Deipnosophistae

CALLIMACHUS the grammarian said that a great book was equivalent to a great evil.

With respect to Ciboria, or Egyptian beans, Nicander says in his Georgics—

1. You may sow the Egyptian bean, in order in summer
2. To make its flowers into garlands; and when the ciboria
3. Have fallen, then give the ripe fruit to the youths
4. Who are feasting with you, into their hands, as they have been a long time
5. Wishing for them; but roots I boil, and then place on the table at feasts.

roots,

1. Have peel'd the beans, and cut up the colocasia.

Theophrastus, in his book on Plants, writes thus: "The bean in Egypt grows in marshes and swamps; and its stalk is in length, when it is at the largest, about four cubits; but in thickness, it is as thick as one's finger: and it is like a long reed, only without joints. But it has divisions within, running through the whole of it, like honeycombs. And on this stalk is the head and the flower, being about twice the size of a poppy; and its colour is like that of a rose, very full coloured; and it puts forth large leaves. But the root is thicker than the thickest reed, and it has divisions like the stalk. And people eat it boiled, and roasted, and raw. And the men who live near the marshes eat it very much. It grows, too, in Syria and in Cilicia, but those countries do not ripen it thoroughly. It grows, too, around Torone in Chalcidice, in a marsh of moderate size, and that place ripens it, and it brings its fruit to perfection there. But Diphilus the Siphnian says, "The root of the Egyptian bean, which is called colocasium, is very good for the stomach, and very nutritious, but it is not very digestible, being very astringent; and that is the best which is the least woolly. But the beans which are produced by the plant called ciborium, when they are green are indigestible, not very nutritious, easily pass through one, and are apt to cause flatulence; but when they are dry they are, not so flatulent. And from the genuine ciborium there is a flower which grows which is made into garlands. And the Egyptians call the flower the lotus; but the Naucratitans tell me, says Athenæus, that its name is the melilotus: and it is of that flower that the melilotus garlands are made, which are very fragrant, and which have a cooling effect in the summer season.

But Phylarchus says, "that though Egyptian beans had never been sown before in any place, and had never produced

With respect to Cucumbers.—There is a proverb—

1. Eat the cucumber, O woman, and weave your cloak.

1. And I saw a cucumber, the son of the all-glorious Earth,
2. Lying among the herbs; and it was served up on nine tables.[*](This is parodied from— καὶ τίτυον εἶδον γαίης ἐρικυδέος υἷονκειμένον ἐν δαπέδῳ ὁδʼ ἔπʼ ἐννεὰ κεῖτο πέλεθρα: translated by Pope: There Tityus large, and long in fetters bound,O'erspreads nine acres of infernal ground. )

1. But, as when cucumber grows up in a dewy place,

1. εντραγεῖν σικύδιον, to eat a little cucumber.

[From this point are the genuine words of Athenœus.][*](The whole of the first two books of the genuine work of Athenæus are lost; as also is the beginning of the third book; and a good deal of the last. What has been translated up to this point is an epitome or abridgement made by some compiler whose name is unknown. Casaubon states that he is ignorant of the name of this compiler; but is sure that he lived five hundred years before his own time, and before Eustathius; because Eustathius sometimes uses his epitome in preference to the original work. But even before this abridgement was made the text had become exceedingly corrupt, according to the statement of the compiler himself.—See Bayle, Diet. voc. Athenœus.)

1. I will send radishes and four cucumbers.

But Theophrastus says that there are three kinds of cucumbers, the Lacedæmonian, the Scytalian, and the Bœotian; and that of these the Lacedæmonian, which is a watery one, is the best; and that the others do not contain water.

Cucumbers too,

contain a more agreeable and wholesome juice if the seed be steeped in milk or in mead before it is sown;

The cucumber being a cooling food is not very manageable, and is not easily digested or evacuated; besides that, it creates shuddering feelings and engenders bile, and is a great preventive against amatory feelings.

With respect to Figs.-The fig-tree, says Magnus, (for I will not allow any one to take what I have to say about figs out of my mouth, not if I were to be hanged for it, for I am most devilishly fond of figs, and I will say what occurs to me;) "the fig-tree, my friends, was the guide to men to lead them to a more civilized life. And this is plain from the fact that the Athenians call the place where it was first discovered The Sacred Fig; and the fruit from it they call hegeteria, that is to say,

the guide,

1. A. What fruits this land produces!
2. Superior, O Hipponicus, to the world.
3. What honey, what bread, what figs!
4. Hipp. It does, by Jove!
5. Bear wondrous figs.

Attics,

The Poet

1. The name of sycophant is one which does
2. Of right apply to every wicked person;
3. For figs when added to a name might show
4. Whether the man was good and just and pleasant
5. But now when a sweet name is given a rogue,
6. It makes us doubt why this should be the case.

And Aristophanes mentions the fig, in his

Farmers;

1. I am planting figs of all sorts except the Lacedæmonian,
2. For this kind is the fig of an enemy and a tyrant:
3. And it would not have been so small a fruit if it had not been a great hater of the people.

Olynthian,

1. And the beautiful fig,
2. The wonderful invention of the Phrygian fig,
3. The diine object of my mother's care.

Crapatalli,

1. O my good friend, make haste and catch a fever,
2. And then alarm yourself with no anxiety,
3. But eat Phibalean figs all the summer;
4. And then, when you have eaten your fill, sleep the whole of the midday;
5. And then feel violent pains, get in a fever, and holloa.

1. How beautiful those Phibalean figs are!

Cretans

1. . . . . . But first of all
2. I want some myrtle-berries on the table,
3. Which I may eat when e'er I counsel take;
4. And they must be Phibalean, very fine,
5. Fit for a garland.

1. Then, in a little while, a well-fill'd basket
2. Of dry Chelidonian figs is brought in.

Lynceus, too, mentions the fig-trees which grow in Rhodes, in his Epistles; instituting a comparison between the best of the Athenian kinds and the Rhodian species. And he writes in these terms:—

But these fig-trees appear to vie with Lacedæmonian trees of the same kind, as mulberries do with figs; and they are put on the table before supper, not after supper as they are here, when the taste is already vitiated by satiety, but while the appetite is still uninfluenced and unappeased.

Other kinds of figs grown near Rome are held in high esteem; and those called the Chian figs, and the Libianian; those two named the Chalcidic, and the African figs; as Herodotus the Lycian bears witness, in his treatise on Figs.

But Parmeno the Byzantine, in his Iambics, speaks of the figs which come from Canæ, an Aeolian city, as the best of all: saying—

1. I am arrived after a long voyage, not having brought
2. A valuable freight of Canæan figs.

1. Moreover, all the wine
2. Was very sour and thin, so that I felt
3. Ashamed to see it; for all other farms
4. In the adjacent region bear the figs
5. Ycleped Oxalian; and mine bears vines.

1. Never mind Paros, and the figs which grow
2. Within that marble island, and the life
3. Of its seafaring islanders.

The λευκερινεὸς is a kind of fig-tree; and perhaps it is that kind which produces the white figs; Hermippus mentions it in his Iambics, in these terms—

1. There are besides the Leucerinean figs.

Sciron

1. Or else to fasten him on the erinean boughs.

1. But these are not like the erinean figs.

The Wedding of Helen,

1. A ripe ἐρινὸς is a useless thing
2. For food, and yet you ripen others by
3. Your conversation.

Caldron

1. And why now need we speak of people who
2. Sell every day their figs in close pack'd baskets,
3. And constantly do place those figs below
4. Which are hard and bad; but on top they range
5. The ripe and beautiful fruit. And then a comrade,
6. As if he'd bought the basket, gives the price;
7. The seller, putting in his mouth the coin,
8. Sells wild figs (ἔρινα) while he swears he's selling good ones.

1. Have you not perceived a wild fig-tree near her?

1. There stands a large wild fig-tree flourishing with leaves.

Hermonax, in his book on the Cretan Languages, gives a catalogue of the different kinds of figs, and speaks of some as ἁμάδεα and as νικύλεα; and Philemon, in his book on Attic Dialects, says, that some figs are called royals, from which also the dried figs are called βασιλίδες, or royal; stating besides, that the ripe figs are called κόλυτρα. Seleucus, too, in his Book on Dialects, says that there is a fruit called γλυκυσίδη, being exceedingly like a fig in shape: and that women guard against eating them, because of their evil effects; as also Plato the comic writer says, in his Cleophon. And Pamphilus says, that the winter figs are called Cydonæa by the Achæans, saying, that Aristophanes said the very same thing in his Lacedæmonian Dialects. Hermippus, in his Soldiers, says that there is a kind of fig called Coracean, using these words—

1. Either Phibalean figs, or Coracean.

Again, of the figs called prodromi, or precocious the same Theophrastus makes mention in the third book of his Causes of Plants, in this way—

When a warm and damp and soft

v.1.p.130

air comes to the fig-tree, then it excites the germination, from which the figs are called prodromi.

And again, some trees bear the prodromi, namely, the Lacedæmonian fig-tree, and the leucomphaliac, and several others; but some do not bear them.

1. Take for a while the fig-tree's leaves
2. Which bears its crop twice in the year.

1. 'Tis by the double-bearing fig-tree there below.

At the time when Philip reigned about the territory of the Bisaltæ, and Amphipolis and Græstonia of Macedon, when it was the middle of spring, the fig-trees were loaded with figs, and the vines with bunches of grapes, and the olive-trees, though it was only the season for them to be just pushing, were full of olives. And Philip was successful in all his undertakings.

Theophrastus also says, that the fig-tree if planted among squills grows up faster, and is not so liable to be destroyed by worms: and, in fact, that everything which is planted among squills both grows faster and is more sure to be vigorous. And in a subsequent passage Theophrastus says, in the second book of his Causes—

The fig called the Indian fig, though it is a tree of a wonderful size, bears a very small fruit; and not much of it; as if it had expended all its strength in making wood.

There is also another kind of fig in Greece, and in Cilicia and Cyprus, which bears green figs; and that tree bears a real fig, σῦκον, in front of the leaf, and a green fig, ὄλυνθος, behind the leaf. And these green figs grow wholly on the wood which is a year old, and not on the new wood.

Tryphon also speaks of the names of figs in the second book of his History of Plants, and says that Dorion states, in his book of the Farm, that Sukeas, one of the Titans, being pursued by Jupiter, was received in her bosom as in an asylum by his mother Earth; and that the earth sent forth that plant as a place of refuge for her son; from whom also the city Sukea in Cilicia has its name. But Pherenicus the epic poet, a Heraclean by birth, says that the fig-tree (συκῆ) is so called from Suke the daughter of Oxylus: for that Oxylus the son of Orius, having intrigued with his sister Hamadryas, had several children, and among them Carya (the nut-tree), Balanus (the acorn-bearing oak), Craneus (the cornel-tree), Orea (the ash), Aegeirus (the poplar), Ptelea (the elm), Am- pelus (the vine), Suke (the fig-tree): and that these daughters were all called the Hamadryad Nymphs; and that from them many of the trees were named. On which account Hipponax says—

1. The fig-tree black, the sister of the vine.

Now that the fig is the most useful to man of all the fruits which grow upon trees is sufficiently shown by Herodotus the Lycian, who urges this point at great length, in his treatise on Figs. For he says that young children grow to a great size if they are fed on the juice of figs. And Pherecrates, who wrote the Persæ, says—

1. If any one of us, after absence, sees a fig,
2. He will apply it like a plaster to his children's eyes:

O king, you are preparing to make war upon men of this character, who wear breeches of leather, and all the rest of their garments are made of leather; and they eat not whatever they fancy, but what they have, since they have but a rough country; moreover they do not, by Jove, use wine, but they drink water; they have no figs to eat, nor any other good thing.

And Polybius of Megalopolis, in the twelfth book of his Histories, says—

Philip, the father of Perseus, when he overran Asia, being in want of provisions, took figs for his soldiers from the Magnesians, as they had no corn. On which account, too, when he became master of Myus, he gave that place to the Magnesians in return for their figs.

1. He who should shut up gold within his house,
2. And a few figs, and two or three men,
3. Would see how far the figs surpass the gold.

And when Magnus had said all this about figs, Daphnus the physician said: Philotimus, in the third book of his treatise on Figs, says, "There is a great deal of difference between the various kinds of figs when fresh; both in their sorts, and in the times when each is in season, and in their effects; not but what one may lay down some general rules, and say that the juicy ones and those which are full ripe are quickly dissolved and are digested more easily than any other fruit whatever, nor do they interfere with the digestion of other sorts of food; and they have the ordinary properties of all juicy food, being glutinous and sweet, and slightly nitrous in taste. And they make the evacuations more copious and fluid, and rapid and wholly free from discomfort; and they also diffuse a saltish juice, having a good deal of harshness, when they are combined with anything at all salt. They are very quickly dissolved by the digestion, because, though many heavy things may be taken into the stomach, we still after a short time feel as if we had become excessively empty: but this could not have happened if the figs had remained in the stomach, and were not immediately dissolved. And figs are dissolved more easily than any other

Figs, then, have the qualities which I have mentioned. That they are glutinous and rather salt is proved by their being sticky and cleansing the hands; and we see ourselves that they are sweet in the mouth. And it certainly needs no arguments to prove that our evacuations after eating them take place without any convulsions or trouble, and that they are more numerous and more rapid and more easy in consequence. And they do not go through any great decomposition in the stomach, which arises not from their being indigestible, but because we drink while eating them, without waiting for the action of the stomach to soften them, and also because they pass through the stomach so quickly. And they generate a salt juice in the stomach, because it has been already shown that they contain something of nitre in them: and they will make that food taste rather salt and harsh which is combined with them. For salt increases the briny taste of anything, but vinegar and thyme increase the harsh qualities of food.

Now Heraclides the Tarentine asks this question;

Whether it is best to drink warm water or cold after the eating of figs?

Others however say, that it is not a good thing to eat figs at midday; for that at that time they are apt to engender diseases, as Pherecrates has said in his Crapatalli. And Aristophanes, in his Proagon, says—

1. But once seeing him when he was sick in the summer,
2. In order to be sick too himself, eat figs at midday.

1. No doubt it was; for I was sick, my friend,
2. From eating lately figs one day at noon.

1. But if a man should eat green figs at noon,
2. And then go off to sleep; immediately
3. A galloping fever comes on him, accursed,
4. And falling on him brings up much black bile.

Diphilus of Siphnos says, that of figs some are tender, and not very nutritious, but full of bad juice, nevertheless easily secreted, and rising easily to the surface; and that these are more easily managed than the dry figs; but that those which are in season in the winter, being ripened by artificial means, are very inferior: but that the best are those which are ripe at the height of the summer, as being ripened naturally; and these have a great deal of juice; and those which are not so juicy are still good for the stomach, though somewhat heavy. And the figs of Tralles are like the Rhodian: and the Chian, and all the rest, appear to be inferior to these, both in the quality and quantity of their juice. But Mnesitheus the Athenian, in his treatise on Eatables, says—

But with respect to whatever of these fruits are eaten raw, such as pears, and figs, and Delphic apples, and such fruits, one ought to watch the opportunity when they will have the juice which they contain, neither unripe on the one hand, nor tainted on the other; nor too much dried up by the season.

1. Figs after fish, vegetables after meat.
2. Figs are agreeable to birds, but they do not choose to plant them.