Deipnosophistae

Athenaeus of Naucratis

Athenaeus. The Deipnosophists or Banquet Of The Learned Of Athenaeus. Yonge, Charles Duke, translator. London: Henry G. Bohn, 1854.

Diphilus says that

the stalk of the lettuce is exceedingly nutritious, and more difficult of digestion than the leaves; but that the leaves are more apt to produce flatulence, and are still more nutritious, and have a greater tendency to promote the secretions. And as a general rule the lettuce is good for the stomach, cooling and wholesome for the bowels, soporific, full of pleasant and wholesome juice, and certainly has a great tendency to make men indifferent to love. But the softer lettuce is still better for the stomach, and still more soporific; while that which is harder and drier is both less good for the stomach and less wholesome for the bowels; that, however, is also soporific. But the black lettuce is more cooling, and is good for the bowels; and summer lettuce is full of wholesome juice, and more nutritious; but that which is in season at the end of autumn is not nutritious, and has no juice. And the stalk of the lettuce appears to be a remedy against thirst.
And the lettuce when boiled like asparagus in a dish, if we adopt the statement of Glaucias, is superior to all other boiled vegetables.

Among some of the other nations Theophrastus says that

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beetroot, and lettuce, and spinach, and mustard, and sorrel, and coriander, and anise, and cardamums, are all called ἐπίσπορα, things fit to be sown for the second crop. And Diphilus says that, as a general rule, all vegetables have but little nutriment in them, and have all of them a tendency to make people thin, and are devoid of wholesome juices, and moreover stay a long while in the stomach, and are not very digestible. But Epicharmus speaks of some as summer vegetables.

Artichokes were often eaten. And Sophocles, in his Colchian Women, calls an artichoke κινάρα, but in his Phœnix he writes the word κύναρος, saying—

  1. The artichoke fills every field with its thorn.
But Hecatæus the Milesian, in his Description of Asia, at least if the book under this title is a genuine work of that author, (for Callimachus attributes it to Nesiotas;) however, whoever it was who wrote the book speaks in these terms—
Around the sea which is called the Hyrcanian sea there are mountains lofty and rough with woods, and on the mountains there is the prickly artichoke.
And immediately afterwards he subjoins—
Of the Parthian tribes the Chorasmians dwell towards the rising sun, having a territory partly champaign and partly mountainous. And in the mountains there are wild trees; the prickly artichoke, the willow, the tamarisk.
He says moreover that the artichoke grows near the river Indus. And Scylax, or Polemo, writes,
that that land is well watered with fountains and with canals, and on the mountains there grow artichokes and many other plants.
And immediately afterwards he adds,
From that point a mountain stretches on both sides of the river Indus, very lofty, and very thickly overgrown with wild wood and the prickly artichoke.

But Didymus the grammarian, explaining what is meant by Sophocles when he speaks of the prickly artichoke (which he calls κύναρος), says, "Perhaps he means the dog-brier, because that plant is prickly and rough; for the Pythian priestess did call that plant a wooden bitch. And the Locrian, after he had been ordered by an oracle to build a city in that place in which he was bitten by a wooden bitch, having had his leg scratched by a dog-brier, built the city in the place

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where the brier had stood. And there is a plant called the dog-brier, something between a brier and a tree, according to the statement of Theophrastus, and it has a red fruit, like a pomegranate, and it has a leaf like that of the willow.

Phænias, in the fifth book of his treatise on Plants, speaks of one which he calls the Sicilian cactus a very prickly plant. As also does Theophrastus, in his sixth book about Plants, who says,

But the plant which is called the cactus exists only in Sicily, and is not found in Greece: and it sends forth stalks close to the ground, just above the root. And the stalks are the things which are called cacti: and they are eatable as soon as they are peeled, and rather bitter; and they preserve them in brine. But there is a second kind, which sends up a straight stalk, which they call πτέρνιξ; and that also is eatable. The shell of the fruit, as soon as the outer soft parts have been taken away, is like the inside of a date: that also is eatable; and the name of that is ἀσκάληρον.
But who is there who would not place such belief in these assertions as to say confidently that this cactus is the same as that plant which is called by the Romans carduus, or thistle; as the Romans are at no great distance from Sicily, and as it is evidently the same plant which the Greeks call κινάρα, or the artichoke? For if you merely change two letters, κάρδος and κάκτος will be the same word.

And Epicharmus also shows us plainly this, when he puts down the cactus in his catalogue of eatable vegetables; in this way—

The poppy, fennel, and the rough cactus; now one can eat of the other vegetables when dressed with milk, if he bruises them and serves them up with rich sauce, but by themselves they are not worth much.
And in a subsequent passage he says—
Lettuces, pines, squills, radishes, cacti.
And again he says—
A man came from the country, bringing fennel, and cacti, and lavender, and sorrel, and chicory, and thisles, and ferns, and the cactus, and dractylus, and otostyllus, and scolium, and seni, and onopordus.
And Philetas the Coan poet says—

  1. A fawn about to die would make a noise,
  2. Fearing the venom of the thorny cactus.

And, indeed, Sopater the Paphian, who was born in the time of Alexander the son of Philip, and who lied even till the time of the second Ptolemy king of Egypt, called the artichoke κίναρα just as we do, as he himself declares in one

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of the books of his history. But Ptolemy Euergetes the king of Egypt, being one of the pupils of Aristarchus the grammarian, in the second book of his Commentaries writes thus— "Near Berenice, in Libya, is the river Lethon, in which there; is the fish called the pike, and the chrysophrys, and a great multitude of eels, and also of lampreys which are half as big again as those which come from Macedonia and from the Copaic lake. And the whole stream is full of fishes of all sorts. And in that district there are a great quantity of anchovies, and the soldiers who composed our army picked them, and ate them, and brought them to us, the generals having stripped them of their thorns. I know, too, that there is an island called Cinarus, which is mentioned by Semus.

Now with respect to what is called the Brain of the Palm.—Theophrastus, speaking of the plant of the palm-tree, states,

The manner of cultivating it, and of its propagation from the fruit, is as follows: when one has taken off the upper rind, one comes to a portion in which is what is called the brain.
And Xenophon, in the second book of the Anabasis, writes as follows:
There, too, the soldiers first ate the brain of the palm or date-tree. And many of them marvelled at its appearance, and at the peculiarity of its delicious flavour. But it was found to have a great tendency to produce headache; but the date, when the brain was taken out of it, entirely dried up.
Nicander says in his Georgics—
  1. And at the same time cutting off the branches
  2. Loaded with dates they bring away the brain,
  3. A dainty greatly fancied by the young.
And Diphilus the Siphnian states—
The brains of the dates are filling and nutritious; still they are heavy and not very digestible: they cause thirst, too, and constipation of the stomach.

But we, says Athenæus, O my friend Timocrates, shall appear to keep our brains to the end, if we stop this conversation and the book at this point.

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Menander says—

  1. It is a troublesome thing to fall in with
  2. An entire party of none but relations;
  3. Where as soon as he has taken his cup in his hand
  4. The father first begins the discourse,
  5. And stammers out his recommendations:
  6. Then after him the mother, in the second place;
  7. And then some old aunt gossips and chatters;
  8. And then some harsh-voiced old man,
  9. The father of the aunt aforesaid; then too
  10. Another old woman calls him her darling:
  11. And he nods assent to all that is said.

And a little afterwards he says—

  1. Before the shade they wear a purple cloth,
  2. And then this comes after the purple;
  3. Being itself neither white nor purple,
  4. But a ray of the brilliancy of the woof as it were
  5. Of divers colours curiously blended.
Antiphanes says:
What do you say? Will you not bring something hither to the door which we may eat? and then I will sit on the ground and eat it as the beggars do: and any one may see me.

The same man says in another place—

  1. Prepare then
  2. A fanner to cool me, a dish, a tripod, a cup,
  3. An ewer, a mortar, a pot, and a spoon.

Thales the Milesian, one of the seven wise that the overflowing of the Nile arises from the Etestian for that they blow up the river, and that the mouths of the river lie exactly opposite to the point from which they blow; and accordingly that the wind blowing in the opposite direc- tion hinders the flow of the waters; and the waves of the sea, dashing against the mouth of the river, and coming on with a fair wind in the same direction, beat back the river, and in this manner the Nile becomes full to overflowing. But Anaxagoras the natural philosopher says that the fullness of the Nile arises from the snow melting; and so, too, says

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Euripides, and some others of the tragic poets. And Anaxagoras says that this is the sole origin of all that fulness; but Euripides goes further, and describes the exact place where this melting of the snow takes place; for in his play called
Archelaus
he speaks thus:—
  1. Danaus, the noble sire of fifty daughters,
  2. Leaving the Nile, the fairest stream on earth,
  3. Fill'd by the summer of the Aethiop land,
  4. The negro's home, when the deep snow does melt,
  5. And o'er the land the Sun his chariot drives.
And in the
Helen
he says something similar:—
  1. These are the beauticous virgin streams of Nile,
  2. Which in the place of rain bedew the plain
  3. Of Egypt when the white snow melts on th' hills.
And Aeschylus says—

  1. I know its history, and love to praise
  2. The race of the Aethiop land, where mighty Nile
  3. Rolls down his seven streams the country through,
  4. When the spring winds bring down the heavy waters;
  5. What time the sun shining along that land
  6. Dissolves the mountain snow; and the whole land
  7. Of flourishing Egypt, fill'd with th' holy stream,
  8. Sends forth the vital ears of corn of Ceres.

And Callisthenes the historian argues against what I quoted just now as stated by Anaxagoras and Euripides: and he, too, declares his own opinion,—that as there is much very heavy and continued rain in Aethiopia about the time of the rising of the Dogstar, and from that period till the rising of Arcturus, and as the Etesian winds blow at about the same time, (for these are the winds which he says have the greatest tendency to bring the clouds over Aethiopia,) when the clouds fall upon the mountains in that region, a vast quantity of water bursts forth, in consequence of which the Nile rises. But Democritus says that about the winter solstice there are heavy falls of snow in the countries around the north; but that when the sun changes its course, at the summer solstice, the snow being melted and evaporated by the warmth, clouds are formed, and then the Etesian gales catch hold of them, and drive them towards the south; and when these clouds are all driven together towards Aethiopia and Libya, a mighty rain ensues, and the water from that flows down the mountains and fills the Nile. This, then, is the cause which Democritus alleges for this fulness of the Nile.

But Euthymenes the Massiliote says, speaking of his

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own knowledge, acquired in a voyage which he had made, that the sea outside the Pillars of Hercules flows towards Libya and turns up and proceeds towards the north; and that then, being driven back by the Etesian gales, it is raised to a height by the winds, and flows high at that time; but, when the Etesian gales cease, it recedes. He says moreover, that that sea is sweet to the taste, and that it contains monsters like the crocodiles and the hippopotami in the Nile.

But Œnopides the Chian says, that in winter the sources of the river are dried up, but in the summer they are thawed and flow; and so that for the sake of filling up the previous dryness, the rains from heaven cooperate with * * * * * * * * And on this account the river is smaller in winter and is full in summer.

But Herodotus gives an explanation quite contrary to that of the rest of those who have discussed this subject, but agreeing with the explanation of Œnopides; for he says that the stream of the Nile is of such magnitude as always to fill the river; but that the sun, as it makes its journey through Libya in the winter, dries up the river at that time; but that as it has gone off towards the north at the time of the sum- mer solstice, then the river becomes full again, and overflows the plains.

Now these are the mouths of the Nile:—towards Arabia, the Pelusiac mouth; towards Libya, the Canopic: and the rest are,—the Bolbitic, the Sebennytic, the Mendesian, the Saitic, and the Opuntic.