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
50. Now when all this conversation had taken place on these subjects,
the physicians who were present would not depart without taking their
share in it. For Dionysiocles said, Mnesitheus the Athenian, in his book
about Comestibles, has said, "The head and feet of a pig have not a
great deal in them which is rich and nutritious." And Leonidas writes,
"Demon, in the fourth book of his Attica, says that Thymœtes, his
younger brother, slew Apheidas, who was king of Athens, he himself being
a bastard, and usurped the kingdom. And in his time, Melanthus the
Messenian was banished from his country, and consulted the Pythia as to
where he should dwell: and she said wherever he was first honoured by
gifts of hospitality, when men set before him feet and a head for
supper. And this happened to him at Eleusis; for as the priestesses
happened at the time to be solemnizing one of their national festivals,
and to have consumed all the meat, and as nothing but the head and feet
of the victim were left, they sent them to Melanthius.
51. Then a paunch[161:1] was brought in, which may be looked upon as a
sort of metropolis, and the mother of the sons of Hippocrates, whom I
know to have been turned into ridicule by the comic poets on account of
their swinish disposition. And Ulpian, looking upon it, said,--Come now,
my friends, whom does the paunch lie with? For we have now been minding
the belly long enough, and it is time for us now to have some real
conversation. And as for these cynics, I bid them be silent, now that
they have eaten abundantly, unless they like to gnaw some of the cheeks,
and heads, and bones, which no one will grudge their enjoying like dogs,
as they are; for that is what they are, and what they are proud of being
called.
The remnants to the dogs they're wont to throw,
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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