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. 3. But Phylarchus says, "that though Egyptian beans had never been sown before in any place, and had never produced fruit if any one had by chance sown a few, except in Egypt, still, in the time of Alexander the king, the son of Pyrrhus, it happened that some sprung up near the river Thyamis in Thesprotia in Epirus, in a certain marsh in that district; and for two years continuously they bore fruit and grew; and that on this Alexander put a guard over them, and not only forbade any one to pick them, but would not allow any one to approach the place: and on this the marsh dried up; and for the future it not only never produced the above-mentioned fruit, but it does not appear even to have furnished any water. And something very like this happened at Ædepsus. For at a distance from all other waters there was a spring sending forth cold water at no great distance from the sea; and invalids who drank this water were greatly benefited: on which account many repaired thither from great distances, to avail themselves of the water. Accordingly the generals of king Antigonus, wishing to be economical with respect to it, imposed a tax to be paid by those who drank it: and on this the spring dried up. And in the Troas in former times all who wished it were at liberty to draw water from the Tragasæan lake; but when Lysimachus became ruler there, and put a tax on it, that lake, too, disappeared: and as he marvelled at this, as soon as he remitted the tribute and left the place free, the water came again. 4. With respect to Cucumbers.--There is a proverb-- Eat the cucumber, O woman, and weave your cloak. And Matron says, in his Parodies-- And I saw a cucumber, the son of the all-glorious Earth, Lying among the herbs; and it was served up on nine tables.[123:1] And Laches says-- But, as when cucumber grows up in a dewy place. Now the Attic writers always use the word σίκυον as a word of three syllables. But Alcæus uses it as a dissyllable, σίκυς; for he says, δάκῃ τῶν σικύων from the nominative σίκυς, a word like στάχυς, στάχυος. And Phrynichus uses the word σικύδιον as a diminutive, where he says-- Εντραγεῖν σικύδιον, to eat a little cucumber. [_From this point are the genuine words of Athenæus._[124:1]] * * * * * I will send radishes and four cucumbers. * * * * * And Phrynichus too used the word σικύδιον as a diminutive, in his Monotropus; where he says, κἀντραγεῖν σικύδιον.