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
80. So when the mighty sophist of Rome had enunciated these precepts of
Aristarchus, Cynulcus said--O Ceres, what a wise man! It is not without
reason that the admirable Blepsias has pupils as the sand of the sea in
number, and has amassed wealth from this excellent wisdom of his, beyond
all that was acquired by Gorgias or Protagoras. So that I am afraid, by
the goddesses, to say whether he himself is blind, or whether those who
have entrusted his pupils to him have all but one eye, so as scarcely to
be able to see, numerous as they are. Happy are they, or rather blessed
ought I to call them, whose masters treat them to such divine lectures.
And in reply to this Magnus, a man fond of the table, and very much
inclined to praise this grammarian to excess, because of the abundance
of his learning, said--But ye--
Men with unwashen feet, who lie on the ground,
You roofless wanderers, all-devouring throats,
Feasting on other men's possessions,
as Eubulus says--did not your father Diogenes, once when he was eagerly
eating a cheesecake at a banquet, say to some one who put the question
to him, that he was eating bread excellently well made? But as for you,
you
Stranglers of dishes of white paunches,
as the same poet, Eubulus, says, you keep on speaking without ever
giving place to others; and you are never quiet until some one throws
you a crust or a bone, as he would do to a dog. How do you come to know
that cubi (I do not mean those which you are continually handling) are a
kind of loaf, square, seasoned with anise, and cheese, and oil, as
Heraclides says in his Cookery Book? But Blepsias overlooked this kind,
as also he did the thargelus, which some call the thalysius. But Crates,
in the second book of his treatise on the Attic Dialect, says that the
thargelus is the first loaf made after the carrying home of the harvest.
The loaf made of sesame he had never seen, nor that which is called
anastatus, which is made for the Arrephori.[188:1] There is also a loaf
called the pyramus, made of sesame, and perhaps being the same as the
sesamites. But Trypho mentions all these different kinds in the first
book of his treatise on Plants, as he also does those which are called
thiagones. And these last are loaves made for the gods in Ætolia. There
are also loaves called dramices and araxis among the Athamanes.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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