Deipnosophistae

Athenaeus of Naucratis

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

And at Athens the cabbage used to be given to women who had just been delivered, as a sort of medicine, having a tendency to add to their nourishment. Accordingly, Ephippus, in his Geryones, says—

What shall next be done?
There is no garland now before the doors,
No savoury smell strikes on my nostril's edge
From Amphidromian festival, in which
The custom is to roast large bits of cheese,
Such as the Chersonesus furnishes,
And then to boil a radish bright with oil,
And fry the breasts of well-fed household Iamb,
And to pluck pigeons, thrushes too, and finches,
And to eat squids and cuttle-fish together,
And many polypi with wondrous curls,
And to quaff many goblets of pure wine.

And Antiphanes, in his Parasite, speaks of the cabbage as an economical food, in the following lines, where he says—

And what these things are, you, my wife, know well;
Garlic, and cheese, and cheese-cakes, dainty dishes
Fit for a gentleman; no fish cured and salted,
No joints of lamb well stuff'd with seasoning,
No forced meat of all kinds of ingredients;
No high made dishes, fit to kill a man;
But they will boil some cabbage sweet, ye gods!
And in the dish with it some pulse of pease.

And Diphilus says, in his Insatiable Man,—

All sorts of dainties now come round us here,
All of their own accord. There's cabbage fresh,
Well boil'd in oil; and many paunches, and
Dishes of tender meat. No . . . . by Jove,
Nor are they like my platters of bruised olives

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And Alcæus, in his Palæstra, says—

And now she's roasted a large dish of cabbage.

And Polyzelus, in his Birth of the Muses, names cabbages; and says—

The close-grown cabbage with its lofty leaves.

The next thing to be mentioned is beet-root. Of beetroot (according to the opinion of Theophrastus), the white is more juicy than the black, and it contains less seed, and it is the kind which is called the Sicilian beet. But, says he, the beet called σευτλὶς is a different kind from the τεῦτλον. On which account, Diphilus the comic poet, in his drama called the Hero, reproaches some one for speaking incorrectly, and for calling τεῦτλα, τευτλίδας. And Eudemus, in his treatise on Vegetables, says that there are four kinds of τεὖτλα: there is the kind which may be pulled, the kind with a stalk, the white kind, and the common kind; and this last is of a brown colour. But Diphilus the Siphnian says that the beet which he calls σεύτλιον is more juicy than the cabbage, and is also, in a moderate degree, more nutritious; and it ought to be boiled and eaten with mustard, and that then it has a tendency to attenuate the blood, and to destroy worms; but the white kind is better for the stomach, while the black is more diuretic. He says, also, that their roots are more pleasing to the palate, and more nutritious.

Then there is the carrot.

This vegetable,

says Diphilus,

is harsh, but tolerably nutritious, and moderately good for the stomach; but it passes quickly through the bowels, and causes flatulence: it is indigestible, diuretic, and not without some influence in prompting men to amatory feelings; on which account it is called a philtre by some people.

And Numenius, in his Man fond of Fishing, says—

Of all the plants which grow in fields unsown,
Or which take root in fertile plough'd-up lands
In winter, or when flowering spring arrives,
Such as the thistle dry, or the wild carrot,
Or the firm rape, or lastly, the wild cabbage.

And Nicander, in the second book of his Georgics, says—

Then there is also the deep root of fennel,
And of rock-parsley, and the carrot too,
Which loves dry soils, the sow-thistle, the myrrh plant,
The dog-tongue and the chicory. And with them bruise
The tough hard-tasted leaves of arum, and
The plant which farmers do entitle bird's-milk.

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Theophrastus also mentions the carrot; and Phænias, in the fifth book of his treatise on Plants, speaks as follows:—

But as to the nature of the seed, the plant which is called σὴψ and the seed of the carrot are much alike.

And in his first book he says—

The following plants have seed in pods of umbellated form: the anise, fennel, the carrot, the bur-parsley, hemlock, coriander, and aconite (which some call mousekiller).

But, since Nicander has mentioned the arum, I must also add that Phænias, in the book which I have just mentioned, writes thus:—

The dracontium, which some call arum or aronia.

But Diocles, in the first book of his treatise on the Wholesomes, calls the carrot, not σταφυλῖνος, but ἀσταφύλινος. There is also another kind which is called καρωτὸν, which is a large and well-grown carrot, more juicy than the σταφυλῖνος, and more heating,—more diuretic, very good for the stomach, and very easily digested, as Diphilus assures us.

Then there is the κεφαλωτὸν, or leek, which the same Diphilus says is also called πράσιον; and he says that it is superior to the kind called the sliced-leek, and that it has some effect in attenuating the blood, and is nutritious, and apt to cause flatulence. But Epænetus, in his Cookery Book, says that the leeks are also called γηθυλλίδες; and I find this name occurring in Eubulus, in his Pornoboscus, where he says—

I cannot now eat any other loaf,
For I've just had one at Gnathænius',
Whom I found boiling up γηθυλλίδες.

But some say that the γηθυλλὶς is the same as the peculiar kind of leek called γήθυον, which Phrynichus mentions in his Saturn. And Didymus, interpreting that play, says that the γήθυον resembles the leek called the vine-leek, or ἀμπελόπρασον; and he says that they are also called ἐπιθυλλίδες. And Epicharmus also mentions the gethyllides in his Philoctetes, where he says—

Two heads of garlic, two gethyllides.

And Aristophanes, in his second Aeolosicon, says—

Some roots of leeks (γηθύων), which taste almost like gallic.

And Polemo the geographer, in his book on Samothrace, says that Latona had a longing for the gethyllis, writing as follows:—"Among the Delphians, at the festival which

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they call the Theoxenia, there is a rule that whoever brings the largest gethyllis to Latona shall receive a portion of food from off her table; and I myself have seen a gethyllis as big as a turnip or as the round rape. And men say that Latona, when she was pregnant with Apollo, longed for the gethyllis; on which account it is treated with this respect."

Next comes the gourd. But as gourds were served round to us in the winter season, every one marvelled, thinking that they were fresh gourds; and we recollected what the beautiful Aristophanes said in his Seasons, praising the glorious Athens in these lines:—

A. There you shall at mid-winter see
Cucumbers, gourds, and grapes, and apples,
And wreaths of fragrant violets
Cover'd with dust, as if in summer.
And the same man will sell you thrushes,
And pears, and honey-comb, and olives,
Beestings, and tripe, and summer swallows,
And grasshoppers, and bullock's paunches.
There you may see full baskets packed
With figs and myrtle, crown'd with snow;
There you may see fine pumpkins join'd
To the round rape and mighty turnip;
So that a stranger well may fear
To name the season of the year.
B. That's a fine thing if all the year
A man can have whate'er he pleases.
A. Say rather, it's the worst of evils;
For if the case were different,
Men would not cherish foolish fancies
Nor rush into insane expenses.
But after some short breathing time
I might myself bear off these things;
As indeed in other cities,
Athens excepted, oft I do:
However, as I tell you now,
The Athenians have all these things.
Because, as we may well believe,
They pay due honour to the gods.
B. 'Tis well for them they honour you,
Which brings them this enjoyment, since
You seek to make their city Egypt,
Instead of the immortal Athens.

At all events, we were astonished eating cucumbers in the month of January; for they were green, and full of their own Peculiar flavour, and they happened to have been dressed by

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cooks who above all men knew how to dress and season such things. Laurentius, therefore, asked whether the ancients were acquainted with this vegetable, or with this way of dressing it. And Ulpian said—Nicander the Colophonian, in the second book of his Georgics, mentions this way of dressing the vegetable, calling the gourds not κολόκυνται, but σίκυαι; for, indeed, that was one of their names, as we have said before. And his words are:—

First cut the gourds in slices, and then run
Threads through their breadth, and dry them in the air;
Then smoke them hanging them above the fire;
So that the slaves may in the winter season
Take a large dish and fill it with the slices,
And feast on them on holidays: meanwhile
Let the cook add all sorts of vegetables,
And throw them seed and all into the dish;
Let them take strings of gherkins fairly wash'd,
And mushrooms, and all sorts of herbs in bunches,
And curly cabbages, and add them too.

The next thing to be mentioned is poultry. And since poultry was placed on the gourds and on other scraped (κνιστὰ) vegetables, (and this is what Aristophanes in his Delian Woman says of chopped up vegetables,

κνιστὰ, or pressed grapes,

) Myrtilus said,—But now, in our time, we have got into a habit of calling nothing ὄρνιθας or ὀρνίθια but pullets, of which I see a quantity now being brought round. (And Chrysippus the philosopher, in the fifth book of his Treatise on what is Honourable and Pleasant, writes thus—

As some people insist upon it that white pullets are nicer than black ones.

) And the names given to the male fowl are ἀλεκτρυόνες and ἀλεκτορίδες. But anciently, men were accustomed to use the word ὄρνις, both in the masculine and feminine gender, and to apply it to other birds, and not to this species in particular to the exclusion of others, as is now done when we speak of buying birds, and mean only poultry. Accordingly, Homer says,

And many birds (ὄρνιθες πολλοὶ) beneath the sun's bright rays.

And in another place he uses the word in the feminine gender, and says—

A tuneful bird (ὄρνιθι λιγυρῇ).

And in another place he says—

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As the bold bird her helpless young attends,
From danger guards them, and from want defends;
In search of prey she wings the spacious air,
And with untasted food supplies her care,
[*](Hom. Iliad. ix. 323, Pope's translation.)—

again using ὄρνις in the feminine gender. But Menander in his first edition of the Heiress, uses the word plainly in the sense in which it is used at the present day; saying—

A cock had loudly crow'd—
Will no one now,

He cried out,
drive this poultry (τὰς ὄρνιθας) from our doors

And again, he writes—

She scarcely could the poultry (τὰς ὄρνεις) drive away.

But Cratinus, in his Nemesis, has used the form ὀρνίθιον, saying—

And all the other birds (ὀρνίθια).

And they use not only the form ὄρνιν, but also that of ὄρνιθα, in the masculine gender. The same Cratinus says in the same play—

A scarlet winged bird (ὄρνιθα φοινικόπτερον).

And again, he says—

You, then, must now become a large bird (ὄρνιθα μέγαν).

And Sophocles, in his Antenoridæ, says—

A bird (ὄρνιθα), and a crier, and a servant.

And Aeschylus, in his Cabiri, says—

I make you not a bird (ὄρνιθα) of this my journey.

And Xenophon, in the second book of his Cyropædia, says—

Going in pursuit of birds (τοὺς ὄρνιθας) in the severest winter.

And Menander, in his Twin Sisters, says—

I came laden with birds (ὄρνεις).

And immediately afterwards he has

He sends off birds (ὄρνιθας ἀποστέλλει).

And that they often used ὄρνεις as the plural form we have the evidence of Menander to prove to us: and also Alcman says somewhere or other—

The damsels all with unaccomplish'd ends
Departed; just as frighten'd birds (ὄρνεις) who see
A hostile kite which hovers o'er their heads.

And Eupolis, in his Peoples, says—

Is it not hard that I should have such sons,
When every bird (ὄρνεις) has offspring like its sire?

But, on the other hand, the ancients sometimes also

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used the word ἀλεκτρυὼν in the feminine gender for a hen. Cratinus, in his Nemesis, says—

This is your work, O Leda. Take you care
To imitate the manners of a hen (ἀλεκτρυόνος)
And sit upon this egg, that so you may
Show us from out this shell a noble bird.

And Strattis, in his Men Fond of Cold, says—

And all the hens (αἱ δʼ ἀλεκτρυόνες ἅπασαι),
And all the pigs are also dead,
And all the little birds around.

And Anaxandrides says, in his Tereus—

They saw the boars their species propagate
With joy, and likewise all the hens (τὰς ἀλεμτρυόνας).

And since I have mentioned this comic poet, and as I know, too, that this play of his, namely Tereus, is not reckoned one of his best, I will also bring forward, my friends, for you judgment, what Chamæleon of Heraclea has said about him in the sixth book of his treatise on Comedy; where he uses the following language:—"Anaxandrides once, publishing a dithyrambic poem at Athens, entered the city on a horse, and recited some lines of his Ode. And he was a very fine, handsome man to look at; and he let his hair grow, and wore a purple robe with golden fringes, but being a man of a bitter disposition he was in the habit of behaving in some such manner as this with respect to his comedies. Whenever he did not get the victory he took his play and sent it to the frankincense market to be torn up to pack bunches of frankincense in, and did not revise it as most people did. And in this way he destroyed many clever and elegant plays; being, by reason of his old age, very sulky with the spectators. And he is said to have been a Rhodian by birth, of the city of Camirus: and I wonder therefore how it was that his Tereus got preserved, since it did not obtain the victory; and I feel the same wonder in the case of others by the same author. And Theopompus, in his Peace, also uses the word ἀλεκτρύων for hens, speaking thus—

I am so vex'd at having lost the hen (ἀλεκτρυόνα)
Which laid the finest eggs in all the yard.

And Aristophanes, in his Dædalus, says—

She laid a noble egg, like any hen (α·λεκτρυών).

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And in another place he says—

Sometimes we find that hens (ἀλεκτρυόνες) when driven about,
And frighten'd, lay wind eggs.

And in the Clouds, where he is explaining to the old man the difference between the names, he says—

A. Tell me then, now, what name I ought to give them.
B. Call this, the hen, ἀλεκτρύαιναν, thus,
And call her mate, the cock, ἀλέκτορα.

And we find the cock called ἀλεκτορὶς and ἀλέκτωρ. And Simonides writes—

O tuneful voiced ἀλέκτωπ.

And Cratinus, in his Seasons, says—

Like the Persian loud-voiced cock (ἀλέκτωρ),
Who every hour sings his song.

And he has this name from rousing us from our beds (λέκτρον). But the Dorians, who write ὄρνις with a ξ, ὄρνιξ, make the genitive with a χ, ὄρνιχος. But Aleman writes the nominative with a ς, saying—

The purple bird (ὄρνις) of spring.

Though I am aware that he too makes the genitive with a X, saying—

But yet by all the birds (ὀρνίχων).

The next thing to be mentioned is the pig, under the name of δέλφαξ. Epicharmus calls the male pig δέλφαξ in his Ulysses the Deserter, saying—

I lost by an unhappy chance
A pig (δέλφακα) belonging to the neighbours,
Which I was keeping for Eleusis
And Ceres's mysterious feast.
Much was I grieved; and now he says
That I did give it to th' Achæans,
Some kind of pledge; and swears that I
'Betray'd the pig (τὸν δέλφακα) designedly.

And Anaxilus also, in his Circe, has used the word δέλφαξ in the masculine gender; and moreover has used it of a full-grown pig, saying—

Some of you that dread goddess will transform
To pigs (δέλφακας), who range the mountains and the woods.
Some she will panthers make; some savage wolves,
And terrible lions.

But Aristophanes, in his Fryers, applies the word to female pigs; and says—

The paunch, too, of a sow in autumn born (δέλφακος ὀπωρίνης).

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And in his Acharnians he says—

For she is young (νέα), but when she is a sow (δελφακουμένα),
You'll see she'll have a large, fat, ruddy tail;
And if you keep her she'll be a noble pig (χοῖρος καλά).

And Eupolis, in his Golden Age, uses it as feminine; and Hipponax wrote—

ʽὡς ʽεφεσίη δέλφαξ.

And, indeed, it is the female pig which is more correctly called by this name, as having δελφύας, for that world δελφὺς means a womb. And it is the word from which ἀδελφὸς is derived. But respecting the age of these animals, Cratinus speaks in his Archilochi, saying—

These men have δέλφακες, the others χοῖροι.

And Aristophanes the grammarian, in his treatise on Ages, says—

Those pigs which are now come to a compact form, are called δέλφακες;; but those which are tender, and are full of juice, are called χοῖροι;

and this makes that line of Homer intelligible—

The servants all have little pigs (χοίρεα) to eat,
But on fat hogs (σύες) the dainty suitors feast.[*](Hom. Odyss. xiv. 80.)

And Plato the comic poet, in his Poet, uses the word in the masculine gender, and says—

He led away the pig (τόν δέλφακα) in silence.

But there was ancient custom, as Androtion tells us, for the sake of the produce of the herds, never to slay a sheep which had not been shorn, or which had never had young, oh which account they always ate full-grown animals:

But on fat hogs the dainty suitors feast.

And even to this day the priest of Minerva never sacrifices a lamb, and never tastes cheese. And when, on one occasion, there was a want of oxen, Philochorus says, that a law was passed that they should abstain from slaying them on account of their scarcity, wishing to get a greater number, an to increase the stock by not slaying them. But the Ionians use the word χοῖρος also of the female pig, as Hipponax does, where he says—

With pure libations and the offer'd paunch
Of a wild sow (ἀγρίας χοίρου).

And Sophocles, in his Tænarus, a satyric drama, says—

Should you then guard her, like a chain'd up sow (χοῖρον δεσμίαν)?

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And Ptolemy, the king of Egypt, in the ninth book of his Commentaries, says—

When I was at Assus, the Assians brought me a pig (χοῖρον) two cubits and a half in height, and the whole of his body corresponding in length to that height; and of a colour as white as snow: and they said that King Eumenes had been very diligent in buying all such animals of them, and that he had given as much as four thousand drachmæ a piece for one.

And Aeschylus says—

But I will place this carefully fed pig
Within the crackling oven; and, I pray,
What nicer dish can e'er be given to man?

And in another place he says—

A. Is he a white one?
B. Aye, indeed he is
A snow white pig (χοῖρος), and singed most carefully.
A. Now boil him, and take care he is not burnt.

And again in another place he says—

But having kill'd this pig (χοῖρον τόνδε), of the same litter
Which has wrought so much mischief in the house,
Pushing and turning everything upside down.

And these lines have all been quoted by Chamæleon, in his Commentary on Aeschylus.

But concerning the pig, that it is accounted a sacred animal among the Cretans, Agathocles the Babylonian, in the first book of his account of Cyzicus, speaks as follows— "They say that Jupiter was born in Crete, on the mountain Dicte; on which mountain a mysterious sacrifice used to take place. For it is said that a sow allowed Jupiter to suck its udder. And that she going about with her constant grunting, made the whining of the infant inaudible to those who were looking for him. On which account all the Cretans think that that animal is to be worshipped; and nothing, it is said, can induce them to eat its flesh. And the Praisians also sacrifice to a sow; and this is a regular sacrifice among that people before marriage. And Neanthes of Cyzicus gives a similar account, in the second book of his treatise on Mysteries.

Achæus the Eretrian mentions full-grown sows under the name of πεταλίδες ὕες in Aethon, a satyric drama, where he says—

And I have often heard of full-grown sows
Under this shape and form.

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But he has given the name of πεταλίδες by a metaphor from heifers. For they are called πέτηλοι, or spreading, from their horns, when they have spreading horns. And Eratosthenes has spoken of pigs in the same way as Achæus has in his Anterinnys, and has called them λαρινοὶ, using this word metaphorically, which properly belongs to fatted oxen which were called so from the verb λαπινεύομαι, which is a word of the same meaning as σιτίζομαι, to be fed up. And Sophron uses the word—

βόες δὲ λαρινεύονται·

or perhaps it comes from Larina, a small town of Epirus, or from the name of the herdsman, which may have been Larinus.

And once when a pig was served up before us, the half of which was being carefully roasted, and the other half boiled gently, as if it had been steamed, and when all marvelled at the cleverness of the cook, he being very proud of his skill, said—And, indeed, there is not one of you who can point out the place where he received the death wound; or where his belly was cut so as to be stuffed with all sorts of dainties. For it has thrushes in it, and other birds; and it has also in it parts of the abdomens of pigs, and slices of a sow's womb, and the yolks of eggs, and moreover the entrails of birds, with their ovaries, those also being full of delicate seasoning, and also pieces of meat shred into thin shavings and seasoned with pepper. For I am afraid to use the word ἰσίκια before Ulpian, although I know that he himself is very fond of the thing. And, indeed, my favourite author Paxamus speaks of it by this name, and I myself do not care much about using no words but such as are strictly Attic. Do you, therefore, show me now how this pig was killed, and how I contrived to roast half of him and to boil the other side. And as we kept on examining him, the cook said,—But do you think that I know less about my business than the ancient cooks, of whom the comic poets speak? for Posidipus, in his Dancing Women, speaks as follows-and it is a cook who is represented as making the following speech to his pupils—