Deipnosophistae

Then, too, there are blackbirds.-Nicostratus or Philetærus says—

1. A. What then shall I buy? Tell me, I pray you.
2. B. Go not to more expense than a neat table;
3. Buy a rough-footed hare; some ducklings too,
4. As many as you like; thrushes, and blackbirds,
5. And other small birds; there are many wild sorts.
6. A. Yes, and they're very nice.

Antiphanes also reckons starlings among the eatable birds, numerating them in the following list—

Honey, partridges, pigeons, ducks, geese, starlings, jays, rooks, blackbirds, quails, and pullets.

You are asking of us for a history of everything, and you do not allow us to say a single thing without calling us to account for it. The word στρουθάριον (a little bird) is found in many other authors, and also in Eubulus. He says,

Take three or four partridges, and three hares, and as many small birds as you can eat, and goldfinches, and parrots, and finches, and nightjars, and whatever other birds of this kind you can come across.

Swine's brains, too, was a not uncommon dish. Philosophers used to forbid our eating these, saying that a person who partook of them might as well eat a bear, and would not stick at eating his father's head, or anything else imaginable. And they said, that at all events none of the ancients had ever eaten them, because they were the seat of nearly all sensation. But Apollodorus the Athenian says, that none of the ancients ever even named the brain. And at all events Sophocles, in his Trachiniæ, where he represents Hercules as throwing Lichas into the sea, does not use the word ἐγκέφαλον, brains, but says λευκὸν μυελὸς, white marrow; avoiding a word which it was thought ill-omened to use:—

1. And from his hair he forces the white marrow,
2. His head being burst asunder in the middle,
3. And the blood flows:

though he had named all the rest of his limbs plainly enough. And Euripides, introducing Hecuba lamenting for Astyanax, who had been thrown down by the Greeks, says—

1. Unhappy child, how miserably have
2. Your native city's walls produced your death,
3. And dash'd your head in pieces! Fatal towers,
4. Which Phæbus builded! How did your mother oft
5. Cherish those curly locks, and press upon them
6. With never-wearied kisses! now the blood
7. Wells from that wound, where the bones broken gape;
8. But some things are too horrid to be spoken.

The lines too which follow these are worth stopping to consider. But Philocles does employ the word ἐγκέφαλον—

1. He never ceased devouring even the brains (ἐγκέφαλον).

And Aristophanes says—

1. I would be content
2. To lose two membranes of the ἐγκέφαλον.

And others, too, use the word. So that it must have been for the sake of the poetical expression that Sophocles said

white marrow.

But Euripides not choosing openly to display to sight an unseemly and disgusting object, revealed as much as he chose. And they thought the head sacred, as is plain by their swearing by it; and by their even venerating sneezes, which proceed from the head, as holy. And we, to this day, confirm our arrangements and promises by nodding the head. As the Jupiter of Homer says—

1. Come now, and I will nod my head to you.

Now all these things were put into the dishes which were served up as propomata: pepper, green leaved myrrh, galingal, Egyptian ointment. Antiphanes says—

1. If any one buys pepper and brings it home,
2. They torture him by law like any spy.

And in a subsequent passage he says—

1. Now is the time for a man to go and find pepper,
2. And seed of orach, and fruit, and buy it, and bring it here.

And Eubulus says—

1. Just take some Cnidian grains, or else some pepper,
2. And pound them up with myrrh, and strew around.

And Ophelion says—

1. Pepper from Libya take, and frankincense,
2. And Plato's heaven-inspired book of wisdom.

And Nicander says, in his Theriaca—

1. Take the conyza's woolly leaves and stalks,
2. And often cut new pepper up, and add
3. Cardamums fresh from Media.

And Theophrastus, in his History of Plants, says—

Pepper indeed is a fruit: and there are two kinds of it; the one is round, like a vetch, having a husk, and is rather red in colour; but the other is oblong, black, and full of seeds like poppy-seeds. But this kind is much stronger than the other. Both kinds are heating, on which account they are used as remedies for, and antidotes against, hemlock.

And in his treatise on Suffocation, he writes—

And people who are suffocated are recovered by an infusion of vinegar and pepper, or else by the fruit of the nettle when crushed.

But we must recollect that, properly speaking, there is no noun of the neuter gender among the Greeks ending in ι, except μέλι alone; for the words πέπερι, and κόμμι, and κοῖφι are foreign.

Let us now speak of oil—Antiphanes or Alexis makes mention of the Samian Oil, saying—

1. This man you see will be a measurer
2. Of that most white of oils, the Samian oil.

Ophelion makes mention also of Carian oil, and says—

1. The man anointed was with Carian oil.

Amyntas, in his treatise on Persian Weights and Measures, Says—"The mountains there bear turpentine and mastic trees, and Persian nuts, from which they make a great deal of oil for the king. And Ctesias says, that in Carmania there is made an oil which is extracted from thorns, which the king uses. And he, in his third book of his treatise on the Revenues derived from Asia, making a list of all the things which are prepared for the king for his supper, makes no mention of pepper, or of vinegar, which of itself is the very best of all seasonings. Nor does Deinon, in his Persian History; though he does say that ammoniac salt is sent up to the king from Egypt, and water from the Nile. Theophrastus also mentions an oil which he calls ὠμοτριβὲς, that is to say, extracted raw, in his treatise on Scents, saying that it is produced from the large coarse olives called phaulian, and from almonds. Amphis also speaks of the oil which is produced amongst the Thurians, as exceedingly fine—

1. Oil from the Thurians comes; from Gela lentils.

Pickle is a thing often mentioned. Cratinus Says—

1. Your basket will be full of briny pickle.

And Pherecrates says—

1. His beard was all besmear'd with pickle juice.

And Sophocles, in his Triptolemus, says—

1. Eating this briny season'd pickle.

And Plato the comic writer says—

1. These men will choke me, steeping me in putrid pickle.

But the word γάρος, pickle, is a masculine noun. As Aeschylus proves, when he says καὶ τὸν ἰχθύων γάρον.

Vinegar too was much used by the ancients, and this is the only seasoning to which the Attics give the name of ἧδος, as if it were akin to ἡδὺς, sweet. And Chrysippus the philosopher says, that the best vinegar is the Egyptian and the Cnidian. But Aristophanes, in his Plutus, says—

1. Sprinkling it o'er with Sphettian vinegar.

Didymus explaining this verse says,

Perhaps he says Sphettian because the Sphettians are sour-tempered people.

And somewhere or other he mentions vinegar from Cleonæ, as being most excellent, saying,

And at Cleonæ there are manufactories of vinegar.

We find also in Diphilus—

1. A. He first takes off his coat, and then he sups,
2. After what fashion think you?
3. B. Why, like a Spartan.
4. A. A measure then of vinegar . . . .
5. B. Bah!
6. A. Why bah
7. B. A measure holds but such and such a quantity
8. Of the best Cleonæan vinegar.

And Philonides says—

1. Their seasonings have not vinegar sufficient.

But Heraclides the Tarentine, in his Symposium, says,

Vinegar has a tendency to make the exterior parts coagulate, and it affects the strings within the stomach in a very similar manner; but any parts which are tumid it dissolves, because forsooth different humours are mixed up in us.

And Alexis used to admire above all others the Decelean vinegar, and says—

1. You have compell'd me to bring forth from thence
2. Four half-pint measures full of vinegar
3. From Decelea, and now drag me through
4. The middle of the forum.

The word ὀξύγαρον must be spelt so, with a v, and the vessel which receives it is called ὀξύβαφον. And so Lysias, in the speech against Theopompus when on his trial for an assault, says,

But I myself drink ὀξύμελι.

And so too we must call oil of roses mixed with vinegar ὀξυρόδινον, spelling all the words thus compounded in this manner with a v.

Seasonings are mentioned even by Sophocles. In his Phæacians we find the expression,

1. And seasoning for food.

And in Aeschylus too we read—

1. You are steeping the seasonings.

And Theopompus says—

Many bushels of seasonings, and many sacks and bags of books, and of all other things which may be useful for life.

In Sophocles too the expression is found—

1. I like a cook will cleverly season . . . .

And Cratinus says in the Glaucus—

1. It is not every one who can season skilfully.

And Eupolis speaks of

1. Very bad vinegar seasoned in an expensive way.

And Antiphanes, in his Leucas, gives the following catalogue of seasonings:—

1. Dried grapes, and salt, and eke new wine
2. Newly boiled down, and assafætida,
3. And cheese, and thyme, and sesame,
4. And nitre too, and cummin seed,
5. And sumach, honey, and marjoram,
6. And herbs, and vinegar and oil
7. And sauce of onions, mustard and capers mix d,
8. And parsley, capers too, and eggs,
9. And lime, and cardamums, and th' acid juice
10. Which comes from the green fig-tree, besides lard
11. And eggs and honey and flour wrapp'd in fig-leaves,
12. And all compounded in one savoury forcemeat.

The ancients were well acquainted with the Ethiopian cardamum. We must take notice that they used the words θύμος and ὀρίγανος as masculine nouns. And so Anaxandrides says—

1. Cutting asparagus and squills and marjoram, (ὃς)
2. Which gives the pickle an aristocratic taste,
3. When duly mixed (μιχθεὶς) with coriander seed.

And Ion says—

1. But in a hurried manner in his hand
2. He hides the marjoram (τὸν ὀρίγανον).

Plato however, or Cantharus, used it as feminine, saying—

1. She from Arcadia brought
2. The harshly-tasted (τὴν δριμυτάτην) marjoram.

Epicharmus and Ameipsias both use it as a neuter noun; but Nicander, in his Melissurgica, uses θύμος as masculine.

Cratinus used the word πέπονες, which properly means merely full ripe, in speaking of the cucumbers which give seed, in his Ulysseses—

1. Tell me, O wisest son of old Laertes,
2. Have you e'er seen a friend of yours in Paros
3. Buy a large cucumber that's run to seed?

And Plato says in his Laius—

1. Do you not see
2. That Meleager, son of mighty Glaucon,
3. . . . . Goes about every where like a stupid cuckoo,
4. With legs like the seedless πέπων cucumber?

And Anaxilas says—

1. His ankles swell'd
2. Larger than e'en a πέπων cucumber.

And Theopompus says of a woman—

1. She was to me
2. More tender than a πέπων cucumber.

Phænias says, "Both the σίκυος and the πέπων are tender to eat, with the stem on which they grow; however the seed is not to be eaten, but the outside only, when they are fully ripe; but the gourd called κολοκύντη, when raw is not eatable, but is very good either boiled or roasted. And Diodes the Carystian, in the first book of his treatise on Wholesome Things, says that

of wild vegetables the following should be boiled before eating: the lettuce (the best kind of which is the black); the cardamum; mustard from the Adriatic; onions (the best kinds are the Asalonian, and that called getian); garlic, that other kind of garlic called physinga, the πέπων cucumber, and the poppy.

And a little afterwards he says, "The πέπων cucumber is better for the stomach and more digestible; though every cucumber when boiled is tender, never gives any pain, and is diuretic; but that kind called πέπων when boiled in mead has very aperient qualities. And Speusippus, in his treatise on Similarities, calls the πέπων by the name of σικύα. But Diocles having named the πέπων, does not any longer call it σικύα: and Speusippus after having named the σικύα never names the πέπων. Diphilus says, the πέπων is more full of wholesome juice, and moderates the humours of the body, but it is not very nutritious; it is easily digested, and promotes the secretions.

The lettuce was in great request as an article of food. Its name is θρῖδαξ, but the Attics call it θριδακίνη. Epicharmus says—

1. A lettuce (θρῖδαξ) with its stalk peel'd all the way up.

But Strattis calls lettuces θριδακινίδες, and says—

1. The leek-destroying grubs, which go
2. Throughout the leafy gardens
3. On fifty feet, and leave their trace,
4. Gnawing all herbs and vegetables;
5. Leading the dances of the long-tailed satyrs
6. Amid the petals of the verdant herbs,
7. And of the juicy lettuces (θριδακινίδες),
8. And of the fragrant parsley.

And Theophrastus says,

Of lettuce (θριδακίνη) the white is the sweeter and the more tender: there are three kinds; there is the lettuce with the broad stalk, and the lettuce with the round stalk, and in the third place there is the Lacedæmonian lettuce-its leaf is like that of a thistle, but it grows up straight and tall, and it never sends up any side shoots from the main stalk. But some plants of the broad kind are so very broad in the stalk that some people even use them for doors to their gardens. But when the stalks are cut, then those which shoot again are the sweetest of any.

But Nicander the Colophonian, in the second part of his Dictionary, says that the lettuce is called βρένθις by the Cyprians. And it was towards a plant of this kind that Adonis was flying when he was slain by the boar. Amphis in his Ialemus says—

1. Curse upon all these lettuces (θριδάκιναι)!
2. For if a man not threescore years should eat them,
3. And then betake himself to see his mistress,
4. He'll toss the whole night through, and won't be equal
5. To her expectations or his own.

And Callimachus says that Venus hid Adonis under a lettuce, which is an allegorical statement of the poet's, intended to show that those who are much addicted to the use of lettuces are very little adapted for pleasures of love. And Eubulus says in his Astuti—

1. Do not put lettuces before me, wife,
2. Upon the table; or the blame is yours.
3. For once upon a time, as goes the tale,
4. Venus conceal'd the sadly slain Adonis;
5. Beneath the shade of this same vegetable;
6. So that it is the food of dead men, or of those
7. Who scarcely are superior to the dead.

Cratinus also says that Venus when in love with Phaon hid him also in the leaves of the lettuce: but the younger Marsyas says that she hid him amid the grass of barley.

Pamphilus in his book on Languages says, that Hipponax called the lettuce τετρακίνη: but Clitarchus says that it is the Phrygians who give it this name. Ibycus the Pythagorean says that the lettuce is at its first beginning a plant with a broad leaf, smooth, without any stalk, and is called by the Pythagoreans the eunuch, and by the women ἄστυτις; for that it makes the men diuretic and powerless for the calls of love: but it is exceedingly pleasant to the taste.