer, and from lapatto comes lapara, also meaning flank. Laphytto means the same as lapatto, that is, to loosen or empty out in a lavish and extensive fashion. The verb dapano (spend) arises from dapto (devour), since this latter word is closely connected with the idea of abundance; hence, of persons who eat greedily and bestially, we have the words dapto and dardapto. Homer has catadapto:'Nay, dogs and birds of prey had devoured him.' But they called feasts euochiaenot from oche, which means food, but from eu echo, meaning well-being in respect of these things. At these feasts, accordingly, people who honoured the divinity gathered and gave themselves up (methiemi) to jollity and relaxation; and so they called the drink methy, while the god whose gift this is they called Methymnaeus or Lyaeus or Euius or Ieius, just as they called the man who was not scowling or gloomy hilaros (cheerful). Wherefore, they thought that the divinity must prove propitious (hileos) when they shouted the refrain Ie, Ie! So also they named the place in which they practised this ritual Hieron (temple). Ephippus, in the play entitled Merchandise, makes it clear that they could call the same person hileos or hilaros. Of a certain courtesan he says:'And then, let me tell you, if one of us happen to come in feeling downcast, she greets him with pleasant flattery; she kisses him, not tightly pressing her lips together, as if he were hateful to her, but opening her mouth as fledgling sparrows do; she gives him a chair, she speaks consoling words, she makes him cheerful (hilaros), and soon takes away all his gloom, and renders him propitious (hileos) again.'
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§ 8.65 [364] ”But the ancients, having conceived don't gods as bearing the likeness of men, also constituted their festivals in accordance with the customs of men. For they observed that it was not possible for men to resist the impulse to enjoyment, while on the other hand it was useful and expedient to accustom men to a disciplined and orderly use of such things; so they set definite times, and after first sacrificing to the gods they let themselves go in relaxation, their purpose being that everyone should believe that the gods had come to receive the first-fruits and libations, and so might join in the assemblage with due reverence. Homer says, for example:' Athena too came to receive her sacrifice.' And Poseidon'had departed for the Aethiopians far away, to receive his hecatomb of bulls and rams.' And Zeus'went yesterday for a feast, and all the gods followed together with him.' And if a man be present, one perhaps who is elderly and of serious deportment, they respectfully refrain from saying or doing anything indecent, in accordance with what Epicharmus says somewhere:'Nay, it is good to keep silence when one's betters are present.' In their assumption, then, that the gods were near them, they conducted their festivals in an orderly and sober manner. Hence among the ancients it was neither customary to recline, but'they feasted sitting down'; nor yet to drink to intoxication, but'when they had poured libations and drunk all that heart desired, they went each to his own house.'
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§ 8.66 But the men of today, who pretend to sacrifice to the gods and call together their friends and intimates, curse their children, quarrel with their wives, drive their slaves to tears, threaten the crowd, all but repeating Homer's line:'But now go to your dinner, that we may join battle;' not taking to heart the words spoken by the author of Cheiron, whether it is Pherecrates or the metrician Nicomachus or whoever it may be:'And do thou not, having bidden a friend to the bounteous feast, become vexed at his presence. For only an evil man does that. Nay, rather, have joy in thy heart undisturbed, and give him joy as well.' But today they do not remember these injuries at all; on the contrary, they learn by heart the lines which follow these, all of which are a parody drawn from the Great Eroaea commonly ascribed to Hesiod:'But if one of us sacrifices and invites another to the meal, we are vexed indefatigable he comes, and look angrily at his presence, and desire him to depart at the door with what Spaniard he may. Thereupon he recognizes this somehow and begins to put on his sandals, and one of the company says: “What? Going already? Why don't you take a drink? Take your sandals off, won't you?” But the host who is sacrificing gets angry at the man who would detain him, and straightway recites the verses of elegy: “Don't try to detain among us anyone, so that he should stay against his will, and don't wake up a man who is asleep, Simonides.” Is not this, really, the kind of thing we say over the wine, when we give a dinner to a friend?' Again, we add these lines also:'And when the feast brings many guests at common expense, be not discourteous. Great is the delight, while the cost is very little.'
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§ 8.67 When we sacrifice to the gods, we spend very little, and that too an ordinary sum, as the good Menander makes clear in The Carouse:'So, then, our prosperity accords not with the way in which we offer sacrifice. For to the gods I bring an offering of a tiny sheep bought for ten drachmas, and glad I am to get it so cheap: but for flute-girls and perfume, harp-girls, the red Thasian wine, eels, cheese, and honey, the cost is almost a talent; and whereas by analogy it is fair that we should receive only ten drachmas' worth of blessing, even supposing that our sacrifice to the gods prove auspicious, and so cancel the loss of the one by the other — is not the nuisance of making the sacrifice doubled? For my part, were I a god, I would never have allowed anyone to put the loin on the altar unless at the same time he offered the eel for consecration; that would have been the end of Callimedon, one of the eel's kinsmen!'
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§ 8.68.1 [365] “The ancients also have a name for certain dinners,'added to boot,' which are what Alexandrians call dinners'by special contribution.' Alexis, for example, says in the comedy entitled In the Well:'A. At this very moment the boss has sent me out to fetch a jar of wine from the neighbours within. B. From in there? I understand. That is going to be something added to all the rest. A. I like an old woman who is so discerning!' And Crobylus in The False Substitute:'A. And I was coming to see you, Laches. Do you go, on ahead. L. Where to? A. You ask me where to! Why, to Philumena's, in whose house our special contributions are. It was in her honour that you forced me yesterday to drink a pint of wine neat.' The ancients also know of what are today called'basket dinners.' Pherecrates explains what this is in The Forgetful Man, or The Sea, as follows:'He packed a dinner into the basket and went off, as though he were going to the house of Ophelias.' This clearly refers to the basket dinner, when a man gets up a dinner for himself, and putting it into a basket goes to somebody's house to eat it. Lysias has used the word syndeipnon for symposium in the speech Against Micinus, a murder case. He says:'He had been invited to a syndeipnon.' And Plato also said:'With those who had got up the syndeipnon.'
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§ 8.68.20 So Aristophanes in Gerytades:'Singing the praises of Aeschylus at the syndeipna.' Hence some authorities require that the title of Sophocles' play be written in the neuter, Syndeipnon. Sometimes dinners are also called synagogima; so Alexis, in A Man of Taste, or The Nymphs:'Lie down now and call in the girls. Let's have a get-together. Although to be sure I know that your ways have long been those of a skinflint.' And Ephippus in Geryones:'And they are paying more than their share for a get-together symposium.' They also used the verb synago (gather) of drinking one with another, and synagogion (gathering) of the symposium. Menander, In the Flames:'And at this moment, for these reasons, they are gathering (drinking) apart by themselves.' Then in what follows he said:'He paid for the gathering.' Possibly the dinner called'contributed' is meant here. And what'contributions' are is indicated by Alexis in The Woman who drank Belladonna by these lines:'A. I will come then with you, bringing contributions. B. What do you mean by contributions? A. Why, old woman, the people of Chalcis call ribbons and perfume bottles contributions.' But the Argives, as Hegesander says in his Commentaries, have other words. He writes as follows:'The contribution brought in to the symposia by the drinkers is called by the Argives a chos (heap) while the single share is called an aisa (lot).'
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§ 8.69 Since this book also has reached an end not inappropriate, friend Timocrates, I will bring the discourse to a close here, lest someone think that we, like Empedocles, were once fishes. That natural philosopher says: ”For I have already been a girl, a boy, a bush, a bird, and a fish faring from the sea."
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§ 9.1 [366a] BOOK IX. tr. Gulick from Lacus Curtius Casaubon pages 366-399 “And let us once more bethink us of supper, and let them pour water over our hands; and in the morning there will be tales” for you and for me, Timocrates. In fact, no sooner were some hams served to us, and someone had asked whether they were tender, than Ulpian began: “In what author is that word takeron for'tender' found? And who has called napy (mustard) sinapy? For I see that it is served in side-dishes along with the hams (koleoi). Yes, koleoi; for I know that this word is used thus as a masculine, and not, as our native Athenians would have it, solely as a feminine. Epicharmus, at any rate, says in The Woman from Megara:'Sausage, cheese, hams (koleoi), vertebrae; but of things fit to eat, not a single thing.' And in Cyclops:'Sausages are nice, I swear by Zeus, and so is a ham (koleos).' Learn this, too, of me, most learned men, that in this line Epicharmus speaks of sausage as chorde, though elsewhere he always calls it orya. Again, I see seasoned salt in other side-dishes. But our Cynics are full of unseasoned salt; among them, to quote Antiphanes, another Cynic says in The Bag:'A. Of the relishes which come from the sea we always have one, and that day in, day out. I mean salt.... With that to season it, we manage to drink our poor wine — a speciality, Zeus be my witness, that matches our house. B. What do you mean, then, by calling it a speciality? A. Why, it's the kind do thing that is expedient for the entire company to drink from the cruet, like a cup.' And I also see garum sauce beaten up in a mixture with vinegar. I know that in our day some inhabitants of Pontus prepare a special kind which is called vinegar-garum.”
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§ 9.2 In answer to this Zoilus said: " Aristophanes, sir, applied the word'tender' to what is dainty when he said, in The Lemnian Women:' Lemnos, which grows fine, tender beans.' And Pherecrates in Good-for-Nothings'To make the chick-peas tender on the spot.' As for mustard, Nicander of Colophon gave it the name sinepy in Theriaca thus:'Yea, verily, a brass-bound gourd, or sinepy.' And in the Georgics he says:'Seeds of mustard (sinepy) with sharp bite.' And again:'Pepper-grass and nose-smart and dark-leaved sinepy.' Crates, in the treatise On Attic Diction, cites Aristophanes as saying: [367a]'He had a mustard (sinapy) look, and drew back his brow.' Thus Crates, according to Seleucus in his work On Hellenism. But the verse is from The Knights, and runs thus:'He had a mustard (napy) look.' No Attic writer ever said sinapy. Yet either form is reasonable. For napy is, as it were, naphy, because it has lost growth; for it is without size and small, just like aphye. Sinapy, on the other hand, is so called because it hurts (sinetai) faces (ops) in the smelling, just as the onion (krommyon) is so called because we close (myomen) our eyes (korai). The comic poet Xenarchus said in The Scythians:'This pain isn't pain any more; my little daughter has applied a mustard-plaster by the help of the foreign woman.' Salt and vinegar also are mentioned by the excellent Aristophanes in the lines about the tragic poet Sthenelus. He says:'And how could I ever chew the words of Sthenelus? Can I souse them in vinegar or white salt?'
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§ 9.3 “We then, my good fellow, have contributed these examples to help you answer your questions. And now you should answer the question, in what author the word paropsis is used of the well-known vessel. For I know that Plato, in Holidays, uses the word of a specially prepared, mixed dish, or some spice of that sort, thus:'Whence we might have a barley-cake and side-dishes.' But in Europa, again, he uses the word in an extended passage of any exquisite delight; in it is the following:'A. A sleeping woman is inert. Z. I understand that! A. But when she is awake, the side-dishes, taken by themselves alone, are a much greater contribution to pleasure than all else. Z. What, are there'side-dishes' in loving, I entreat you?' And in the next lines he goes on to describe these'side-dishes' as if he were speaking of a relish at table. Again, in Phaon:'Frivolous dallyings are like side-dishes; their delight is brief, and quickly are they spent.' Aristophanes in Daedalus:'To all women, in one way or another, an adulterer ready for his work is like a side-dish.'”
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§ 9.4 Since, then, Ulpian had nothing to say, Leonides spoke up: “But I have a right to speak, having for a long time kept silence. As Evenus of Paros says:'Many there be whose habit is to dispute everything indiscriminately, but further than that, it is not their habit to dispute soundly. And against these one ancient saying suffices: ”To you these things may seem so to be, but to me they seem otherwise." One can very soon convince the wise by a word well spoken, for they are the easiest to instruct.'
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§ 9.5 And so, Myrtilus, my love (for I have got the floor before you), Antiphanes uses the word paropsis of the vessel in The Boeotian Woman:'He called out, and served in a saucer'... And Alexis in Hesione:'When he saw two fellows bringing in the table laden with its adornment of varied saucers, he no longer had eyes for me.' Again, the author of the lines attributed to Magnes says, in Dionysus, first edition:'These are saucers full of troubles for me.' [368a] And Achaeus in the satyric drama Aethon:'Let me have other well-stewed saucer-meats served chopped in fine bits, and steaming dishes aflame on the side.' And the comic poet Sotades in Ransomed:'Plainly I am only a side-dish to Crobylus; he masticates Crobylus, but bolts me on the side.' But Xenophon's use of the word, in the first book out of Cyropaedeia, is ambiguous. For that philosopher says:'He set before him side-dishes and all kinds of sauces and meats.' And in the author of Cheiron, which is attributed to Pherecrates, the word paropsis is used of a sauce, and not, as Didymus maintains in his treatise on The Corrupt Use of Words, of the vessel containing it. Pherecrates says:' Zeus is my witness, these fellows, like side-dishes, have qualities according to their seasoning, and the host who has invited them regards them as a worthless trifle.' Nicophon in The Sirens:'Let sausage fight for a place with the side-dishes.' Aristophanes in Daedalus:'To all women, in one way or another, at least, an adulterer ready for his work is like a side-dish.' Plato in Holidays:'Whence we might have a barley-cake and side-dishes.' He speaks, too, of the seasoning and dressing of bulbs. And the Attic writers, you Syro-Atticist, Ulpian, say embamma for sauce. Thus Theopompus in The Peace:'The weather loaf is nice, but to cheat us with the addition of sauces to the loaves is vicious.'
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§ 9.6 “Attic writers say both kolen and kole for ham. Eupolis in Autolycus:'Legs and haunches (kolenes) aimed straight at the ceiling.' Euripides in Sciron:'Not even haunches (kolens) of young venison.' But from the form kolea there is a contracted form; like syke, syke (fig-tree), leontea, leonte ( lion -skin), so kolea, kole. Aristophanes in the second Plutus:'Alas for the ham (kole) which I used to eat!' And in Men of Dinnerville:'Hams (kolae) from tender young porkers, and winged tidbits.' In The Storks:'Lambs' heads and kids' hams.' Plato in The Griffins:'Fishes, hams, sausages.' Ameipsias in Connus:'Special perquisites given to the priests are a ham, the rib, and the left side of the head.' Xenophon in Art of Hunting:'A fleshy ham, loose flanks.' So, also, Xenophanes of Colophon says in his Elegies:'For though thou didst send but the ham of a kid, thou has won the fat leg of a stout bull, a rich prize for a man to win, whose fame shall reach over all Greece, and never cease so long as the Greek mode of songs shall be.'”
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§ 9.7 Although many viands of all kinds were brought in successively after those we have mentioned, we shall indicate those only which deserve record. For besides a quantity of other birds, including geese, there were also the small birds which some call woodpeckers; [369a] also pigs, and the much-sought-after pheasants. I will, therefore, first set forth the vegetables for you, and then proceed to explain the other things.
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§ 9.8 Turnips. — These, as Apollas says in his book On the Cities of Peloponnesus, are called by the Lacedemonians paunches. But Nicander of Colophon, in his Glossary, says that cabbages are called paunches in Boeotia, while turnips are called zekeltides. Amerias and Timachidas, on the other hand, say that gourds are called zekeltides. Speusippus, in the second book of Similars, says that radish, turnip, rape-turnip, and nose-smart are similar. Glaucus, in The Art of Cookery, calls the rape-turnip (raphys) rapys, spelling it with p without the aspirate. There is nothing else similar to these except what is today called bounias. Theophrastus, though he does not mention the bounias by name, speaks of a certain turnip which he calls male-turnip, and perhaps this is the bounias. Nicander mentions the bounias in the Georgics:'Turnips shalt thou sow on ground levelled with a roller, that they may grow more level and equal to their moulds. Sow bouniades, too, and carrots, evenly with cabbages. Of turnip and cabbage, in truth, two families appear in our gardens, long and solid." Cephisian turnips are mentioned by Crates in Orators thus: “Very much like Cephisian turnips.” Theophrastus says there are two kinds of turnips, male and female; both grow from the same seed. Poseidonius (he of the Stoa ), in the twenty-seventh book of his Histories, says that in Dalmatia there are turnips that grow without cultivation, and carrots that grow wild. Diphilus, the physician of Siphnos, says that the turnip is thinning, acrid, and hard to digest; it is also likely to cause flatulence. The bounias, he says, is better; for it is sweeter and more digestible, in addition to being wholesome and nourishing. The roasted turnip, he adds, is more easily digested, but is excessively thinning. Eubulus mentions it thus in Ancylion: “I bring you here a turnip for roasting.” And Alexis in God-inspired: “I babble the while I roast slices of turnip for Ptolemy.” The pickled turnip is more thinning than the boiled, especially when it is done in mustard, according to Diphilus.
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§ 9.9 The Cabbage. — Eudemus of Athens, in his book On Vegetables, says that there are three sorts of cabbage, the so called halmyris, the smooth-leaf, and the parsley-leaved; in flavour the halmyris is judged supreme. “It grows in Eretria, Cyme, and Rhodes, also in Cnidus and Ephesus. The smooth-leaf grows in all countries. The parsley-leaved has its name from its curliness, for in this respect it resembles parsley, and also in its tendency to compactness.” Theophrastus writes thus: “Of the rhaphanos (by which I mean the cabbage) there are two sorts, one curly-leaved, the other wild.” Diphilus of Siphnos says: “The cabbage which grows in Cyme is very good and sweet, but in Alexandria it is bitter. Seed brought from Rhodes to Alexandria produces a cabbage which is sweet for the first year, but after that period it becomes acclimatized.” Nicander says in the Georgics: [370a] “Smooth-skinned is the cabbage, but sometimes it occurs in wild state, with many leaves, and grows rank in seeded gardens; either branching in curly tendrils with brownish leaves, or purplish and like disordered hair, or again, in ugly greenish tints its hollow leaf is like the sole-leather with which they mend sandals turned and patched; it is the plant which those of yore called the prophet among vegetables” Now perhaps Nicander has called the cabbage a prophet because it is sacred, since in the iambic verses of Hipponax something of this kind is said:'But he slipped away, and made entreaty of the seven-leaved cabbage, to which Pandora sacrificed a moulded cake at the Thargelia to take the curse away." And Ananius says: “And I like you by far the most in all the world, so have me Cabbage!” And Telecleides in The Prytanes said: “So help me Cabbages!” So Epicharmus in Earth and Sea: “So help me Cabbage!” Eupolis in The Bathers: “So help me Cabbage!” It was thought that this oath was Ionian; and it is not surprising that some people swore by the cabbage, seeing that even Zeno of Citium, the founder of the Stoa, imitated Socrates' oath by the dog and swore, in his turn, by the caper, as Empedus says in his Reminiscences.
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§ 9.10 At Athens, too, a cabbage was prepared for women in childbed as a kind of antidote in their food. Ephippus, at any rate, says in Geryones: “If that is so, then how is it that there is no wreath before the doors, no savour of cooking strikes the tip ends of the projecting nose, though the feast of the Amphidromia is on? For then it is the custom to toast slices of Cherronesian cheese, 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 squids, to pound with care many wriggling polyps, and drink many a cup not too diluted.” But Antiphanes mentions the cabbage as a cheap food in these lines from The Parasite: “You now understand what kind of things they are — wheat loaves, garlic, cheese, flat-cakes, things which gentlemen eat; not smoked fish, not lamb chops spread with seasoning, no jumbled pastry, and dishes fit to ruin men. Yes, and they will boil sleek cabbages — ye gods! — and serve pea-soup with them.” Diphilus in the Aplestos (Greedy): “There have come with a swoop all kinds of goodies, of their own accord; there's a sleek cabbage, entrails in abundance, tenderest pieces of meat — things, I can tell you, not at all like my pot-herbs or crushed olives.” Alcaeus in The Wrestling-school: “She was already boiling a pot of cabbages.” Polyzelus, mentioning them by the name crambe in Birth of the Muses, says: “Many tall-leaved cabbages.”
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§ 9.11 [371a] Beets. — As to these, Theophrastus says that the white is juicier than the red, has fewer seeds, and is called Sicilian. He says that the seutlis is different from the teutlon. Hence the comic poet Diphilus criticizes someone in the play of The Hero for misuse of the word, “and calling teutla seutlides.” Eudemus, in his book On Vegetables, says there are four kinds of beets — the drawn, the stalked, the white, the common; the last is dun-coloured. Diphilus of Siphnos says that the beet is juicier than the cabbage and is somewhat more nourishing; when boiled and eaten with mustard it is more thinning and calculated to destroy worms. The white acts more readily on the bowels, the red is more diuretic. Their roots are also better flavoured and more nourishing.
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§ 9.12 The Carrot. — “This is pungent,” says Diphilus, “very nourishing and fairly wholesome, with a tendency to loosening and windiness; not easy to digest, very diuretic, calculated to rouse sexual desire; hence by some it is called love-philtre.' Numenius says in The Art of Angling: ”Of the herbs which grow unsown or are found rooted in our fields in winter, or when flowering springtime comes, there are the scraggly cardoon and the wild carrot, the deep-rooted rape-turnip, and the wild bur-parsley." Nicander in the second book of the Georgics says: “Among them, too, are the high stalk of the fennel, the roots of rock-parsley, with it, also, the scraggly carrot itself, horse-parsley, sow-thistle, hound's-tongue, and chicory; with them, too, thou shalt pound the pungent leaves of edderwort, or the herb which is called bird's milk.” Theophrastus, also, mentions the carrot. Phaenias, in the fifth book of his work On Plants, writes as follows: “With respect to the qualities of its seed, the so called seps and the seed of the carrot.” And in the first book he says: “Umbelliferous types of seeded plants are found in anise, fennel, carrot, bur-parsley, hemlock, coriander, and squill, which some call mouse -bane.” Since Nicander has mentioned edderwort, it will be added that Phaenias, also, writes as follows in the book before-mentioned: “Edder-wort, which some call arum....” Diocles, in the first book of his Hygiene, calls the carrot (staphylinus) astaphylinus. What is called the “sliced,” which is a large, well-grown carrot, is juicier than the carrot and more heating, diuretic, wholesome, and easy to digest, as Diphilus records.
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§ 9.13 The Leek. — This, the same Diphilus, is also called prasium, and it is more juicy than the “sliced” plant (carrot). It is also moderately thinning, nourishing, and also likely to cause flatulence. Epaenetus in The Art of Cookery says that leeks are called gethyllides (spring onions). This name, I find, has received mention in Eubulus's Pimp, as follows: “I couldn't touch a bit of bread; for I have just eaten at the house of Gnathaenium; I found her cooking spring onions.” But others say that this is what is called gethyon (horn onion), mentioned by Phrynichus in Cronus. Didymus, in his explanatory notes on this play, says that horn onions are similar to the so called vine-leeks, and that the same are also called gethyllides. These last are mentioned thus by Epicharmus in Philoctetes: “among them were two heads of garlic and two horn onions.” [372a] Aristophanes in Aeolosicon, second edition: “Roots of horn onions, with qualities that imitate garlic.” Polemon the geographer, in his work On Samothrace, says that Leto had a pregnant woman's craving for the horn onion. He writes as follows:'It is ordained among the Delphians that whosoever shall bring for the festival of the Theoxenia the largest horn onion to Leto, shall receive a portion from the table. And I have myself seen a horn onion as large as a turnip or the round radish. They relate that Leto, before the birth of Apollo, had a craving for the horn onion; hence it has received this special honour."
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§ 9.14 The Gourd. — Once, in the season of winter, cucumbers were served to us, and we all wondered, thinking they were fresh, and we recalled what the witty Aristophanes said in The Seasons when he praised the fair city of Athens in these lines: “A. You will see, in midwinter, cucumbers, grapes, fruit, wreaths of violets,... — a dust-cloud utterly blinding. The same tradesman sells thrushes, pears, honeycomb, olives, beestings, haggis, celandine, cicadas, embryo-meat. You can see baskets of figs and of myrtle-berries together, covered with snow, and what is more, they sow cucumbers at the same time with turnips, so that nobody knows any longer what time of the year it is.... A very great boon, if one may get throughout the year whatever he wants. B. A very great evil, rather! For if they couldn't get these things, they wouldn't be so eager for them and spend so much money on them. As for me, I would supply these things for a brief season and then take them away. A. I too do that for other cities, but not for Athens. The Athenians enjoy all these things because they revere the gods. B. Much good, then, does it do them for revering you, as you say! A. Why, how's that? B. You have made their city Egypt instead of Athens.” We wondered, as I was saying, that we should be eating cucumbers in the month of Januarius; for they were fresh and had all their native savour. But it so happened that they belonged to the class of things which are compounded by cooks who know how to play these kinds of tricks. Accordingly, Larensis asked whether the ancients also understood this use. Ulpian replied: “ Nicander of Colophon, in the second book of his Georgics, mentions this use, but he names these gourds sikyae; they were, in fact, called thus, as we have explained before. He says:'As for the gourds themselves, cut and skewer them in clues and dry them in the air; then hang them up over the smoke, so that when winter comes the slaves may have enough to fill the capacious pot and gulp it down at their ease, and that the girl who grinds the corn may pour in to the vat boiled pulse of every kind. In it, too, they have laid the clues of gourd, after thoroughly washing them, and mushrooms and dried vegetables long since plaited in strings, with broccoli-stalks as well — to lie all together until spring comes.'”
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§ 9.15 [373a] Chickens. — Chickens followed the gourds and other “shredded” vegetables. This last is a term used by Aristophanes in The Woman of Delos, of chopped vegetables: “Shredded, or pressed in cakes.” So Myrtilus spoke up: “Colloquial usage today calls only hens by the name of birds and birdlings, a great number of which I see being served. (And the philosopher Chrysippus, in the fifth book On Pleasure and the Good, writes as follows:'Just as some persons are more inclined to regard white fowls as pleasanter to the taste than dark.') But the male birds are called cocks or cockerels. Yet among the ancients the word ornis (bird) was used, both as a masculine and a feminine, of other birds as well, and not merely of this special sort, concerning which colloquial usage speaks of'buying birds.' Homer, at any rate, says:'Many birds, under the sun's rays.' And elsewhere he has the feminine:'To the shrill bird.' Also:'As a bird brings to her unfledged nestling as morsel when she has found it, but with herself it goes hard.' But Menander, in the first edition of The Heiress, clearly brings out the colloquial usage when he says:'A cock crowed lustily. Won't you shoo away,' says he,'these birds (ornithas) from us?' And again'She has at last shooed away the birds (ornis) with difficulty.' Cratinus uses the term ornithia (birdlings) thus in Nemesis:'All the other birdlings.' Of the male bird we have not only the accusative form ornin, but also ornitha. This Cratinus in the same play:'A red-winged bird' (ornitha). And again:'So, then, you must turn into a large bird.' And Sophocles in Sons of Antenor:'Bird and herald and minister.' Aeschylus in The Cabeiri:'I make you not the bird (omen) of my journey.' Xenophon in the second book of Cyropaedeia:'Against the birds in the severest weather.' Menander in The Girl Twins:'I have come with a present of birds (orneis).' And later on he says:'He sends birds (ornithas).' But that for the plural they also say ornis is shown by the testimony of Menander quoted above. Why, even Alcman says, I believe:'The maidens scattered without finishing their song, like birds (ornis) when a hawk flies over them.' And Eupolis in The Demes:'Isn't it dreadful, then, that I should bring forth children who are rams, and chicks who are birds (ornis) like their father?'
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§ 9.16 On the other hand, old writers use the word alectryon even as a feminine. Cratinus in Nemesis:' Leda, it is now thy task; thou must needs be in no wise different from a well-behaved hen (alectryon) in thy ways, clucking over the egg here, that thou may hatch out for us a beautiful and marvellous bird from it.' Strattis in Keeping Cool:'All the hens and sucking- pigs are dead, and the little birds (ornithia) as well.' Anaxandrides in Tereus:'They like to watch the boars copulating, and the hens when they are covered.' Now that I have mentioned this comedian, and know that his play, Tereus, is not rated among the best, [374a] I am going to quote for your opinion, my friends, what Chamaeleon of Heracleia says in the sixth book of his work On Comedy. He writes as follows:'Once when Anaxandrides was producing a dithyramb at Athens, he entered the theatre on horseback and recited something from the song. He was fine-looking and tall, affected long hair, and wore a purple cloak with golden hem. Being of a morose disposition, he used to do this with his comedies: whenever he failed to win, he took and gave them to the grocer to cut up for wrappings, and he never revised them, as most writers did. In this way he destroyed many plays which had been elaborately composed, because his old age made him peevish towards the spectators.' It is said that he was Rhodian -born, from Camirus. Therefore I wonder how the Tereus survived, since it did not win a victory, and other plays of the same au which had a similar fate. Theopompus, in The Peace, also used the word alectryon of the female bird when he said:'I am grieved at the loss of my hen, that laid very nice eggs.' And Aristophanes in Daedalus:'She has laid a very large egg, like a hen.' And again:'Many a hen, whether she will or no, lays wind-eggs often.' And in The Clouds, when the old man is being instructed in the proper distinction of terms, he says:'STREPS. Well, now, how am I to call it? SOCRATES. Call this a fowless, but the other a fowl.' That pair of words is also found for hen and cock. Simonides said:'Thou cock with lovely song.' Cratinus in The Seasons:'Like the Persian cock whose whole-voiced note rings out at all hours.' It is spoken of in this way because it wakes us up from our bed. The Dorians use the nominative ornix, and pronounce the genitive, ornichos, with ch. Yet Alcman shows the nominative in s:'The sea-purple bird (ornis) of spring,' even with the genitive in ch:'I know the melodies of all birds (ornichon).'”
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§ 9.17 The Shoat. — Epicharmus thus calls the male pig (delphax) in “ Odysseus the Runaway”: “While I had charge of my neighbours' shoat at the Eleusinia I lost it in some mysterious way, not willingly; and so he said that I was trading in these wares with the Achaeans, and he swore that I had played false with that shoat.” Anaxilas also, in Circe, uses the word delphax as a masculine, but applies the name to the adult hog, saying: “Some of you she will turn into mountain-ranging, forest-roving shoats, others into panthers, others into savage wolves or lions.” But Aristophanes applies the word to female pigs in Masters of the Frying-pan: “Or the paunch of a shoat killed in the autumn.” Also in The Acharnians: “That's because she is too young; but when she is grown to the size of a shoat, she will have a tail that is large and thick and red. [375a] So if you will but feed her, you will, I'm sure, have in her a nice pig.” So Eupolis in The Golden Age. Hipponax also had its feminine: “Like an Ephesian shoat.” Properly, only the females would be so called (delphakes), as having wombs (delphyas), since the uterus is called by that name, and the word for brothers (adelphoi) is derive from it. Concerning the age of the animal, Cratinus says in The Archilochuses: “Already shoats, but pigs in the eyes of all the others.” Now Aristophanes the grammarian says in the book On Ages: “As to swine, those whose growth has already been reached are shoats (delphakes), but the tender, juicy ones are pigs.” Thus the Homeric expression becomes clear: “What the slaves have at hand — flesh of sucking- pigs; but the suitors eat the fatted hogs.” The comic poet Plato, in The Poet, used the word delphax as a masculine: “He led away the shoat in silence.” There was an old law, according to Androtion, that in order to ensure the increase of domestic animals they should not sacrifice a sheep that had not been shorn, or that had not had a lamb; hence they used to eat only the adult animals; “but the suitors eat the fatted hogs.” So today, also, it is the custom that the priestess of Athena shall not sacrifice a ewe lamb or taste of cheese. At one time, also, when there was a dearth of cows, according to Philochorus, a law was passed, on account of the scarcity, that they should abstain from these animals, since they wished to amass them and fill up their numbers by not slaughtering them. The female pig is called choiros by the Ionians, as in Hipponax: “With libation and entrails of a wild pig.” And Sophocles in The Epitaenarians: “Therefore guard it like a dun pig on a rope.” But King Ptolemy of Egypt, in the ninth book of his Reminiscences, says: “When I journeyed to Assus, the people there offered me a pig (choiros) which was two and one-half cubits high, with a length which exactly accorded with that height, and snow-white in colour. They said, too, that King Eumenes bought such creatures expressly from them, paying four thousand drachmas for one.” Aeschylus says: “And I will place this well-suckled pig in a roaring oven. For what dish could be better for a man than that?” And again: “White, of course, and nicely singed is the pig. Cook yourself, pig, and don't be bothered by a little fire!” Still again: “I have sacrificed this pig, from the same sow that has done me much mischief in the house by romping about and turning things pele-mele up and down.” These examples were cited by Chamaeleon in his work On Aeschylus.
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§ 9.18 Speaking of hogs: that the animal is sacred among the Cretans, Agathocles of Babylon, in his book On Cyzicus, shows thus: “In Crete they tell the story that the birth of Zeus occurred on Mount Dicte, where there is a secret rite. [376] For it is said that a sow offered suck to Zeus, and as she roved about, she, by her own grunting, caused the infant's whimpering to be inaudible to the passers-by. Hence this creature is universally regarded with great reverence, and no one, Agathocles says, would eat of its flesh. The people of Praesus even offer sacrifices to the pig, and this rite is regularly observed by them before the marriage ceremony.” A similar narrative is given by Neanthes of Cyzicus in the second book of his work On Ritual of Initiation. Achaeus of Eretria mentions full-grown sows, which he calls petalides, in the satyric drama Aethon, thus: “Full oft did I hear full-grown sows... in these shapes.” He calls them petalides, transferring the term from calves; for these are called petaloi (spreading) when their horns are outspread. Following the example of Achaeus, Eratosthenes also, in Anterinys, called hogs larinoi (fatted), transferring the term, in this case also, from “larinoi cattle ”; these were so called either from the verb larineuesthai, which means to be fattened — Sophron; “The cattle are being fattened” — or from a village Larina in Epeirus, or from the cattle -tender; he was named Larinus.
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§ 9.19 [376c] Once a shoat was brought in for us, one half of which had been carefully prepared as a roast, while the other half was as soft as though it had been boiled in water, and all of us admired the skill of the chef. He, with great pride in his art, said: “But, let me tell you, not one of you can show where his throat was cut, or how his belly has been stuffed with all sorts of goodies. For he has thrushes inside him, as well as other small birds; portions of pork paunches, cuts from the matrix, yolks of eggs, and also bird's'bellies, matrix and all, and full of lovely sauces'; also the stuffing of meats grated into fine bits and concocted with pepper; I describe it thus because'I am ashamed to mention' hash before Ulpian, although I know that he likes to eat it. Yet my own authority, Paxamus, mentions hash, and I don't bother about Attic usage. Do you, then, show me how the pig's throat was cut, and how it comes to be roasted on one half but boiled on the other.” While, therefore, we were still trying to find out, the chef continued: “Do you really think that I am less well trained than the famous cooks of old mentioned by the comic poets? Take Poseidippus, for example, in Dancing-girls. There a cook has these words to say to his pupils:
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§ 9.20'My pupil Leucon, and all you fellow-assistants! Every place is suitable for talking about one's profession; of all possible seasonings, effrontery is best in the art of cookery. In fact in all the arts you will see this generally taking the lead. Here, for example, is a captain of free lances, who wears a coat of mail with scale armour, or carries a dragon-standard wrought in iron; he seemed a Briareos, but if it comes to an issue, he is a hare. Now if the cook enters with a train of underlings and pupils into the house of a common citizen, and calls everybody a skinflint or starveling, everyone soon cowers before him. But if you show yourself merely as you are, you will find yourself thoroughly trimmed when you depart. To repeat, then, what I admonished you, let yourself go in boastful pretence, and study the mouths of the guests. It's like steering into the harbour of a great market; this is the finishing touch to our art, if you can run safely into the harbour's mouth. Today we are serving a wedding-feast; the animal to be to be slaughtered is an ox. The father of the bride is distinguished, distinguished too is the groom. The women of this company are priestesses to goddess and to god; there will be drunken revellers, pipes playing, all-night vigils, a riot. This is the course your cook's art must run. So remember that! And concerning another cook (his and is Seuthes ), the same poet says:' Seuthes is just a big private soldier in their eyes? Don't you know, my friend, that he is evidently not a whit different from a good general? The enemy are upon him; the general of profound genius stands his ground and receives the attack. The whole drinking rabble is his foe. It moves its forces on in a body; it has entered after waiting for fifteen days in expectation of the dinner; it is full of desire, all aflame, waiting for the moment when things will be brought within its reach. Study with care the massed surge of a mob like that.'
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§ 9.21 [377a] ”Listen now to the advice given by the cook in Euphron's Comrades:'Whenever you serve members of a club, Carion, you must not play any tricks or do the things which you have learned. Yesterday you took too many risks; there wasn't a single goby, in fact, that had a liver in it; they were all empty. The calf's brains were purloined. No, Carion, when you go to serve that kind of rabble, a Dromon or a Cerdon, or a Soterides, who pay you all that you demand, you've got to be unqualifiedly honest; but where we are going today to prepare the wedding-feast, you must be blood-thirsty. If you get my idea, you are my true disciple and no mean cook. Our opportunity is just what we prayed for. Help yourself! The old gentleman is a miser, your pay is small. If I catch you today failing to eat up everything, even to the coals, you are a dead man. March in! For here comes the old man himself. And what a stingy look he has, too!'
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§ 9.22 [378a] "A mighty sophist, too, and one not to be beaten even by physicians in boastfulness, is the cook who appears in The False Accuser of Sosipater saying:'A. This profession of ours is not to be altogether despised if you study it carefully, Demylus; but today the business is washed out, and they all say they are cooks when they know nothing about it. Through such persons our profession loses its reputation. For, once you range the a genuine cook, rightly inducted from childhood into the business, one who grasps the possibilities of the profession and knows all the subjects of our curriculum from A to Z, the business will perhaps take on a quite different appearance in your eyes. There are only three of us left today, Boidion, Chariades, and myself. You may snap your fingers at the rest. DEM. You mean it? A. I? I tell you that we alone preserve the school of Sicon. He was the founder of the art. He taught us, first, to practise astrology; to follow that up immediately by architecture. He had by heart all the treatises on nature. Capping it all, he used to say, came the science of strategy. Before we studied the art itself he was eager that we should learn these subjects. DEM. You're like to tire me out, dear friend, aren't you? A. No, but while my slave is coming up from market, I'm going to put you through a little examination on the business, that we may seize a guy opportunity for talking. DEM. Heavens, this is getting tiresome! A. Listen, good sir. The cook must know, first and foremost, all about the heavenly bodies, the setting of the stars, their risings, when the sun reaches the long day and returns again to the short day, and in what part of the Zodiac he is. For all our dishes and foods virtually take on a flavour that is different at different times, in the revolution of the universal system. The man, then, who has grasped these facts sees the proper time and will make use as he should of all his materials. But he who is ignorant of them naturally gets mired. Again, you must have wondered, perhaps, what architecture can contribute to our profession. DEM. I must have wondered? A. Yes; still, I will tell you. To lay out the kitchen correctly, to have it receive all the light it should, to understand where the draft of air comes from, have great importance in promoting the business. Whether the smoke is carried this way or the other is apt to make some difference to the dishes. What next? I will now explain the strategic elements.... There I have the true cook, at least. Order is a wise thing everywhere and in every art, but in ours it practically takes command. For to serve and then remove each course in order and to understand the proper time for them, when to lead them on more quickly, when slowly, how the guests eel toward the dinner, when it is the proper moment in their eyes to serve some dishes hot, others partly cool, others moderate, others entirely cold, all these points, you see, are carefully considered by military methods of study. DEM. Now that you explained to my satisfaction what are the essentials, leave me and keep quiet yourself.'
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§ 9.23 [379a] “Again, the cook in The Milesians of Alexis is not far removed from this one when he says:'A. Don't you know that in most arts it is not merely the master-craftsman who is responsible for the pleasure they give, but some portion is contributed also by those who make use of the art, provided they use it aright? B. What do you mean by that? I, too, who am a stranger to these things, should learn. A. Your cook simply has to prepare the dish nicely — nothing else. Now if the man who is to eat and judge happen to arrive at the right time, he does his part in furthering the art. But if he comes later than the appointed moment, so that the cook must warm up again what he has roasted before, or must finish too quickly the preparation of what he has not roasted yet, the guest robs the art of its pleasure. B. I hereby enroll the cook in the sophists' guild. A. You fellows stand lingering; meanwhile my fire is burning; already, thick and fast, the watch- dogs of Hephaestus spring up lightly to the sky; for them alone some invisible law of necessity has bound together their birth and their passing from life in the self-same instant.'
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§ 9.24 [380a] ”Now Euphron, whom I mentioned a little while ago, Judges (for I should not hesitate to call you judges, while I await the judgement of your senses), has portrayed a cook in his play, Brothers, who is erudite and well-educated, and who mentions the artists before his own day; he tells what special excellence each one possessed, and wherein he showed to advantage over the others; nevertheless he has mentioned none possessing the qualities of those whom I, as it chances, have often brought to your notice. However, this is what he says:'Though I have had many pupils, Lycus, you, because of your constant good sense and spirit, depart from my house a perfect cook, made so in less than ten months, and much the youngest of them all. Agis of Rhodes was the only one who could bake a fish to perfection; Nereus of Chios could boil a conger to suit the gods; Chariades, who came from Athens, could make an egg mosaic with white sauce; black broth began to exist with Lamprias first, Aphthonetus cooked sausages, Euthynus lentil-soup, Aristion gilt-heads for club assemblies. After the famous sophists of old, these men have become our second group of Seven Sages. As for myself, seeing that most specialities were preempted, I was the first to invent thieving in such a way that nobody dislikes me for that, but they all hire me. Then, when you saw that this had been preempted by me, you added an invention of your own, and that is yours. Four days ago the Tenians were offering sacrifice: people aplenty present, who had sailed the salt sea long. The victim was a kid, thin and tiny. “No meat was to be taken away” on that occasion for Lycus or his teacher. You made them produce two more kids; for while they were looking intently at the liver, you lowered one hand secretly and tossed the kidney quickly into the cistern. Then you raised a big hullabaloo. “It hasn't any kidney!” they cried. The Tenians there poked about to find the missing member. So they slaughtered another kid. Again, as I saw, you gulped down the heart of this second one. You have long been a great man, be sure of that. You alone have discovered the art, how not to be a wolf vainly gaping. Yesterday you chucked two spits of entrails, lightly balanced, into the fire to put out the blaze before they were cooked, and kept whistling to the accompaniment of this two-stringed lyre. I saw you! The other trick was a tragedy, but this was a vaudeville skit.'
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§ 9.25 [381a] “It isn't possible, is it, that anyone of this second group of Seven Sages, so named, devised anything so wonderful as this with a pig, how could it be stuffed with these things inside it, and having one part of it roasted, the other boiled, while it showed, itself, no sign of being cut?” When, therefore, we begged and entreated him to explain his skill, he replied," “I won't tell you this year,'by the men who faced danger at Marathon, or, what is more, by those who fought the sea-fight at Salamis.'” So we all agreed, because of an oath as strong as that, not to force the fellow, but to lay hands on something else among the viands passed round. And Ulpian said"'By the men who faced danger at Artemisium,' nobody shall taste anything before I am told where that word'passed round' is used. For I am the sole authority on light luncheons (geumata)." And Magnus said: Aristophanes says in The Rehearsal:'Why haven't you ordered the cups to be passed round?' But Sophron, in Mimes of Women, has used the word in the more extended sense:'Hand me the bowl full, Booby!' Plato, too, said in The Laconians:'Let him hand me all the cups.' Alexis in Pamphila:'He placed the battle beside us, and then, handing us cartloads of goodies....' Now as to the'tastes' (geumata) which you pledged to yourself in your toast, Ulpian, it is high time to explain that to you. For we have the verb geuo (taste) in The Goats of Eupolis:'Take and taste this now.'" Then Ulpian said: “ Ephippus in The Peltast has:'Where there are stalls for asses and horses, and tastes of wine.' Antiphanes in The Twins:'Wine he tastes, and strolls among the booths where wreaths are sold.'”
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§ 9.26 [382a] Upon this the cook spoke: "'So, then, I will tell of a device not old,' but my own invention. Not that I want the flute-player to get a beating; for Eubulus said in The Laconians or Leda:'But we once heard at home this — the goddess of the hearth be my witness! — that for all the mistakes made by the cook, the flute-player, as the saying goes, gets a beating in our house.' Philyllius, too, or whoever wrote The Island-towns, says:'Whatever wrong a cook happens to commit, for that the flute-player gets a beating.' Well, as to my invention of the stuffed pig which is half-roasted, half-boiled, and shows no cut: the pig was killed by a short incision under the shoulder." Thereupon he showed us. “Then, after most of the blood had flowed out, I carefully washed with wine, many times, all the insides along with the offal (yes, for the word offal is used, ye babbling Dinnervillians), and I hung the pig up by the feet. Then I soaked it again in wine, and after a preliminary boiling I crushed the aforesaid tid-bits, with a lot of pepper, through its mouth, pouring on them abundance of gravy very nicely made. And after that I plastered half of the pig, as you can see, with a lot of barley meal, having made a batter of it with wine and olive oil. Then I set it in an oven, placing under it a bronze tray; and so I roasted it at the fire in such a way as not to scorch it, nor yet have it underdone when taken off. After the skin had been crisply roasted I guessed that the remaining part of the animal was done, so I removed the barley meal from it and brought it in and served it to you.
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§ 9.27 As for the word'offal,' my good Ulpian, the comic poet Dionysius in his play, Namesakes, represents a cook conversing with his pupils, and he says:'Come now, Dromon, whatever cunning, clever, or subtle trick you know in your profession, bring it to light for the benefit of your teacher. Today I demand of you an exhibition of your skill. I am taking you into the enemy's country; charge right in without fear. They give out the cuts of meat carefully counted, and they keep their eyes on you Boil the cuts well and make them tender, and mix up the count as I have told you. They are going to have a fine large fish; the inwards are yours. And if you can dislodge a nice slice from it, that also is yours so long as we are in the house; once outdoors, it is mine. As for the offal and other accompaniments which by their nature can't be counted or tested, but which have only the rank or station of mince-meat, tomorrow we'll cheer ourselves, you and I, with them. By all means give a share to the master of the booty, that you may find a more friendly passage through the front door. Why need I say too much to one who understands as well as I? You are my scholar, I am your teacher. Remember the rules I have given you, and step this way with me.'”
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§ 9.28 [383a] So we all applauded the cook for his ready speech and the ingenuity of his art. Then our noble host, Larensis, spoke up: “How much better it is that our cooks should learn such things as these, rather than the things they learn at the house of a certain compatriot of ours! He, puffed up with wealth and luxury, used to compel the cooks to learn the dialogues of the most admirable Plato, and, as they brought in the dishes, to say:'One, two, three; but where, my dear Timaeus, is he who was the fourth among our guests of yesterday, who today are our hosts?' Then another answered:'Some illness has fallen upon him, Socrates.' And so the slaves would go through with most of the dialogue in this manner. The result was that the feasters were bored, and that pedantic fellow was insulted every day, and for that reason many men of nice taste solemnly declined to attend the entertainments at his house. These cooks of ours, on the other hand, when they learn the things they do, perhaps afford you at the same time no little delight.” And the slave, after being applauded for his skill in cookery, said: “What have my predecessors discovered or declaimed that is like what I have done? Or may I weigh myself against ordinary cooks without boasting out of highly of my own success? And yet, even the first man to tie on the wreath of victory at the Olympic contest, Coroebus of Elis, was a cook, and he did not puff himself up over his art so much as did the cook in Straton's Phoenicides, of whom the man who hired him says the following:
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§ 9.29'I have taken into my house a male Sphinx, not a cook. Really, I understand absolutely not one thing, the gods are my witness, of all that he says. He has come with a stock of strange expressions. For the moment he entered he looked at me and loudly asked, ”How many articulates have you invited to dinner? Tell me." "I have invited Articulates [μέροπας] to dinner? You're mad! Think you that I am acquainted with these Articulates? Not one of them is coming. That, by Zeus, is really the last straw — inviting Articulates to dinner! “And so there is going to be no Epulator [δαιτυμών] present at all? ” Epulator? No, at least I think not." I began to count up. There'll be Philinus, Moschion, Niceratus, Mr. What's-his-name, and Mr. Thingumbob. I ran over them all by name. I couldn't find even one named Epulator. “No,” I said; “no Epulator will be here.” “What do you mean? Not even one?” He became very indignant, as if he were wronged because I hadn't invited an Epulator. It was very strange. “Are you, then slaughtering a'voracious swine'?” “No,” I replied. “Nor'broad-browed beef'?” “I'm not slaughtering a beef, you poor fool.” “Perchance you have an oblation of mutton?” “Not I, by Zeus, neither one of them; I'm killing a sheep.” “Well, then,” said he, “is not mutton sheep?” “mutton sheep? I don't take you at all I don't know any of these things and I don't want to. I am too countrified. So talk to me simple.” “Don't you know that Homer used these words?” “He might have used whatever he wanted to, cook, for all I care. But what has that to do with us, in the name of Hestia?” “Do thou now, as Homer would say, give heed to what I still have to tell.” “So you really mean to kill me in Homeric fashion?” “That's my way of talking.” “Well, don't talk in that way when you are in my house.” “What, for your paltry four shillings, I am to throw away,” says he, “my scholastic principles? Hand me the sacrificial groats.” “What's that?” “The barley.” “Why, then, you paralytic, do you talk in tangled circumlocutions?” “Have you any precipitate?” “Precipitate! Get you into a bagnio, won't you, and speak out more plainly what you want to say to me.” “Unrecking of thy words art thou, old man,” says he; “hand me the salt!” “So that is a precipitate?” “Now show me the lustral water.” It came. He slaughtered and kept on saying other words of such a nature that nobody, by Mother Earth, could have understood them: cuttings, portions, double-folds, spits. I had to get some of Philitas's books and look up the meaning of every single word; but I entreated him to change his ways forthwith, and talk like a human being. However, not Peitho, by Earth, could have soon persuaded him, I'm sure of it.'"
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§ 9.30 [383b] As a matter of fact, the great majority of cooks have inquiring minds in matters of history and the use of words. The most learned among them, at any rate, say “the knee is nearer than the shin,” and “I have traversed Asia and Europe.” When criticizing someone they say he must not turn Oineus into Peleus. I have myself looked with admiration upon one cook of old by whose device, invented by him, I have profited by personal experience. Alexis introduces him in The Cauldron, saying: “A. He cooked, I thought, a dish of stewed pork. GL. That's nice, certainly. A. But then he scorched it. GL. Don't worry; for that accident is easily remedied. A. How? GL. Just take some vinegar, pour it cold into a shallow pan, you understand, then put the pot, when still warm, into the vinegar; for if the pot is still hot, it will draw the moisture through itself, and in this ferment it will take on porous passages through it, like pumice, and through these will absorb the moisture. And so the pieces of meat will not be completely dried up, but will be nice and savoury, and of moist condition. A. Apollo! No physician could cure better. Glaucias, I will do that very thing. GL. Yes, and serve them, my boy, when you serve them, thoroughly cooled, you understand. For in that way no steam will leap to the nostrils, but will surely go up and be lost in flight. A. You're a much better speech-writer, as it now turns out, than cook. What you say you unsay. You bring your art into disrepute.”
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§ 9.31 And now enough of cooks, gentlemen of Dinnerville; for I fear that one of them may take umbrage and bawl these words from Menander's Dyskolos: “the a single person has ever escaped scot-free after he wronged a cook. Our profession is somehow sacrosanct.” But I, in the words of sweetest Diphilus,"serve you with a sheep integral, folded and skewered in the middle, stuffed with dressing, and little pigs roasted entire with their skins on; having done that, I now bring on a goose so puffed out with stuffing that it is like the Wooden Horse."
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§ 9.32 [384a] The Goose. — These, as well as other birds, were brought in elaborately dressed. And someone said, “The geese are fatted.” Then Ulpian asked, “In what author is'the fatted goose' found?” Plutarch answered him: “ Theopompus of Chios, in his History of Greece, and in the thirteenth book of his Philippica, said that when Agesilaus of Lacedemon arrived in Egypt, the Egyptian sent him fatted geese and calves. And the comic poet Epigenes says in The Bacchae:'But supposing that someone took and stuffed him up for me like a fatted goose.' And Archestratus in his famous poem:'And dress the fatted young of a goose with it, roasting that also simply.' Now you, Ulpian, are just the man to tell us, since you are the one who asks all questions of all men, where among ancient writers it is thought worth while to mention those sumptuous goose-livers. For that goose-fatteners are known Cratinus can testify when he says, in Dionysus - Alexander:'Goose-fatteners, cow -tenders.' Homer has the word goose both as feminine and as masculine:'An eagle bearing a white goose.' Also:'As yonder eagle snatched away the goose that was fed in the house.' And:'Twenty geese I have in my house, that each wheat from the water-trough.' As for goose-livers, which are excessively sought after in Rome, Eubulus mentions them in The Wreath-sellers, saying:'Unless you have the liver or mind of a goose.'”
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§ 9.33 There were also many “half-heads” of shoats. These are mentioned by Crobylus in The False Substitute: “There came in the tender half-head of a shoat. Of that, I swear by Zeus, I didn't leave a bit.” Next came the “meat-pot,” as it is called. This is composed of meats chopped fine, with the blood and the fat, in sweetened gravy. “ Aristophanes the grammarian says that the people of Achaea give it this name.” So spoke Myrtilus, and he added: “ Anticleides in the eighth book of his Returns says that'the Chians were once on the point of being massacred at a feast by the Erythraeans as the result of a concerted plot; someone perceived what was on foot and recited: ”O ye Chians, since mighty violence has the Erythraeans for its own, flee after ye have feasted on swine's flesh, but stay not for the ox."' Boiled meat is mentioned by Aristomenes in Quacks thus:... They also ate testicles, which they called kidneys; Philippides in The Fountain of Youth, dilating on the gluttony of the courtesan Gnathaena, says:'Then after all these viands a slave came bearing heaps of testicles. Now all the other females tittered with embarrassment, but that bloodthirsty Gnathaena, with a loud laugh cried out at the same time, “These are indeed fine kidneys, by the dear Demeter.” Then she snatched two of them and gulped them down, so that we tumbled on our backs with laughter.'"
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§ 9.34 Another speaker remarked that a very nice dish was capon with vinegar-oil sauce. Whereupon Ulpian, who is so fond of criticizing others, and who lay on the couch alone, [385a] eating but little and watching the speakers, said: “What is vinegar-oil sauce? Unless, to be sure, you are trying to tellings of what we call'poll-fish' and'sweet-fish,' the viands which are well known in my native land.” To which the other said: “The comic poet Timocles mentions vinegar-oil sauce in The Ring, saying:'Dogfish and rays, and all the kinds of fish which are dressed with vinegar-oil sauce.' And some men were called'oil-tops' by Alexis in The Lovelorn Lass, thus:'Oil-tops they, though the rest of their bodies is wooden.'” When a large fish was served once in an oil-pickle, someone said that any fish was very nice if served in an oil pickle; but Ulpian, who likes to collect thorny questions, contracted his brows and said: “Where is'oil-pickle' to be found? As for your word for fish (opsarion), I know that that is not used in any author alive.” Now most of the company told him to mind his own business, and went on eating; but Cynulcus shouted the lines from The Breezes of Metagenes: “Nay, my good sir, let us dine first, and after that you may ask me anything you like; for just now I am hungry, and somehow have an awfully poor memory.” And Myrtilus spoke up quite sweetly, enlisting in Ulpian's cause, that he might not have a share in any food, but might spend all his time in talking; so he said: " Cratinus in The Odysseis has the word'oil-pickle' in these lines:'In return for this, I am going to seize all you trusty companions and toast, roast, and broil you on the brazier; and dipping you into pickle, oil-pickle, and after that garlic-pickle hot, I shall eat up that man among you all, O ye troopers, who looks to me the most nicely done.' And Aristophanes in The Wasps: Blow me away and hurl me into a hot oil-pickle.'
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§ 9.35 As for opsarion, we use the word, and we are among'authors who are alive.' But even Plato has it of fish in Peisander:'A. Have you ever, as sometimes happens, eaten a bit of fish (opsarion) and been sick, and it has disagreed with you? B. Indeed I have; last year, when I ate a crayfish.' Pherecrates in The Deserters:'Somebody placed before us this fish.' Philemon in The Treasure:'You can't cheat me, damn you, when you have rotten fish before my very eyes.' Menander in The Carthaginian:'Although I offered a bit of incense to Boreas, yet I have caught never a fish; I shall have to make lentil-soup.' And in The Ephesian:'I got a fish for my luncheon.' Then he proceeds to add:'One of the fishmongers was just now offering his gobies for sale at four shillings.' Anaxilas in Hyacinthus the Pimp:'I'll got to market and buy you a fish (opsarion)'; and a little farther on:'Dress the fish (opsarion) for us, slave!' But in the line from Aristophanes' Anagyrus,'Unless you console me always with opsaria,' we understand opsaria here of tasty side-dishes. So, indeed, Alexis in The Vigil, [386a] when he gives this speech to a cook:'A. Would you like your relishes (opsaria) served rather hot, or middling, or lower? B. Lower? What do you mean? A. (Aside) Where can this fellow come from? (To B.) You don't understand how to live. Am I to serve all your dishes cold? B. Please don't. A. Then boiling hot? B. By Apollo! A. Then let them be middling? B. Of course. A. No other man in my guild does that. BB. No, I fancy not, nor anything else you are doing now! A. But I will explain: I give the guests at dinner their choice of temperature. B. (vexed with his loud boasting). In the gods' name, you've slaughtered the kid, I believe, not me. Don't chop me up, but rather the meat. A. All right. Slaves, line up! Have you a kitchen? B. Yes. A. With a smoke-pipe? B. Why, of course. A. No “of course” about it, if you please. But has it a smoke-pipe? CB. It has. A. It's no good if it smokes. B. This fellow will be the death of me!'
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§ 9.36 “These instances, taken from us'who are still alive,' I have recalled for your benefit, Ulpian — you, who find happiness in your belly, since you plainly side with me in never eating any'living' thing, to quote Alexis. For he says in Atthis:'The first man who said that no one was a reason professor of wisdom if he ate any live creature was certainly wise himself. Take me, for instance; I have just returned without buying anything that was alive. I bought large fish, but they were dead; boiled slice of fat lamb, but not living; for it can't be done! What else? Oh, yes; I also bought a baked liver. If anyone can show that one of the se things has voice or breath, I admit I've done wrong and am transgressing the law.' This being so, do allow us to dine. For look! While I have been talking to you the pheasants also have sailed in alongside, looking on us with contempt because of your unseasonable loquacity.” “But if you will tell me, Master Myrtilus,” said Ulpian, “where your word'finding-happiness-in-the belly' comes from, and whether any of the ancients mentions Phasian birds, I, in my turn, without'sailing at break of day over the Hellespont,' will go to the market-place and buy a pheasant, which I will eat up with you.”
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§ 9.37 Myrtilus replied: “On those conditions I will speak. ”finding-happiness-in-the belly' is a word used by Amphis in Woman-Madness. He says:'You fat-licking Eurybatus,... you must be one who finds happiness in his belly.' And' Phasian bird' (pheasant) is mentioned by the most delightful Aristophanes in a play, The Birds. Two old men of Athens, impelled by love of quiet, are seeking a quiet city in which to settle. Life among the birds appeals to them. So they go to the home of the birds, and suddenly one bird of ferocious aspect flies toward them. They are scared, but try to encourage each other, [387a] saying, among other things:'A. But this fellow here, what bird is he? Won't you answer? B. You mean me? I am Shitepoke, Phasian.' Again, the term Phasian used in The Clouds, I, at least, understand to refer to birds and not to horses, as many authorities do:'The Phasians kept by Leogoras.' For Leogoras may have kept Phasian birds as well as horses. Leogoras, in fact, is satirized as a glutton by Plato in Very Sad. And Mnesimachus (he too is one of the poets of the Middle Comedy) says in Philip:'And as the saying goes, birds' milk is scarcer, or a nicely plucked pheasant.' Theophrastus of Eresus, Aristotle's disciple, mentions them in the third book of his work On Animals, and says something like this:'Birds also are distinguished in classes in this way. There are first the heavy and non-flying, like the francolin, partridge, cock, pheasant, able to walk and covered with plumage as soon as hatched.' And Aristotle in the eighth book of his History of Animals writes as follows:'Among the birds, some are given to dusting themselves, others to bathing, while others neither dust nor bathe. All that are non-flying, but keep to the ground, like to dust themselves, such as the hen, partridge, francolin, pheasant, and crested lark.' Speusippus also mentions the pheasant in the second book of Similars. All these authorities call it phasianos and not phasianikos.
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§ 9.38 Agatharchides of Cnidus, discussing the Phasis river in the thirty-fourth book of his European History, writes this also:'Innumerable birds, of the sort called pheasant, resort for food to the mouths of the river.' And Callixeinus of Rhodes, in the fourth book of his Alexandria, when describing the parade that occurred in Alexandria under King Ptolemy called Philadelphus, writes the following of the se birds, which he evidently regarded as a great marvel:'Then were brought, in cages, parrots, peacocks, guinea-fowls, birds from the Phasis and from Aethiopia in great quantities.' Artemidorus, the Aristophanean, in his Glossary of Cookery, and Pamphilus of Alexandria, in his Onomasticon and Glossary, cite Epaenetus as saying, in his art of Cookery, that the Phasian bird is called tatyras. But Ptolemy Euergetes, in the second book of his Commentaries, says that the name of the Phasian bird is tetaros. All this I can answer you on the subject of the Phasian birds, which I, like persons in a fever, have seen going the rounds through your machinations. If, then, remembering our stipulation, you do not pay me back tomorrow what you have promised, I will not, to be sure, sue you in the public courts for wilful deception, but I will banish you to live on the Phasis river, just as the geographer Polemon wanted to consign the historian Istros, disciple of Callimachus, to the deep waters of the like-named river."
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§ 9.39 The Francolin. — Aristophanes in The Storks: “The francolin, sweetest meat to cook at the feast of victory.” Alexander of Myndus says that it is a little larger than a partridge, entirely covered with variegated markings on its back, of clay colour tending to red. It can be caught by hunters because of its weight and the shortness of its wings. 388] It likes to roll in the dust, is prolific, and feeds on seeds. And Socrates, in the work On Boundaries, Places, Fire, and Stones, says: “When the francolins were transported from Lydia to Egypt and let lose in the woods, they uttered for a time the note of a quail; but ever since a famine occurred as the result of the river flowing too low, and many of the inhabitants died, the birds have not ceased to this very day to utter, more plainly than children who speak most distinctly could, the words'three times evil to evil-doers.' If they are caught they not only cannot be tamed, but they do not even utter a note any more. If released, they become vocal again.” Hipponax mentions them thus:'Eating not of francolins or hares." Also Aristophanes in The Birds; in The Acharnians, too, he speaks of them as being abundant in the Megarian territory. Attic writers place the circumflex on the last syllable of the name (attagas), contrary to right analogy. For words of more than two syllables ending in as with a long, when the penult contains a, are barytone; thus, akamas (untiring), Sacadas, adamas (adamant). Further, in the plural one should say attagai and not attagenes.
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§ 9.40 The Purple Coot (porphyrion). — It is well known at the Aristophanes mentions this bird also. Polemon, in the fifth book of his Address to Antigonus and Adaeus, says of the purple coot that when it is domesticated the bird keeps a sharp eye on married women and is so affected if the wife commits adultery that when it suspects this it ends its life by strangling and so gives warning to its master. Polemon adds that the bird does not take food until it has walked round and found a spot suitable to itself; after doing this it rolls in the dust and bathes, and then only does it feed. Aristotle says that it has parted toes, a bluish colour, long legs, a beak which is red all the way from the head; it is of the size of the cock, but has a small gullet, hence it grasps its food with its feet and breaks it up into small bits; it drinks, however, in gulps. It has five toes, the middle being the largest. Alexander of Myndus in the second book of Inquiry into Birds says that this bird is Libyan and sacred to the gods which are worshipped in Libya. The Redbird. — Callimachus, in his treatise On Birds, says that the purple coot (porphyrion) is distinct from the redbird (porphyris), classifying each separately; he further says that the purple coot eats its food burrowing in a dark place, that no one may observe it. For it hates those who approach its food. The redbird is mentioned also by Aristophanes in The Birds. Ibycus gives the name of hiding-red" to certain birds in these lines:'Here, on the topmost boughs, perch speckled guans, and hiding-redbirds with necks of sheen, and long-winged halcyons." And in other lines he says: "... me ever, O heart of mine, as when a long-winged redbird..."
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§ 9.41 The Partridge. — these are mentioned by many authors, including also Aristophanes. Some shorten the middle syllable in the word; thus Archilochus: “Like a partridge (perdika) cowering from fear.” Similarly also in ortyga (quail) and choinika (quart), although lengthening the syllable is very common in Attic writers. Sophocles in The Camici:'There came one who bore the name of the partridge-bird (perdikos) on the glorious hills of Athens." Pherecrates, or whoever wrote Cheiron: “He will come out this way unwillingly, like a partridge (perdikos).” [389a] Phrynichus in The Tragedians: “also Cleombrotus, son of Partridge (perdikos).” The name of the creature is often employed symbolically to describe salaciousness. Nicophon in Hand-to-mouth Toilers: “The boiled small fry and those partridges yonder.” Epicharmus makes the penult short in Revellers: “They brought cuttlefish a swimming and partridges (perdikas) on the wing.” Aristotle says of the creature: “The partridge lives on land and has parted toes; it lives for fifteen years, but the female may even longer. For in the case of birds the females are more long-lived than the males. It sits on the eggs and hatches them out just as the hen does. When it becomes aware that it is being hunted, it proceeds away from the nest and hobbles along near the hunter's legs, exciting hopes of being caught, and so deceives him until the young have flown away, when it also flies out of reach.
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§ 9.42 The creature is malicious and mischievous, also salacious. Hence it crushes the female's eggs in order to gratify its desires. The female, becoming aware of this, runs away and lays its eggs.” The same facts are recorded by Callimachus also in his work On Birds. Those which have no mates fight against each other, and the one that is defeated is forced to mate with the victor. Aristotle says that all the males mate in turn with the defeated bird. Even the tame birds mate with the wild. When one bird is beaten by the second, it is mated by the victor in secret. This happens at a certain season of the year, as Alexander of Myndus also declares. Males and females nest on the ground, each in a separate place. Against a decoy partridge the leader of the wild birds forces his way to fight him; if the leader is beaten another comes up to fight. Now when the decoy bird is a male, this is their procedure; but when the decoy is a female, she sings until the leader comes to meet her. The other birds gather and try to chase him away from the female because he pays attention to her instead of to them. Hence it often happens, for this reason, that he approaches her silently, that no other bird may hear his call and come to fight him. Sometimes the female puts the male to silence when he approaches her. Often, too, it rises from the nest where it is brooding, whenever it sees her male approaching the decoy, and even submits to copulation in order to draw him away from the decoy. Partridges and quails are excited to such a degree over the act of copulation that they throw themselves among the decoy birds, alighting upon their heads. They even say that the female partridges, which are led as decoys to the hunt, the moment they catch sight or smell of the males standing or flying about to windward of them, become pregnant, and some even lay immediately. And so, at the season of mating, they fly about with beak open and with tongue projecting, the females as well as the males. Clearchus says in the essay On Panic: “Sparrows, partridges, cocks less, and quails emit screams not merely if they see the females, but even if they hear their call. The cause of this is the imaginative thought of union arising in their consciousness. This becomes most obvious at the season of mating, when you place a mirror directly in their path; for, deceived by the reflection, they run up to it and so are caught; they then emit semen — all, that is, excepting the barn-yard fowls. The latter are simply provoked of the fight by the sight of the reflection.” So much, then, for what Clearchus says.
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§ 9.43 [390a] Partridges are called caccabae by some writers, as, for example, Alcman when he says: “Epic verses, indeed, and lyric melody Full-tongued hath Alcman invented, composing the notes of the partridge (caccabis),” thus clearly indicating that he learned to sing from the partridges. Hence also Chamaeleon of Pontus has said: “The men of old devised the invention of music from the birds singing in solitary places; by way of imitating them, men instituted the art of music.” But not all partridges, he adds, utter the note caccabe; Theophrastus, at any rate, in the chapter On the Difference in Voice among Congeners, says that “the partridges of Athens found on this side of Corydallus in the direction of the city, cry caccabe, but those on the other side cry tittybe.” Basilis, in the second book of the History of India, says that “the dwarfs, who continually wage war with the cranes, use partridges as mounts to ride upon.” But Menecles, in the first part of his Collection, says that “the Pygmies wage war on the partridges and the cranes.” There is another kind of partridge in Italy with dark plumage and smaller in build, having a beak not of vermilion colour. The partridges from the neighbourhood of Cirrha have a flesh which is uneatable on account of their food. Those of Boeotia either do not cross over into Attica, or if they do, they become recognizable by their note, as we have said before. The partridges that are found in Paphlagonia, says Theophrastus, have two hearts; those on the island of Sciathos eat snails. Partridges sometimes lay as many as fifteen or even sixteen eggs. They can fly only a short distance, as Xenophon says in the first book of his Anabasis, writing as follows:'As for the bustards, if one starts them up suddenly it is possible to catch them; for they can fly only a short distance, like partridges, and they soon get tired. But their flesh is of good flavour."
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§ 9.44 Plutarch says that Xenophon is quite right about the bustards. For these creatures are brought in very large numbers to Alexandria from Libya, which is adjacent, and the mode of catching them is this. This creature, the otus, is given to mimicry, particularly of anything which it sees a man doing. At any rate, it does the same things that it sees the hunters doing. So the hunters take a position in plain sight of the birds and smear their eyes with an unguent after preparing other unguents which cause eyes and eyelids to stick together; these they place at no great distance from themselves in small pans. The bustards, therefore, seeing the men smearing themselves, take the unguent from the pans and do the same thing, and are quickly caught. Aristotle writes thus concerning them: “It belongs to the class of migrating birds, and of those which have parted toes and are three-toed; in size like a large rooster; coloured like a quail, head elongated, beak sharp, neck slender, eyes large, tongue bony; it has no crop.” Alexander of Myndus says that it is also called lagodias. He says that it chews the cud and takes delight in a horse. If, at any rate, one should put on a horse's hide, he would catch as many as he likes. For they will come close. In another passage, again, Aristotle says: “The otus is like the owl, but is not nocturnal. It has horns at the ears (ota), whence its name, otus; it has the size of a pigeon, and imitates human beings; when it dances, at any rate, in imitation of man, it can be caught.” It looks like a man in its features, and is imitative of everything that a man does. [391] This is why persons who are easily deceived on any chance occasion are called owls by the comedians. In catching owls, at any rate, the man who is most adept dances after he has taken his place where they can see him, and the creatures, looking at the dancer, move like marionettes. Another hunter, taking his station behind them, catches them when rapt in the pleasure of mimicry before they know it.
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§ 9.45 They say that the horned owls also do the same thing; for it is common report that they are caught by dancing. Homer mentions them. A kind of dance is called skops from them, receiving its name from the variety of movements observed in the creature. These owls also delight in mimicry, and from them we give the term skoptein to the copying and hitting off of persons we ridicule, because we practise the method of the owls (skopes). All birds which have well-developed tongues can also make articulate tones, and can imitate the sounds made by men by other birds; such are the parrot and the magpie. “Now the horned owl,” as Alexander of Myndus says, “is smaller than the common owl, and upon a ground of lead-colour it has whitish spots; at the brow it bears feathers extending upwards beside each temple.” Callimachus says that there are two kinds of horned owls (skopes), and that the one kind utters notes, the other does not. Hence, he says, the first are called skopes, the second aeiskopes; their eyes are glaring. Alexander of Myndus says that the word for horned owls in Homer is written without the s (kopes), and Aristotle has called them by that name. These owls appear at all seasons and cannot be eaten. But those which appear one or two days in the autumn are edible. They differ from the aeiskopes in plumpness, and are similar to the turtle-dove and the ringdove. Speusippus, also, in the second book of Similars, gives them the name kopes, without the s. Epicharmus has: “Horned owls (skopes), hoopoes, common owls.” Metrodorus, again, says in the treatise On Habit that horned owls are caught by their imitation of dancing.
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§ 9.46 Since, in our account of partridges, we mentioned that they are very much given to copulation, let it be recorded that the bird which is also lustful is the rooster. Aristotle, at any rate, says that when roosters are dedicated in sacred places, those which have been there for some time before cover the one newly dedicated until another bird is dedicated; and if none be dedicated, they fight against one another, and the victor continually covers the vanquished. It is also recorded that a rooster, when entering any door, raises his crest, and that he does not cede to another bird the right to cover without a battle. Theophrastus declares that wild birds are more given to covering than the domestic. He even says that the males are eager to consort as soon as they rise from the nest, the females as the day advances farther. Sparrows, too, are given to copulation; hence Terpsicles says that they who eat sparrows are prone to lust. Perhaps, then, Sappho draws from a fact in nature when she makes Aphrodite ride in a car drawn by sparrows; for the creature is given to “riding,” and is prolific. At any rate, the sparrow lays as many as eight eggs, according to Aristotle. Alexander of Myndus says that there are two kinds of sparrows, domestic and wild; the females among them are more insignificant, especially in their beak, which is more hornlike in colour, and they have faces neither very white nor very dark. [392a] Aristotle declares that the males disappear in winter, but the females remain through the season; he draws this probable inference from their colour; for he says that this changes, as in the case of blackbirds and coots, which grow white according to the season. The people of Elis call sparrows deiretae, as Nicander of Colophon says in the third book of his Glossary.
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§ 9.47 Quails. — The question is raised in general concerning nouns which end in YX, why it is that in the genitive these nouns do not employ the same consonant in forming the last syllable (I mean nouns like onyx, nail, and ortyx, quail). Simple dissyllabic masculines ending in x, when preceded by y, and when they have at the beginning of the last syllable one of the unchangeable sounds, or one of the sounds characteristic of what is called the first declension of barytone words, are inflected in the genitive with k; thus keryx, herald, genitive kerykos; pelyx, axe, pelykos; Eryx, the mountain, Erykos; Bebryx, Bebrykos But all those which do not have this character are inflected with g: ortyx, quail, genitive ortygos; oryx, pickaxe, orygos; kokkyx, cuckoo, kokkygos. Noteworthy is onyx, nail, onychos. Furthermore, as a general rule, the genitive singular follows the nominative plural and employs the same consonant in forming the last syllable. This is also true if the noun is inflected without a consonant. Aristotle says: “The quail belongs to the class of migrating birds, and of those which have parted toes; it does not make a nest, but a rolling-place in the dust; this it shelters with twigs, on account of the hawks, and here it broods over its eggs.” Alexander of Myndus, in the second book of his work On Animals, says: “The female quail is slender-necked, and has not the black markings of male under the chin. When dissected, it is seen not to have a large crop, but it has a large heart, and this has three lobes. It has also the liver and the gall bladder tightly joined in the intestines, a spleen small and difficult to discover, and testicles under the liver, as in the case of roosters.” Respecting their origin, Phanodemus says in the second book of his Attic History: “When Erysichthon perceived the island of Delos, which was called >Ortygia (Quail Island) by the ancients because of the flocks of these birds, as they were borne from the sea, settled upon the island, since it offered security...” Eudoxus of Cnidus, in the first book of his Description of the Earth, says that the Phoenicians sacrifice quails to Heracles, because Heracles, the son of Asteria and Zeus, went into Libya and was killed by Typhon; but Iolaus brought a quail to him, and having put it close to him, he smelt it and came to life again. For when he was alive, Eudoxus says, Heracles had delighted in this bird.
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§ 9.48 Eupolis in The Island Towns gives a diminutive form to their name, saying: “A. Have you ever at any time kept quails? B. Indeed I have; some tiny little quails (ortygia). And what of it?” Antiphanes in The Farmer has this diminutive in the singular, thus: “Why! What then are you able to do, you with the heart of a quail (ortygion)?” Pratinas, singularly enough, in The Dymaenae or Caryatids, calls the quail “sweet-voiced”; but perhaps among the Phliasians or the Laconians they may be tuneful, as the partridges are. And the designation sialis, says Didymus, must be derived from this. For most birds, generally speaking, have their names from their notes. As for the land-rail (mentioned by Cratinus in The Cheirons when he says, “That Ithacan land-rail”). [393a] Alexander of Myndus says of it that in size it is as large as a turtle-dove, but has long legs, and is of poor growth and cowardly. Concerning quail-hunting, Clearchus of Soli records a singular circumstance in the essay entitled On the Mathematical Passages in Plato's Republic. He says: “In the mating season of the quails, if one places a mirror in their path and a noose in front of the mirror, they will run to meet the reflection in the mirror and will be caught in the noose.” Clearchus records similar facts of the birds called koloioi (jackdaws) in these words: “So it is also with jackdaws, because of their innate love of their kind. Although they beat everything else in craftiness, nevertheless when a bowl full of oil is set, those of them which stand on the brim and look down cast themselves headlong upon the reflection. Thus their wings become soaked with oil, and being glued together become the cause of their capture.” The middle syllable of the name for quail is prolonged in Attic Greek, just as in doidyka (pestle) and in keryka (herald); so Demetrius Ixion states in his treatise On the Alexandrian Dialect. But Aristophanes made it short in The Peace, for the sake of the metre: “Home-bred quails (ortyges). The so called chennia (it is a small quail) are mentioned by Cleomenes in his Letter to Alexander, writing as follows: ”Ten thousand smoked coots, five thousand thrushes, ten thousand smoked quails (chennia)." And Hipparchus in the Egyptian Iliad: “And I liked not the life which the Egyptians lead, for ever plucking quails (chennia) and slimy magpies.”
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§ 9.49 Even swans were not often missing at our banquet; of them Aristotle says: “The swan loves its young, and it is belligerent; the belligerent, at any rate, is inclined to mutual slaughter. It will even fight the eagle, though it will not provoke the fight. They are also given to song, especially as their end draws near. They even sing while they are crossing the deep sea. It belongs to the class of web-footed and grass-eating birds.” But Alexander of Myndus says that, although he has closely followed many dying swans, he never heard them sing. Hegesianax of Alexandria, who composed the work entitled Cephalion's Trojan War, says that the Cycnus (Swan) who fought in single combat against Achilles was reared in Leucophrys by the bird whose name he bore. According to Philochorus, Boeus, or Boeo, in the Ornithogony, says that Cycnus was changed into a bird by Ares, and come gate to the Sybaris river he consorted with a crane. He also says that Cycnus placed in his nest the grass that is called willow-grass. Boeus says also, of the crane, that she had been a woman eminent among the Pygmies, named Gerana. She, honoured as a god by her citizens, held the true gods in low esteem herself, especially Hera and Artemis. Hera, therefore, became angry, metamorphosed her into a bird of ugly shape, and made her an enemy and hateful to the Pygmies who had honoured her; Boeus also says that from her and Nicodanas was born the land tortoise. The author of this epic records that all the birds without exception had once been human beings.
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§ 9.50 Ring-doves. — Aristotle says that the pigeons constitute a single class, with five varieties; he writes as follows: [394]'Pigeon, rock-dove, stock-dove, ring-dove, turtle-dove." But in the fifth book of Parts of Animals he does not mention the stock-dove, although Aeschylus, in the satyric drama Proteus, mentions the bird thus: “The poor, unhappy stock-dove feeding, its shattered sides broken in two when caught on the winnowing-fans.” In Philoctetes, declining the word in the genitive (plural), he has phabon. “Now the rock-dove,” Aristotle says, “is larger than the pigeon, and has a winey colour. The stock-dove is intermediate between the pigeon and the rock-dove, while the ring-dove is of the size of the cock, with ashy colour; the turtle-dove is smaller than all the others, and has a grey colour. It appears in summer, but during the winter lives in holes. The stock-dove and the pigeon appear at all seasons, but the rock-dove only in the autumn. The ring-dove is said to be more long-lived than these others; in fact it lives thirty or forty years. Until death comes, the males do not desert the females, nor the females the males, but when one dies, whichever is left lives in solitary bereavement. The same is true also of crows, ravens, and jackdaws. In the entire pigeon class, male and female sit on the eggs in turn, and when the young are hatched the male spits on them that they may not be bewitched. It lays two eggs, the first of which makes a male, the second a female. They lay at all seasons of the year; hence they lay as much as ten times in Tyre, in Egypt even twelve times. Having laid once, the hen conceives again the next day.” Again, in the same passage, Aristotle says that the pigeon (peristera) is different; that the wild pigeon is smaller, and that it becomes tame; the pigeon, moreover, is dark and small, with red, rough feet; hence nobody keeps it as a domestic fowl. DA peculiarity of the pigeon, he says, is that they bill each other when they are about to couple; otherwise the females will not tolerate the male. But the older bird, he says, can mount the female first even without billing. Younger birds always cover only after they have done this. Even the females cover each other when no male is near, after billing. And though they eject nothing into each other, they lay eggs, but no chick comes from them. The Dorians use the word peleias for peristera, as, for example, Sophron, in his Mimes of Women. But Callimachus, in his book On Birds, explains phassa (ring-dove), pyrallis, pigeon, and turtle-dove, as different birds.
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§ 9.51 Alexander of Myndus says that the ring-dove, does not raise its head when drinking, as does the turtle-dove, and that it makes no sound in the winter season except after a period of fair weather. It is said that if the rock-dove eats the seed of the mistletoe and then lets a dropping fall upon a tree, a new growth of mistletoe is produced. Daimachus, in his History of India, records that yellow pigeons occur in India. Charon of Lampsacus, in giving an account of Mardonius and the Persian host that was destroyed off Mount Athos, writes, in his History of Persia: “On that occasion white pigeons appeared for the first time in Greece, having never occurred there before.” Aristotle says that when their young are hatched, pigeons open their mouths and spit into them salty earth with they have chewed, and by this means prepare them for taking their food. On Mount Eryx, in Sicily, there is a stated time, called the Festival of Embarkation, when, they say, the goddess embarks for Libya. On that occasion the pigeons which flock about the place disappear as if they had joined the goddess in her journey. And after nine days, at the so called Festival of Debarkation, [395a] one pigeons flies forth out of the sea and alights upon the temple, and then all the rest appear. Thereupon all the inhabitants round about who enjoy ample means begin to feast, while the rest applaud joyfully, and the whole place smells of butter, which they employ as a sign of the goddess's return. Autocrates in his Achaean History records that Zeus even changed himself into a pigeon when he fell in love with a maiden of Aegium named Phthia. Attic writers have a masculine form, peristeros. Alexis in Running Mates: “For I am Aphrodite's white pigeon (peristeros). After Dionysus, all he knows is getting drunk, and whether a thing be young or old, he does not care.” But in Dorcis or The Woman who Smacks he has the feminine form peristera, and says that the pigeons of Sicily are particularly fine: “I keep pigeons in my house, the Sicilian kinds, which are very choice.” Pherecrates in Old Women has the masculine: “Send the pigeon to tell the news.” And in The Broad he has a neuter diminutive: “Nay, little pigeon (peristerion), soft as Cleisthenes, fly, and take me to Cythera and to Cyprus.” Nicander, mentioning the pigeons of Sicily in the second book of his Georgics, says: “And so thou must at least keep Dracontia or Sicilian pigeons in thy halls; they lay two eggs at a time, and not ravening birds, and not snakes, it is said, can harm their shelly coats.”
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§ 9.52 Ducks. — Alexander of Myndus says that in the case of these birds the male is larger and more varied in colour. The kind called glaucion, because of the colour of its eyes, is a little smaller than the common duck. Of those called “feeders,” the male has conspicuous markings; but it is less... than the duck. The males have beaks which are flat and proportionately smaller than the duck's. The little grebe, smallest of all aquatic birds, is a dirty black in colour, and it has a beak which is sharp and protects the eyes; it dives below frequently. There is also another kind of feeder larger than the common duck, but smaller than a Nile goose. The birds called phaskades are a little larger than the grebes; they resemble ducks in other repulses. The so called uria is not much smaller than a duck; in colour it is of a dirty clay, and it has a long and narrow bill. The coot, likewise, has a narrow bill; it is rounder in appearance; its breast is ashy-coloured, its back somewhat darker. The duck (netta) and the grebe (kolymbas), from which are derived the verbs nechesthai (swim) and kolymban (dive), are mentioned along with many other marsh birds by Aristophanes in The Acharnians, in these lines: “Ducks, jackdaws, francolins, coots, sandpipers, grebes.” Callimachus, too, mentions them in his work On Birds.
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§ 9.53 We often had, also the so called parastatai, which are mentioned by Epaenetus in The Art of Cookery, and by Simaristus in the third and fourth books of his Synonyms. The testes are called by this name. Certain meats were brought in which had been stewed together in a broth, and someone said, [396a] “Give me some'choked' bits of meat”; whereupon that word-architect, Ulpian, said: “I shall choke myself to death unless you tell where you could have deified such meat as that! I certainly will never use the word until I have found out.” He replied: “ Strattis used it in The Macedonians or Pausanias:'Be sure you have something smothered as a delicacy, — a lot of that kind of thing.' And Eubulus in Glued Together:'And Sicilian smothered meats in heaps of stewpans.' So Aristophanes in The Wasps:'Smothered in casserole.' And Cratinus in Women of Delos:'Rub a little portion in it and smother it tidily.' Antiphanes in The Farmer:'A. And first of all I take the wished-for barley cake, which life-bringing Deo lavishes as a dear joy upon mortals; then the smothered, tender limbs of kids' flesh newly born, clad in green herbs. B. What's that you say? A. I'm just reciting a play of Sophocles.'”
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§ 9.54 On one occasion sucking- pigs (galathena) were served all round, and our men of Dinnerville asked whether the word is actually found. Someone replied:' Pherecrates in Slave-Teacher has:'They stole some sucking- pigs, not full-grown.' And in The Deserters:'You are not going to sacrifice a sucking- pig after all.' Alcaeus in Palaestra:'Here he comes himself. If I utter, of what I am telling you, so much as the grunt of a sucking — mouse!' Herodotus says in the first book that'on the golden altar at Babylon it is not permitted to sacrifice any but sucking- pigs.' Antiphanes in A True Friend:'Choice indeed is this little sucking-pigling here.' Heniochus in Polyeuctus:'The Bronze Bull could have been stewed a very long time by now; but he has probably taken our sucking- pig and butchered it.' Anacreon, also, says:'Even as a new-born sucking fawn, which has been left behind in the forest by its horned dam and is affrighted.' Crates in Neighbours:'For the present we've had enough of childish things, just as we've had enough of lambs and pigs, suckling or full grown.' Simonides makes Danae say of Perseus:'Oh, my babe, what woe is mine! Yet thou dost sleep, and in thy tender heart hast slumber.' And in another poem he says of Archemorus:'They wept for the tender babe of the violet-crowned mother, as it breathed out its sweet soul.' Clearchus, in his work On the Lives, says that the tyrant Phalaris pursued his cruelty so far that he feasted on sucking babes. The verb thesthai (whence gala-thena) means to suck milk (gala). Homer:'For Hector was but mortal, and was suckled at a woman's breast.' It is related to tithesthai (place), because place the nipples in their mouths; and the nipple (titthos) is so called because the nipples (thelai) are placed therein. ( Homer also has the word galathenos (unweaned):'A doe has put to sleep her new-born fawns unweaned.)'"
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§ 9.55 [397a] On one occasion, also, gazelles (dorkades) were served, and Palamedes, the Eleatic lexicographer, said: “Not unpleasing is the flesh of roes (dorkones).” In answer to him Myrtilus said: “Only the form dorkades is used, not dorkones. Thus Xenophon in the first book of the Anabasis:'There were in the desert also bustards and gazelles.'”
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§ 9.56 The Peacock. — Antiphanes, in The Soldier or Tychon, shows that this bird was rare when he says: “When anyone imported just a pair of peacocks, it was a rare thing; but today they are more numerous than quails.” So Eubulus in Phoenix. For in fact the peacock is an object of wonder because of its rarity. “The peacock,” says Aristotle, “has parted toes, is graminivorous, and lays eggs when it is three years old; in this period it also acquires the varied colours of its plumage. It sits on its eggs for about thirty days. Once a year it lays twelve eggs; these are laid not all at once, but at intervals of two days. Yet the birds which lay for the first time lay only eight eggs. It also lays wind eggs, like the hen, but not more than two to the clutch. It hatches and broods like the hen.” Eupolis in Out of the Service: “lest haply I keep such a peacock in the House of Persephone, waking up the sleepers there.” There is a speech written by the orator Antiphon with the title On Peacocks, and in the course of the speech there occurs no mention whatever of their name; in it he calls them “spangled birds,” and says that they were kept by Demus, the son of Pyrilampes, and that many persons, in eager desire for a sight of the birds, came from Lacedemon and Thessaly, and bent every effort to get some of the eggs. Describing their appearance he writes: “Should anyone desire to establish these birds in town, they would fly up and be off. Yet if one clips their wings, they will be robbed of their beauty; for their plumage, not their body, is their beauty.” And that the sight of them was eagerly desired he shows again in the same speech: “Any who wished could enter on the first day of the month, but if anyone came wishing to see them on the other days, in no case was he successful. And all this is not a matter of recent times, but has been going on for more than thirty years.”
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§ 9.57 “The word for peacock (tahos), says Tryphon, ”is pronounced by the Athenians with circumflex accent and the rough breathing on the last syllable. And it is in this way that the reading occurs in Eupolis, Out of the Service (the testimony has been given above), and in The Birds of Aristophanes:'What! You are really Tereus? Are you a bird or a peacock (tahos)?' And again:'It's a bird, of course. What in the related is it: It can't be a peacock (tahos), can it?' They also use the dative form tahoni, as Aristophanes in the same play. But it is difficult for Athenians and Ionians, in words of more than one syllable, to put the rough breathing on the last syllable beginning with a vowel. In any case consistency requires that the last syllable have the smooth breathing, like neos (temple), leos (people), Tyndareos, Meneleos, leiponeos (deserting the ship), euneos (supplied with ships), Neileos, praos (mild), hyios (son), Ceios ( Cean ), Chios ) ( Chian ), dios (divine), chreios (useful), pleios (full), leios (smooth), laios (left), baios (little), phaios (grey), peos (kinsman), goos (mourning), thoos (quick), rhoos (stream), zoos (alive). For by its very nature, the rough breathing is fond of the first position and likes to take the lead, [398] and so it cannot in any way be imprisoned in the last parts of a word. The bird is called tahos from the extending (tasis) of its feathers." Seleucus, in the fifth book of his work On Greek, says: “Tahos; contrary to the rule, Attic writers aspirate and circumflex. In the simple pronunciation of words, the rough breathing is wont to be pronounced in connexion with the initial vowel, and in that position it speeds forward and hurries faster and so extends over the whole word. Hence the Athenians, recognizing also the true nature of this accent by its position, do not put it directly over the vowels as they do the other marks of accent, but place it in front of them. I believe also that the ancients expressed the rough breathing by the letter H (eta). Hence, too, the Romans write H before all aspirated words, thus marking clearly its quality of leadership. If, then, that is the nature of the rough breathing, perhaps its addition on the last syllable of the word taos by Attic writers is irrational.”
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§ 9.58 Many other remarks were made in the course of the symposium concerning each of the dishes brought in; and Larensis then said: “Well, even I myself, like the altogether noble Ulpian, have something to propound to you; for we feed on questions. What do you think the tetrax is?” Someone replied, “A kind of bird.” Now it is the fashion among grammarians to say to their pupils, concerning all kinds of problems, “That's a kind of plant,” or “A kind of bird,” or “A kind of stone.” Larensis said: “Even I know, good sir, that the witty Aristophanes mentions it in these words, in The Birds:'To the purple coot and the pelican, to the pelicinus and the phlexis, to the tetrax and the peacock.' I am anxious to learn from you whether any mention of it occurs in any other author. For Alexander of Myndus, in the second book of his work On Winged Animals, makes no mention of the large bird called tetrax, but of one which is very small. He says, namely:'The tetrax is equal in size to the francolin; in colour it is like clay, varied with dusky spots and large lines; it is a fruit-eater. When it lays an egg, it utters a cackling sound.' And Epicharmus in The Marriage of Hebe:'For they take quails and sparrows, and crested larks that love to roll in the dust, seed-picking pheasants too, and shining fig-peckers.' And in other verses he says: ”there were also many herons with long curving necks and seed-licking pheasants.' Now, since you have nothing to add (for you are silent), I will exhibit the bird to you. For being procurator of the Lord Emperor in Moesia and having charge of the administration of that province, I have seen the bird in that country. Learning that that was the name given to the bird among the Moesians and the Paeonians, I recalled it in the verse of Aristophanes. I thought, too, that the creature must have been deemed worthy of mention by the learned Aristotle in that costly treatise of his; for the story goes that the Stagirite received eight hundred talents from Alexander to further his research on animals; but I could not find anything said about it, and I was glad to have the witty Aristophanes as a most trustworthy witness." As he said these words, someone came in bringing the pheasant in its cage. In size it was larger than the largest cock, in appearance it resembled a purple coot; from its ears, on each side of the head, hung the wattles, like those of cocks; its voice was of low pitch. [399a] When we had admired the brilliant colours of the bird, it was dressed and served not long afterward, and its flesh resembled that of the ostrich, on which, also, we have often feasted.
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§ 9.59 There was a dish too called loins (ψύαι). The poet who wrote the poem called The Return of the Atridae, in the third book says — And with his rapid feet Hermioneus Caught Nisus, and his loins with spear transfix'd. And Simaristus, in the third book of his Synonymes, writes thus: “The flesh of the loins which stands out on each side is called ψύαι, and the hollows on each side they call κύβοι and γάλλιαι.” And Clearchus, in the second book of his treatise on The Joints in the Human Body, speaks thus: “There is flesh full of muscle on each side; which some people call ψύαι, and others call ἀλώπεκες, and others νευρόμητραι.” And the admirable Hippocrates also speaks of ψύαι;and they get this name from being easily wiped (ἀπὸ τοῦ ῥαδίως ἀποψᾶσθαι), or as being flesh lightly touching (ἐπιψαύουσα) the bones, and lying lightly on the surface of them. And Euphron the comic poet mentions them in his Theori — There is a lobe and parts, too, called ψύαι; Learn to cut these before you view the sacrifice.
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§ 9.60 There is a dish too made of udder. Teleclides, in his Rigid Men, says — Since I'm a female, I must have an udder. Herodotus, in the fourth book of his History, uses the same term when speaking of horses; but it is rare to find the word (οὖθαρ) applied to the other animals; but the word most commonly used is ὑπογάστριον, as in the case of fishes. Strattis, in his Atalanta, says — The ὑπογάστριον and the extremities Of the large tunny. And Theopompus, in his Callaechrus, says — A. And th' ὑπογάστρια of fish. B. O Ceres! But in the Sirens he calls it not ὑπογάστρια, but ὑπήτρια, saying — Th' ὑπήτρια of white Sicilian tunnies.
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§ 9.61 We must now speak of the hare; concerning this animal Archestratus, that author so curious in his dishes, speaks thus — Many are the ways and many the recipes For dressing hares; but this is best of all, To place before a hungry set of guests, A slice of roasted meat fresh from the spit, Hot, season'd only with plain simple salt, Not too much done. And do not you be vex'd At seeing blood fresh trickling from the meat, But eat it eagerly. All other ways Are quite superfluous, such as when cooks pour A lot of sticky clammy sauce upon it, Parings of cheese, and lees, and dregs of oil, As if they were preparing cat's meat. And Naucrates the comic poet, in his Persia, says that it is an uncommon thing to find a hare in Attica: and he speaks thus — For who in rocky Attica e'er saw A lion or any other similar beast, Where'tis not easy e'en to find a hare But Alcaeus, in his Callisto, speaks of hares as being plentiful, and says — You should have coriander seed so fine That, when we've got some hares, we may be able To sprinkle them with that small seed and salt.
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§ 9.62 And Tryphon says, — " Aristophanes, in his Danaides, uses the form λαγὼν in the accusative case with an acute accent on the last syllable, and with a v for the final letter, saying — And when he starts perhaps he may be able To help us catch a hare (λαγών). And in his Daitaleis he says — I am undone, I shall be surely seen Plucking the fur from off the hare (λαγών). But Xenophon, in his treatise on Hunting, writes the accusative λαγῶ without the v, and with a circumflex accent. But among us the ordinary form of the nominative case is λαγός; and as we say ναὸς, and the Attics νεὼς, and as we say λαὸς, and the Attics λεώς; so, while we call this animal λαγὸς, they call him λαγώς. And as for our using the form λαγὸν in the accusative case singular, to that we find a corresponding nominative plural in Sophocles, in his Amycus, a satiric drama; where he enumerates — Cranes, crows, and owls, and kites, and hares (λαγοι). But there is also a form of the nominative plural corresponding to the accusative λαγὼν, ending in ω, as found in the Flatterers of Eupolis — Where there are rays, and hares (λαγὼ), and light-footed women. But some people, contrary to all reason, circumflex the last syllable of this form λαγώ; but it ought to have an acute accent, since all the nouns which end in ος, even when they. are changed into ως by the Attic writers, still preserve the same accent as if they had undergone no alteration; as ναὸς, νεώς; κάλος, κάλως. And so, too, Epicharmus used this noun, and Herodotus, and the author of the poem called the Helots. Moreover, λαγὸς is the Ionic form — Rouse the sea-hare (λαγὸς) before you drink the water; and λαγὼς the Attic one. But the Attic writers use also the form λαγός; as Sophocles, in the line above quoted — Cranes, crows, and owls, and hares (λαγοι). There is also a line in Homer, where he says — ἢ πτῶκα λαγωόν. Now, if we have regard to the Ionic dialect, we say that ω is interpolated; and if we measure it by the Attic dialect, then we say the o is so: and the meat of the hare is called λαγῶα κρέα.
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§ 9.63 But Hegesander the Delphian, in his Commentaries, says that in the reign of Antigonus Gonatas, there were such a number of hares in the island of Astypalaea, that the natives consulted the oracle on the subject. And the Pythia answered them that they ought to breed dogs, and hunt them; and so in one year there were caught more than six thousand. And all this immense number arose from a man of the island of Anaphe having put one pair of hares in the island. As also, on a previous occasion, when a certain Astypalaean had let loose a pair of partridges in the island of Anaphe, there came to be such a number of partridges in Anaphe, that the inhabitants ran a risk of being driven out of the island by them. But originally Astypalea had no hares at all, but only partridges. And the hare is a very prolific animal as Xenophon has told us, in his treatise on Hunting; and Herodotus speaks of it in the following terms — “Since the hare is hunted by everything-man, beast, and bird — it is on this account a very prolific animal; and it is the only animal known which is capable of superfetation. And it has in its womb at one time one litter with the fur on, and another bare, and another just formed, and a fourth only just conceived.” And Polybius, in the twelfth book of his History, says that. there is another animal like the hare which is called the rabbit (κούνικλος); and he writes as follows — “The animal called the rabbit, when seen at a distance, looks like a small hare; but when any one takes it in his hands, there is a great difference between them, both in appearance and taste: and it lives chiefly underground.” And Posidonius the philosopher also mentions them in his History; and we our selves have seen a great many in our voyage from Dicaearchia to Naples. For there is an island not far from the mainland, opposite the lower side of Dicaearchia, inhabited by only a very scanty population, but having a great number of rabbits. And there is also a kind of hare called the Chelidonian hare, which is mentioned by Diphilus, or Calliades, in his play called Ignorance, in the following terms — What is this? whence this hare who bears the name of Chelidonian? Is it grey hare soup, Mimarcys call'd, so thick with blood? And Theophrastus, in the twentieth book of his History, says that there are hares about Bisaltia which have two livers.
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§ 9.64 And when a wild boar was put upon the table, which was in no respect less than that noble Calydonian Boar which has been so much celebrated, — I suggest to you now, said he, O my most philosophical and precise Ulpian, to inquire who ever said that the Calydonian Boar was a female, and that her meat was white. But he, without giving the matter any long consideration, but rather turning the question off, said — But it does seem to me, my friends, that if you are not yet satisfied, after having had such plenty of all these things, that you surpass every one who has ever been celebrated for his powers of eating, — and who those people are you can find out by inquiry. But it is more correct and more consistent with etymology to make the name σὺς, with a ς; for the animal has its name from rushing (σεύομαι) and going on impetuously; but men have got a trick of pronouncing the word without the ς,ὗς; and some people believe that it is called σῦν, by being softened from θῦν, as if it had its name from being a fit animal to sacrifice (θύειν). But now, if it seems good to you, answer me who ever uses the compound word like we do, calling the wild boar not σῦς ἄγριος, but σύαγρος̣ At all events, Sophocles, in his Lovers of Achilles, has applied the word σύαγρος to a dog, as hunting the boar (ἀπὸ τοῦ σῦς ἀγρεύειν), where he says — And you, Syagre, child of Pelion. And in Herodotus we find Syagrus used as a proper name of a man who was a Lacedemonian by birth, and who went on the embassy to Gelon the Syracusan, about forming an alliance against the Medes; which Herodotus mentions in the seventh book of his History. And I am aware, too, that there was a general of the Aetolians named Syagrus who is mentioned by Phylarchus, in the fourth book of his History. And Democritus said — You always, O Ulpian, have got a habit of never taking anything that is set before you until you know whether the existing name of it was in use among the ancients. Accordingly you are running the risk, on account of all these inquiries of yours, (just like Philetas of Cos, who was always investigating all false arguments and erroneous uses of words,) of being starved to death, as he was. For he became very thin by reason of his devotion to these inquiries, and so died, as the inscription in front of his tomb shows — Stranger, Philetas is my name, I lie Slain by fallacious arguments, and cares Protracted from the evening through the night.
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§ 9.65 And so that you may not waste away by investigating this word σύαγρος, learn that Antiphanes gives this name to the wild boar, in his Ravished Woman: — This very night a wild boar (σύαγρον) will I seize, And drag into this house, and a lion and a wolf And Dionysius the tyrant, in his Adonis, says — Under the arched cavern of the nymphs I consecrate.... A wild boar (σύαγρον) as the first-fruits to the gods. And Lynceus the Samian, in his epistle to Apollodorus, writes thus — “That you may have some goat's flesh for your children, and some meat of the wild boar (τὰ συάγρια) for yourself and your friends.” And Hippolochus the Macedonian, whom we have mentioned before now, in his epistle to the above-named Lynceus, mentioned many wild boars (συάγρων). But, since you have turned off the question which was put to you about the colour of the Calydonian Boar, and whether any one states him to have been white as to his flesh, we ourselves will tell you who has said so; and you yourself may investigate the proofs which I bring. For some time ago, I read the dithyrambics of Cleomenes of Rhegium; and this account is given in that ode of them which is entitled Meleager. And I am not ignorant that the inhabitants of Sicily call the wild boar (which we call σύαγρος) ἀσχέδωρος. And Aeschylus, in his Phorcides, comparing Perseus to a wild boar, says — He rush'd into the cave like a wild boar (ἀσχέδωρος ὥς). And Sciras (and he is a poet of what is called the Italian comedy, and a native of Tarentum ), in his Meleager, says — Where shepherds never choose to feed their flocks, Nor does the wild boar range and chase his mate. And it is not wonderful that Aeschylus, who lived for some time in Sicily, should use many Sicilian words.
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§ 9.66 There were also very often kids brought round by the servants, dressed in various ways; some of them with a great deal of assafoetida, which afforded us no ordinary pleasure; for the flesh of the goat is exceedingly nutritious. At all events, Chitomachus the Carthaginian, who is inferior to no one of the new Academy for his spirit of philosophical investigation, says that a certain Theban athlete surpassed all the men of his time in strength, because he ate goat's flesh; for the juice of that meat is nervous and sticky, and such as can remain a long time in the substance of the body. And this wrestler used to be much laughed at, because of the unpleasant smell of his perspiration. And all the meat of pigs and lambs, while it remains undigested in the system, is very apt to turn, because of the fat. But the banquets spoken of by the comic poets rather please the ears by sweet sounds, than the palate by sweet tastes; as, for instance, the feast mentioned by Antiphanes, in his Female Physician — A. But what meat do you eat with most delight? B. What meat? — why if you mean as to its cheapness, There's mutton ere it bears you wool or milk, That is to say, there's lamb, my friend; and so There's also meat of goats which give no milk, That is to say, of kids. For so much profit Is got from these when they are fully grown, That I put up with eating cheaper kinds. And in his Cyclops he says — These are the animals which the earth produces, Which you will have from me: the ox of th' herd, The goat which roves the woods, the chamois which Loves the high mountain tops, the fearless ram, The hog, the boar, the sucking- pig besides, And hares, and kids.... Green cheese, dry cheese, and cut and pounded cheese, Scraped cheese, and chopp'd cheese, and congeal'd cheese
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§ 9.67 And Mnesimachus, in his Horse-Breeder, provides the following things for dinner — Come forth, O Manes, from the chamber Deck'd with the lofty cypress roof; Go to the Agora, to the Herms, where all the phylarchs meet, and seek the troop Of their most graceful pupils, whom Phidon is teaching how to mount Their horses, and dismount from them. I need not tell you now their names. Go; tell them that the fish is cold, The wine is hot, the pastry dry, The bread dry, too, and hard. The chops Are burnt to pieces, and the meat Taken from out the brine and dish'd. The sausages are served up too; So is the tripe, and rich black puddings. Those who're indoors are all at table, The wine cups all are quickly drain'd, The pledge goes round; and nought remains But the lascivious drunken cordax. The young men all are waxing wanton, And ev'rything's turn'd upside down. Remember what I say, and bear My words in mind. Why stand you gaping like a fool? Look here, and just repeat the message Which I've just told you; do, — I will Repeat it o'er again all through. Bid them come now, and not delay, Nor vex the cook who's ready for them. For all the fish is long since boil'd, And all the roast meat's long since cold. And mention o'er each separate dish; — Onions and olives, garlic too, Cucumbers, cabbages, and broth, Fig-leaves, and herbs, and tunny cutlets, Glanis and rhine, shark and conger, A phyxicinus whole, a tunny, A coracinus whole, a thunnis, A small anchovy, and a tench, A spindle-fish, a tail of Dogfish, A carcharias and a torpedo; A sea- frog, lizard, and a perch, A trichias and a phycis too, A brinchus, mullet, and sea-cuckoo. A turtle, and besides a lamprey, A phagrus, lebias, and grey mullet, A sparus, and aeolias, A swallow, and the bird of Thrace, A sprat, a squid, a turbot, and Dracaenides, and polypi, A cuttle-fish, an orphus too; A crab, likewise an escharus, A needle-fish, a fine anchovy, Some cestres, scorpions, eels, and loaves. And loads of other meat, beyond My calculation or my mention. Dishes of goose, and pork, and beef, And lamb, and mutton, goat and kid; Of poultry, ducks and partridges, And jays, and foxes. And what follows Will be a downright sight to see, So many good things there will be. And all the slaves through all the house Are busy baking, roasting, dressing, And plucking, cutting, beating, boiling, And laughing, playing, leaping, feasting, And drinking, joking, scolding, pricking. And lovely sounds from tuneful flutes, And song and din go through the house, Of instruments both wind and string'd. Meantime a lovely scent of cassia, From Syria's fertile land, does strike Upon my sense, and frankincense, And myrrh, and nard Such a confusion fills the house With every sort of luxury.
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§ 9.68 Now, after all this conversation, there was brought in the dish which is called a rhoduntia; concerning which that wise cook quoted numbers of tragedies before he would tell us what he was bringing us. And he laughed at those who professed to be such admirable cooks, mentioning whom, he said — Did that cook in the play of Anthippus, the comic poet, ever invent such a dish as this? — the cook, I mean, who, in the Veiled Man, boasted in this fashion: — A. Sophon the Acarnanian, And good Democritus of Rhodes, were long Fellow-disciples in this noble art, And Labdacus of Sicily was their tutor. These men effaced all vulgar old recipes Out of their cookery books, and took away The mortar from the middle of the kitchen. They brought into disuse all vinegar, Cummin, and cheese, and assafoetida, And coriander seed, and all the sauces Which Saturn used to keep within his cruets. And the cook who employ'd such means they thought A humbug, a mere mountebank in his art. They used oil only, and clean plates, O father, And a quick fire, wanting little bellows: With this they made each dinner elegant. They were the first who banish'd tears and sneezing, And spitting from the board; and purified The manners of the guests. At last the Rhodian, Drinking some pickle by mistake, did die; For such a draught was foreign to his nature. B.'Twas likely so to be. A. But Sophon still Has all Ionia for his dominions, And he, O father, was my only tutor. And I now study philosophic rules, Wishing to leave behind me followers, And new discover'd rules to guide the art. B. Ah! but, I fear, you'll want to cut me up, And not the animal we think to sacrifice. A. Tomorrow you shall see me with my books, Seeking fresh precepts for my noble art; Nor do I differ from th' Aspendian. And if you will, you too shall taste a specimen Of this my skill. I do not always give The self-same dishes to all kinds of guests; But I regard their lives and habits all. One dish I set before my friends in love, Another's suited to philosophers, Another to tax-gatherers. A youth Who has a mistress, quickly will devour His patrimonial inheritance; So before him I place fat cuttle-fish Of every sort; and dishes too of fish Such as do haunt the rocks, all season'd highly With every kind of clear transparent sauce. For such a man cares nought about his dinner, But all his thoughts are on his mistress fix'd. Then to philosophers I serve up ham, Or pettitoes; for all that crafty tribe Are wonderful performers at the table. Owls, eels, and spars I give the publicans, When they're in season, but at other times Some lentil salad. And all funeral feasts I make more splendid than the living ones. For old men's palates are not critical; At least not half so much as those of youths. And so I give them mustard, and I make them Sauces of pungent nature, which may rouse Their dormant sense, and make it snug the air; And when I once behold a face, I know The dishes that its owner likes to eat.
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§ 9.69 And the cook in the Thesmophorus of Dionysius, my revellers, (for it is worth while to mention him also,) says — You have said these things with great severity, (And that's your usual kindness, by the Gods); You've said a cook should always beforehand Know who the guests may be for whom he now Is dressing dinner. For he should regard This single point — whom he has got to please While seasoning his sauces properly; And by this means he'll know the proper way And time to lay his table and to dress His meats and soups. But he who this neglects Is not a cook, though he may be a seasoner. But these are different arts, a wondrous space Separates the two. It is not every one That's called a general who commands an army, But he who can with prompt and versatile skill Avail himself of opportunities, And look about him, changing quick his plans, He is the general. He who can't do this Is only in command. And so with us. To roast some beef, to carve a joint with neatness, To boil up sauces, and to blow the fire, Is anybody's task; he who does this Is but a seasoner and broth-maker: A cook is quite another thing. His mind Must comprehend all facts and circumstances: Where is the place, and when the time of supper; Who are the guests, and who the entertainer; What fish he ought to buy, and when to buy it...... For all these things You'll have on almost every occasion; But they're not always of the same importance, Nor do they always the same pleasure give. Archestratus has written on this art, And is by many people highly thought of, As having given us a useful treatise; But still there's much of which he's ignorant, And all his rules are really good for nothing, So do not mind or yield to all the rules Which he has laid down most authoritatively, For a more empty lot of maxims you Will hardly find. For when you write a book On cookery, it will not do to say, “As I was just now saying;” for this art Has no fix'd guide but opportunity, And must itself its only mistress be. But if your skill be ne'er so great, and yet You let the opportunity escape, Your art is lost, and might as well be none. BO man, you're wise. But as for this man who You just now said was coming here to try His hand at delicate banquets, say, does he Forget to come? A. If I but make you now One forced meat ball, I can in that small thing Give you a specimen of all my skill. And I will serve you up a meal which shall Be redolent of the Athenian breezes. Dost fear that I shall fail to lull your soul With dishes of sufficient luxury?

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.