The stony soil produced no mushrooms. And Poliochus has the following passage-- Each of us twice a day received to eat Some small dark maize well winnow'd from the chaff, And carefully ground; and also some small figs. Meantime some of the party would begin And roast some mushrooms; and perhaps would catch Some delicate snails if 'twas a dewy morning, And vegetables which spontaneous grew. Then, too, we'd pounded olives; also wine Of no great strength, and no very famous vintage. And Antiphanes says-- Our supper is but maize well fenced round With chaff, so as not to o'erstep the bounds Of well-devised economy. An onion, A few side-dishes, and a sow-thistle, A mushroom, or what wild and tasteless roots The place affords us in our poverty. Such is our life, not much exposed to fevers; For no one, when there's meat, will eat of thyme, Not even the pupils of Pythagoras. And a few lines afterwards he goes on-- For which of us can know the future, or The fate that shall our various friends befal? Take now these mushrooms and for dinner roast them, Which I've just picked beneath the maple shade. Cephisodorus, the pupil of Isocrates, in the treatise which he wrote against Aristotle (and there are four books of it), reproaches the philosopher for not having thought it worth his while to collect proverbs, though Antiphanes had made an entire play which was called Proverbs: from which play he produces these lines-- For I, if I eat any of your dishes, Seem as if I was on raw mushrooms feeding, Or unripe apples, fit to choke a man. 57. Mushrooms are produced by the earth itself. But there are not many sorts of them which are good to eat; for the greater part of them produce a sensation of choking: on which account Epicharmus, when jesting, said-- You will be choked, like those who waste away By eating mushrooms, very heating food. And Nicander, in his Georgics, gives a list of which species are poisonous; and says-- Terrible evils oftentimes arise From eating olives, or pomegranates, or from the trees Of maple, or of oak; but worst of all Are the swelling sticky lumps of mushrooms. And he says in another place-- Bury a fig-tree trunk deep in the ground, Then cover it with dung, and moisten it With water from an everflowing brook, Then there will grow at bottom harmless mushrooms; Select of them what's good for food, and not Deserving of contempt, and cut the root off. But all the rest of that passage is in a mutilated state. The same Nicander in the same play writes-- And there, too, you may roast the mushrooms, Of the kind which we call ἀμάνιται. And Ephippus says-- That I may choke you as a mushroom would.