83. Phænias, in the fifth book of his treatise on Plants, speaks of one which he calls the Sicilian cactus, a very prickly plant. As also does Theophrastus, in his sixth book about Plants, who says, "But the plant which is called the cactus exists only in Sicily, and is not found in Greece: and it sends forth stalks close to the ground, just above the root. And the stalks are the things which are called cacti: and they are eatable as soon as they are peeled, and rather bitter; and they preserve them in brine. But there is a second kind, which sends up a straight stalk, which they call πτέρνιξ; and that also is eatable. The shell of the fruit, as soon as the outer soft parts have been taken away, is like the inside of a date: that also is eatable; and the name of that is ἀσκάληρον." But who is there who would not place such belief in these assertions as to say confidently that this cactus is the same as that plant which is called by the Romans _carduus_, or thistle; as the Romans are at no great distance from Sicily, and as it is evidently the same plant which the Greeks call κινάρα, or the artichoke? For if you merely change two letters, κάρδος and κάκτος will be the same word. And Epicharmus also shows us plainly this, when he puts down the cactus in his catalogue of eatable vegetables; in this way--"The poppy, fennel, and the rough cactus; now one can eat of the other vegetables when dressed with milk, if he bruises them and serves them up with rich sauce, but by themselves they are not worth much." And in a subsequent passage he says--"Lettuces, pines, squills, radishes, cacti." And again he says--"A man came from the country, bringing fennel, and cacti, and lavender, and sorrel, and chicory, and thistles, and ferns, and the cactus, and dractylus, and otostyllus, and scolium, and seni, and onopordus." And Philetas the Coan poet says-- A fawn about to die would make a noise, Fearing the venom of the thorny cactus. 84. And, indeed, Sopater the Paphian, who was born in the time of Alexander the son of Philip, and who lived even till the time of the second Ptolemy king of Egypt, called the artichoke κίναρα just as we do, as he himself declares in one of the books of his history. But Ptolemy Euergetes the king of Egypt, being one of the pupils of Aristarchus the grammarian, in the second book of his Commentaries writes thus--"Near Berenice, in Libya, is the river Lethon, in which there is the fish called the pike, and the chrysophrys, and a great multitude of eels, and also of lampreys which are half as big again as those which come from Macedonia and from the Copaic lake. And the whole stream is full of fishes of all sorts. And in that district there are a great quantity of anchovies, and the soldiers who composed our army picked them, and ate them, and brought them to us, the generals having stripped them of their thorns. I know, too, that there is an island called Cinarus, which is mentioned by Semus.