Deipnosophistae
Athenaeus of Naucratis
Athenaeus. The Deipnosophists or Banquet Of The Learned Of Athenaeus. Yonge, Charles Duke, translator. London: Henry G. Bohn, 1854.
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—
- You may sow the Egyptian bean, in order in summer
- To make its flowers into garlands; and when the ciboria
- Have fallen, then give the ripe fruit to the youths
- Who are feasting with you, into their hands, as they have been a long time
- Wishing for them; but roots I boil, and then place on the table at feasts.
roots,he means the things which are called by the Alexandrians colocasia; as he says elsewhere—
Now there is at Sicyon a temple to the Colocasian Minerva. There is also a kind of cup called κιβώριον. [*](This was a Latin word for a cup. Horace says— Obliviosi levia MassiciCiboria exple. )
- 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—
And Matron says, in his Parodies—
- Eat the cucumber, O woman, and weave your cloak.
And Laches says—
- And I saw a cucumber, the son of the all-glorious Earth,
- 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. )
Now the Attic writers always use the word σίκυον as a word of three syllables. But Alcæus uses it as a dissyllble, σίκυς; for he says, δάκῃ τῶν σικύων from the nominative σίκυς, a word
- But, as when cucumber grows up in a dewy place,
- 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.)
And Phrynichus too used the word σικύδιον as a diminutive, in his Monotropus; where he says, κἀντραγεῖν σικύδιον.
- 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,says he,
contain a more agreeable and wholesome juice if the seed be steeped in milk or in mead before it is sown;and he asserts in his book on the Causes of Plants, that they come up quicker if they are steeped either in water or milk before they are put in the ground. And Euthydemus says, in his treatise on Vegetables, that there is one kind of cucumber which is called δρακοντίας. But Demetrius Ixios states, in the first book of his treatise on Etymologies, that the name σίκυον is derived ἀπὸ τοῦ σεύεσθαι καὶ κιεῖν, from bursting forth and proceeding; for that it is a thing which spreads fast and wide. But Heraclides of Tarentum calls the cucumber ἡδύγαιον, which means growing in sweet earth, or making the earth sweet, in his Symposium. And Diocles of Carystos says that cucumber, if it is eaten with the sium in the first course, makes the eater uncomfortable; for that it gets into the head as the radish does; but that if it is eaten at the end of supper it causes no
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.But cucumber grow in gardens at the time of full moon, and at that time they grow very visibly, as do the sea-urchins.
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,because that was the first to be discovered of all the fruits now in cultivation. Now there are many species of figs;—there is the Attic sort, which Antiphanes speaks of in his Synonymes; and when he is praising the land of Attica, he says—
And Isistrus, in his
- A. What fruits this land produces!
- Superior, O Hipponicus, to the world.
- What honey, what bread, what figs!
- Hipp. It does, by Jove!
- Bear wondrous figs.
Attics,says that it was forbidden to export out of Attica the figs which grew in that country, in order that the inhabitants might have the exclusive enjoyment of them. And as many people were detected in sending them away surreptitiously, those who laid informations against them before the judges were then first called sycophants. And Alexis says, in his
The Poet—
And Philomnestus, in his treatise on the Festival of Apollo at Rhodes, which is called the Sminthian festival, says—"Since the sycophant got his name from these circumstance, because
- The name of sycophant is one which does
- Of right apply to every wicked person;
- For figs when added to a name might show
- Whether the man was good and just and pleasant
- But now when a sweet name is given a rogue,
- It makes us doubt why this should be the case.
And Aristophanes mentions the fig, in his
Farmers;speaking as follows:—
But he called it small because it was not a large plant. But Alexis, in his
- I am planting figs of all sorts except the Lacedæmonian,
- For this kind is the fig of an enemy and a tyrant:
- And it would not have been so small a fruit if it had not been a great hater of the people.
Olynthian,mentioning the Phrygian figs, says—
And of those figs which are called φιβάλεοι, mention is made by many of the comic writers; and Pherecrates, in his
- And the beautiful fig,
- The wonderful invention of the Phrygian fig,
- The diine object of my mother's care.
Crapatalli,says—
And Teleclides, in his Amphictyons, says—
- O my good friend, make haste and catch a fever,
- And then alarm yourself with no anxiety,
- But eat Phibalean figs all the summer;
- And then, when you have eaten your fill, sleep the whole of the midday;
- And then feel violent pains, get in a fever, and holloa.
They also call myrtle-berries Phibalean. As Antiphanes does in his
- How beautiful those Phibalean figs are!
Cretans—
Epigenes too mentions Chelidonian figs, that is, figs fit for swallows, in his Bacchea—
- . . . . . But first of all
- I want some myrtle-berries on the table,
- Which I may eat when e'er I counsel take;
- And they must be Phibalean, very fine,
- Fit for a garland.
And Androtion, or Philippus, or Hegemon, in the Book of the Farm, gives a list of these kinds of figs, saying—"In the
- Then, in a little while, a well-fill'd basket
- 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.And if Lynceus had tasted the figs which in the beautiful Rome are called καλλιστρούθια, as I have, he would have been by far more long-sighted than ever his namesake was. So very far superior are those figs to all the other figs in the whole world.
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—
And that the figs from Caunus, a city of Caria, are much praised, is known to all the world. There is another sort of fig, called the Oxalian, which Heracleon the Ephesian makes mention of, and Nicander of Thyatira, quoting what is mentioned by Apollodorus of Carystus, in his play, called the Dress-seller with a Dowry;" where he says—
- I am arrived after a long voyage, not having brought
- A valuable freight of Canæan figs.
Figs also grow in the island of Paros, (for those which are
- Moreover, all the wine
- Was very sour and thin, so that I felt
- Ashamed to see it; for all other farms
- In the adjacent region bear the figs
- Ycleped Oxalian; and mine bears vines.
But these figs are as far superior to the ordinary run of figs which are grown in other places as the meat of the wild boar is superior to that of all other animals of the swine tribe which are not wild.
- Never mind Paros, and the figs which grow
- Within that marble island, and the life
- Of its seafaring islanders.