Thus spake the hero, and the servants smiled, And after brought, on silver dishes piled, Fine fatten'd birds, clean singed around with flame, Like cheesecakes on the back, their age the same. And Sopater the farce-writer speaks of fattened sucking-pigs in his Marriage of Bacchis, saying this— If there was anywhere an oven, there The well-fed sucking-pig did crackle, roasting. But Æschines uses the form δελφάκιον for δέλφαξ in his Alcibiades, saying, "Just as the women at the cookshops breed sucking-pigs (δελφάκια)." And Antiphanes, in his Physiognomist, says— Those women take the sucking-pigs (δελφάκια), And fatten them by force; And in his Persuasive Man he says— To be fed up instead of pigs (δελφακίων). Plato, however, has used the word δέλφαξ in the masculine gender in his Poet, where he says— Leanest of pigs (δέλφακα ῥαιότατον). And Sophocles, in his play called Insolence, says— Wishing to eat τὸν δέλφακα. And Cratinus, in his Ulysses, has the expression— Large pigs (δέλφακας μεγάλους). But Nicochares uses the word as feminine, saying— A pregnant sow (κύουσαν δέλφακα); And Eupolis, in his Golden Age, says— Did he not serve up at the feast a sucking-pig (δέλφακα), Whose teeth were not yet grown, a beautiful beast (καλήν)? And Plato, in his Io, says— Bring hither now the head of the sucking-pig (τῆς δέλφακος). [Sidenote: THE HELOTS.] Theopompus, too, in his Penelope, says— And they do sacrifice our sacred pig (τὴν ίερὰν δέλφακα).