proper dinner “I write these precepts for immortal Greece, That round a table delicately spread, Or three, or four, may sit in choice repast Or five at most. Who otherwise shall dine, Are like a troop marauding for their prey.” (I. Disraeli’s trans.) The sentiment, if not the number, coincides with the Latin proverb—“Septem convivium, novem convicium.” [372] I follow Wilamowitz in σκᾶρ for σκῶρ, the usual reading, partly because Epicharmus being a Dorian would use the Doric form, partly because being a comedian he is probably playing on the words σκᾶρ and σκάρος. [373] _Hedyphagetica_ (_frag._ 529, Baehrens). Suidas states that the Persians termed an exquisite dish Διὸς ἐγκέφαλον. [374] Another reading is _adesus_. Cf. Xenocrates, _de Alimento ex Aquatilibus_, c. 14, of the _scarus_, which was fresh-caught and not _vivarium_-kept, being πολλοῖς ἐγκάτοις εὔστομος. [375] See Liddell and Scott. [376] VI. 718 (Kühn). [377] Athen., VIII. 51. [378] Cf. Oppian, I. 590. [379] Ælian, XVI. 19, writes that these sea-hares were so poisonous, that if a man touched one thrown up on the shore with his hand, he shortly died, unless medicine was at once administered. So poisonous indeed are they, that “if you touch them with but your walking stick, there is the same danger which contact with a lizard evokes,” which in II. 5 is described τέθνηκεν ὁ κύριος τῆς λύγου! Nero, to “mak siccar” (like Kirkpatrick with the Red Comyn), employed the sea-hare as a dainty for friends whose deaths he earnestly desired. Cf. Philostratus, _Life of Apollonius of Tyana_, VI. 32. [380] Nonnius, always the alert defender of his favourite fish, ingeniously suggests that the _scarus_ of Pythagoras was not our famous _scarus_, because as this fish, even during the Augustan period, was extremely rare in Italian waters, there seems little necessity for its being banned by the “Hyperborean Apollo of the Crotoniates” in B.C. 540-510. Numa, apparently influenced by Pythagorean precepts, forbade (according to Cassius Hemina, Pliny, XXXII. 10) all scaleless fish being offered to the gods. Festus, p. 253, a. 20, however, states that in such offerings it was allowable to present all fish with scales, except the _Scarus_, which was sacrificiable, and most acceptable to the god of the peasants, Hercules, whose “swinish gluttony | Crams and blasphemes his feeder.” For _squaram_, Müller suggests _scarum_, while Lindsay prints _squatum_, the skate. [381] Mayhoff would read _inertior_. [382] Ælian, I. 2. [383] Aristotle and Pliny, _supra_; Oppian, I. 135-7; Ælian, II. 54.