The Deipnosophists; or, Banquet of the Learned of Athenæus, Vol. 1 (of 3)Athenaeus, of Naucratis
General
The Deipnosophists; or, Banquet of the Learned of Athenæus, Vol. 1 (of 3)
Athenaeus, of Naucratis
Civilization, Greco-Roman; Dinners and dining -- Greece; Greece -- Social life and customs; Homosexuality -- Greece
29. Now if any one disbelieves this, let him learn from Theopompus the
Chian, a man of the strictest truth and who expended a great deal of
money on the most accurate investigation of matters to be spoken of in
his History. For he says, in the thirty-eighth book of his History,
while giving an account of Clearchus, the tyrant of the Heracleans who
were in Pontus, that he seized violently upon a number of people and
gave a great many of them hemlock to drink.--"And as," says he, "they
all knew that he was in the habit of compelling them to pledge him in
this liquor, they never left their homes without first eating rue: for
people who have eaten this beforehand take no harm from drinking
aconite,--a poison which, they say, has its name from growing in a place
called Aconæ, which is not far from Heraclea." When Democritus had said
this they all marvelled at the efficacy of citron, and most of them ate
it, as if they had had nothing to eat or drink before. But Pamphilus, in
his Dialects, says that the Romans call it not κίτριον, but κίτρον.
30. And after the viands which have been mentioned there were then
brought unto us separately some large dishes of oysters, and other
shell-fish, nearly all of which have been thought by Epicharmus worthy
of being celebrated in his play of the Marriage of Hebe, in these
words:--
Come, now, bring all kinds of shell-fish;
Lepades, aspedi, crabyzi, strabeli, cecibali,
Tethunachia, balani, porphyræ, and oysters with closed shells,
Which are very difficult to open, but very easy to eat;
And mussels, and anaritæ, and ceryces, and sciphydria,
Which are very sweet to eat, but very prickly to touch;
And also the oblong solens. And bring too the black
Cockle, which keeps the cockle-hunter on the stretch.
Then too there are other cockles, and sand-eels,
And periwinkles, unproductive fish,
Which men entitle banishers of men,
But which we gods call white and beautiful.
31. And in the Muses it is written--
There is the cockle, which we call the tellis;
Believe me, that is most delicious meat.
Perhaps he means that fish which is called the _tellina_, and which the
Romans call the _mitlus_,--a fish which Aristophanes the grammarian
names in his treatise on the Broken Scytale, and says that the lepas is
a fish like that which is called the tellina. But Callias of Mitylene,
in his discussion of the Limpet in Alcæus, says that there is an ode in
Alcæus of which the beginning is--
O child of the rock, and of the hoary sea;
and at the end of it there is the line--
Of all limpets the sea-limpet most relaxes the mind.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account