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
But with respect to the quail Aristotle says, "The quail is a migratory
bird, with cloven feet, and he does not make a nest, but lies in the
dust; and he covers over his hole with sticks for fear of hawks; and
then the hen lays her eggs in the hole." But Alexander the Myndian
says, in the second book of his treatise on Animals, "The female quail
has a thin neck, not having under its chin the same black feathers
which the male has. And when it is dissected it is found not to have a
large crop, but it has a large heart with three lobes; it has also its
liver and its gall-bladder united in its intestines, but it has but a
small spleen, and one which is not easily perceived; and its testicles
are under its liver, like those of the common fowl." And concerning
their origin, Phanodemus, in the second book of his History of Attica,
says:—"When Erysichthon saw the island of Delos, which was by the
ancients called Ortygia, because of the numerous flocks of quails which
came over the sea and settled in that island as one which afforded
them good shelter . . . ." And Eudoxus the Cnidian, in the first book of
his Description of the Circuit of the Earth, says that the Phoenicians
sacrifice quails to Hercules, because Hercules, the son of Asteria
and Jupiter, when on his way towards Libya, was slain by Typhon and
restored to life by Iolaus, who brought a quail to him and put it to
his nose, and the smell revived him. For when he was alive he was, says
Eudoxus, very partial to that bird.
48. But Eupolis uses the word in its diminutive form, and in his play
called Cities, calls them ὀρτύγια, speaking as follows:—
_A._ Tell me now, have you ever bred any ὄρτυγες̣?
_B._ I've bred some small ὀρτύγια. What of that?
And Antiphanes, in his play called The Countryman, speaks as follows,
using also the form ὀρτύγιον:—
For what now could a man like you perform,
Having the soul of a quail (ὀρτυγίου)?
It is an odd expression that Pratinas uses, who in his Dymænæ, or
the Caryatides, calls the quail a bird with a sweet voice, unless
indeed quails have voices in the Phliasian or Lacedæmonian country
as partridges have; and perhaps it is from this, also, that the bird
called σίαλις has its name, as Didymus says. For nearly all birds
derive their names from the sounds which they make.
[Sidenote: QUAILS.]
There is also a bird called the ὀρτυγομήτρα (which is mentioned by
Crates in his Chirons, where he says,
The ὀρτυγομήτρα came from Ithaca.)
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