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 Polybius of Megalopolis, in the thirty-fourth book of his History,
speaking of the Lusitanian district in Iberia, says, "That in the sea,
in these parts, acorn-bearing oaks grow, on the fruit of which the
tunnies feed, and grow fat; so that a person who called the tunny the
pig of the sea would not err, for the tunnies, like the pigs, grow to a
great size on these acorns."
65. And the intestines of this fish are highly extolled, as Eubulus also
tells us, in his Ionian,—
And after this the luscious intestines
Of roasted tunnies sail'd upon the table.
And Aristophanes, in his Lemnian Woman, says—
Despise not thou the fat Bœotian eel,
Nor grayling, nor the entrails of the tunny.
And Strattis, in his Atalanta, says—
Next buy the entrails of a tunny, and
Some pettitoes of pigs, to cost a drachma.
And the same poet says in his Macedonians—
And the sweet entrails of the tunny-fish.
And Eriphus says in his Melibœa—
These things poor men cannot afford to buy,
The entrails of the tunny or the head
Of greedy pike, or conger, or cuttle-fish,
Which I don't think the gods above despise.
But when Theopompus, in his Callæschrus, says,
The ὑπογάστριον of fish, O Ceres,
we must take notice that the writers of his time apply the term
ὑπογάστριον to fish, but very seldom to pigs or other animals; but it
is uncertain what animals Antiphanes is speaking of, when he makes use
of the term ὑπογάστριον in his Ponticus, where he says—
[Sidenote: THE TUNNY-FISH.]
Whoever has by chance bought dainty food
For these accursed and abandon'd women,
Such as ὑπογάστρια, which may Neptune
Confound for ever; and who seeks to place
Beside them now a dainty loin of meat . . . .
And Alexis, in his Ulysses weaving, praises the head of the tunny; and
says—
_A._ And I will throw the fishers headlong down
Into the pit. They only catch for me
Food fit for freed men; trichides and squids,
And partly fried fish.
_B._ But not long ago,
This man, if he could get a tunny's head,
Thought he was eating tunnies whole, and eels.
They praised also that part of the tunny which they called "the key,"
as Aristophon does, in his Peirithus:—
_A._ But now the dinner is all spoilt entirely.
_B._ Here are two roasted keys quite fit to eat.
_A._ What, keys to open doors?
_B._ No, tunny keys;
A dainty dish.
_A._ There is the Spartan key too.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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