Montaigne, whom few things of this kind had escaped, reads _forty_, and thinks that men might lawfully get drunk after that age. Essais, ii. 2. t. iii. p. 278. Footnote 573: De Legg. ii. t. vii. p. 258, sqq. ----- We shall now pass from the primitive aliments of the heroic times to those almost infinite varieties of good things which the ingenuity of later ages brought into use. The reader, not already familiar with the gastronomic fragments of ancient literature, will probably be surprised at the omniverous character of the Greeks, to whom nothing seems to have come amiss, from the nettle-top to the peach, from the sow’s metra to the most delicate bird, from the shark to the small semi-transparent aphyæ, caught along the shores of Attica.[574] Through this ocean of dainties we shall endeavour to make our way on the following plan:—first, it will be our “hint to speak” of the more solid kinds of food, as beef, mutton, pork, veal; we shall then make a transition to the soups, fowls, and fish; next the fruit will claim our attention; and, lastly, the several varieties of wines. Footnote 574: Ass’s flesh was commonly eaten by the Athenians. Poll. ix. 48, et Comment. t. vi. p. 938, seq. Their neighbours the Persians, however, enjoyed one dainty not known, I believe, to the Greeks; that is to say, a camel, which, we are told, they sometimes roasted whole. Herod. i. 123. Athen. iv. 6. In the opinion of Aristotle the flesh of this animal was singularly good: ἔχει δὲ καὶ τὰ κρέα καὶ τὸ γάλα ἥδιστα πάντων.—Hist. Anim. vi. 26. It was this passage, perhaps, that first induced Heliogabalus to try a camel’s foot, which he appears afterwards to have much affected. Lamprid. Vit. Anton. Heliogab. § 19. Hist. Aug. Script. p. 195. The same emperor also tried the taste of an ostrich, whose eggs anciently constituted an article of food among certain nations of Africa. Lucian. de Dipsad. § 7. ----- It has already been observed, that in the earliest ages men wholly abstained from animal food.[575] Afterwards when they began to cast “wolfish eyes” upon their mute companions on the globe, the hog is said to have been the first creature whose character emboldened them to make free with him. They saw it endued with less intelligence than other animals; and, from its stupidity, inferred that it ought to be eaten, its soul merely serving during life, as salt, to keep the flesh from putrefying.[576] The determining reason, however, appears to have been, that they could make no other use of him, since he would neither plough like the ox, nor be saddled and mounted like the horse or ass, nor become a pleasant companion, or guard the house, like the dog. ----- Footnote 575: Plato, De Legg. vi. t. vii. p. 471. Footnote 576: Cicero, De Natura Deorum, ii. 64. Dion. Chrysost. i. 280, cum not. Reisk. -----