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
And Sophocles, in his Tænarus, a satyric drama, says—
Should you then guard her, like a chain'd-up sow
(χοῖρον δεσμίαν)?
And Ptolemy, the king of Egypt, in the ninth book of his Commentaries,
says—"When I was at Assus, the Assians brought me a pig (χοῖρον) two
cubits and a half in height, and the whole of his body corresponding in
length to that height; and of a colour as white as snow: and they said
that King Eumenes had been very diligent in buying all such animals of
them, and that he had given as much as four thousand drachmæ a piece
for one." And Æschylus says—
But I will place this carefully fed pig
Within the crackling oven; and, I pray,
What nicer dish can e'er be given to man?
And in another place he says—
_A._ Is he a white one?
_B._ Aye, indeed he is
A snow-white pig (χοῖρος), and singed most carefully.
_A._ Now boil him, and take care he is not burnt.
And again in another place he says—
But having kill'd this pig (χοῖρον τόνδε), of the same litter
Which has wrought so much mischief in the house,
Pushing and turning ev'rything upside down.
And these lines have all been quoted by Chamæleon, in his Commentary on
Æschylus.
18. But concerning the pig, that it is accounted a sacred animal
among the Cretans, Agathocles the Babylonian, in the first book of
his account of Cyzicus, speaks as follows—"They say that Jupiter was
born in Crete, on the mountain Dicte; on which mountain a mysterious
sacrifice used to take place. For it is said that a sow allowed Jupiter
to suck its udder. And that she going about with her constant grunting,
made the whining of the infant inaudible to those who were looking
for him. On which account all the Cretans think that that animal is
to be worshipped; and nothing, it is said, can induce them to eat
its flesh. And the Praisians also sacrifice to a sow; and this is a
regular sacrifice among that people before marriage. And Neanthes of
Cyzicus gives a similar account, in the second book of his treatise on
Mysteries.
Achæus the Eretrian mentions full-grown sows under the name of
πεταλίδες ὕες in Æthon, a satyric drama, where he says—
And I have often heard of full-grown sows
Under this shape and form.
[Sidenote: PIGS.]
But he has given the name of πεταλίδες by a metaphor from heifers. For
they are called πέτηλοι, or spreading, from their horns, when they have
spreading horns. And Eratosthenes has spoken of pigs in the same way
as Achæus has in his Anterinnys, and has called them λαρινοὶ, using
this word metaphorically, which properly belongs to fatted oxen which
were called so from the verb λαπινεύομαι, which is a word of the same
meaning as σιτίζομαι, to be fed up. And Sophron uses the word—
βόες δὲ λαρινεύονται;
or perhaps it comes from Larina, a small town of Epirus, or from the
name of the herdsman, which may have been Larinus.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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