The Deipnosophists; or, Banquet of the Learned of Athenæus, Vol. 2 (of 3)Athenaeus, of Naucratis
Philosophy
The Deipnosophists; or, Banquet of the Learned of Athenæus, Vol. 2 (of 3)
Athenaeus, of Naucratis
Civilization, Greco-Roman; Dinners and dining -- Greece; Greece -- Social life and customs; Homosexuality -- Greece
Fish, and hams (κωλὰς), and sausages.
And Ameipsias, in his Connus, says—
The ham (κωλῆ) from off the victim, and the ribs,
And the left side o' th' head are usually given.
And Xenophon, in his book on Hunting, says—"The ham (κωλῆ) is fleshy,
and the loins moist." And Xenophanes the Colophonian, in his Elegies,
says—
For having sent a ham (κωλῆ) of kid, you won
A mighty leg of carefully fatted bull,
An honourable present for a man,
Whose glory shall pervade all Greece, and never
Cease while the poets and the songs of Greece
Survive in memory and the mouths of men.
[Sidenote: TURNIPS.]
7. And as immediately after this a great quantity of food of all sorts
was brought in, we will just mention those dishes which seem most
worthy of being remembered; for there was a great quantity of birds,
and of geese, and also of young birds (which some people call πίποι),
and of pigs, and of those highly-esteemed birds the pheasants. And
after I have told you about the vegetables, I will then enumerate to
you the other dishes also.
8. First of all, there were turnips; and Apellas, in his treatise on
the Cities in Peloponnesus, says that turnips are called γαστέρες by
the Lacedæmonians: and Nicander the Colophonian, in his Dialects, says
that among the Bœotians it is cabbages which are called γαστέρες,
and that turnips are called in Boeotia ζεκελτίδες. But Amerias and
Timachidas affirm that it is gourds which are called ζακελτίδες. And
Speusippus, in the second book of his treatise on Things resembling one
another, says—"The radish, the turnip, the rape, and the nasturtium
all resemble each other." But Glaucus, in his Cookery Book, spells the
word ῥάφυς (rape) with the lene π,—ῥάπυς. But these vegetables have
nothing else like them, unless, indeed, it be the plant which we call
bounias: but Theophrastus does not use the name of bounias, but calls
it a sort of male turnip; and perhaps the plant which he means is the
bounias. And Nicander, in his Georgics, mentions the bounias—
Sow turnips on a well-roll'd field, that they
May grow as large as the flat dish that holds them.
* * * * *
. . . . . For there are two kinds
Which from the radish spring: one long, one firm,
Both seen in well-till'd beds in kitchen gardens.
And the turnips which grow on the banks of the Cephisus are mentioned
by Cratis, in his Orators, thus—
And wholly like the turnips of Cephisus.
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