Among the herbs eaten by his countrymen, Hesiod enumerates the mallow,[643] and the asphodel, which are likewise said by Aristophanes to have constituted a great part of the food of the early Greeks. Gœttling, therefore, not without reason, wonders that Pythagoras should have prohibited the use of the mallow. Lupines, pomegranates, horse-radish, the dregs of grapes and olives, all of which entered into the material of an Attic entertainment, were commonly cried about the streets of Athens.[644] But these edible lupines, (θέρμοι) still eaten by the Egyptian peasantry and the poor generally throughout the Levant, must be distinguished from the common species. An anecdote of Zeno, of Cittion, will illustrate the character of this kind of pulse, with which the philosopher was evidently familiar. Being one day asked why, though naturally morose, he became quite affable when half-seas-over: “I am like the lupine,” he replied, “which, when dry, is very bitter, but perfectly sweet and agreeable after it has been well soaked.”[645] Kidney-beans, too, were in much request, and pickled olives, slightly flavoured with fennel. ----- Footnote 643: Cf. Lucian. Amor. § 33. Footnote 644: Cf. Arist. Acharn. 166. Eq. 493. Athen. xiii. 22. Footnote 645: This is as good as the reply of an English labourer who, being reproached for babbling in his drink, replied, “Sir, I am like a hedgehog—when I’m wet I open.” ----- The radish[646] was esteemed a great delicacy, particularly that of Thasos and Bœotia. And the seeds of the ground-pine,[647] still eaten as a dessert in Italy, entered, in Greece, also into the list of edible fruits.[648] The tree, I am informed, has been introduced into England, but I have nowhere seen its fruit brought among pears, walnuts, and apples, to table. Hen’s milk has already been spoken of among the good things of Hellas;[649] but lest the reader should suspect us of amusing him with fables, it should be explained, that the white of an egg was so called by Anaxagoras.[650] Eggs of all kinds were much esteemed. Sometimes they were boiled hard, and cut in two with a hair; but, many writers, confounding ὄα, the berries of the service-tree, with ὠὰ, eggs, have imagined that the Athenians, in the capriciousness of their culinary taste, actually ate pickled eggs, an idea which stirs to the bottom the erudite bile of David Ruhnken.[651] Generally, eggs were eaten soft, as with us, or swallowed quite raw. Those of the pea-hen were considered the most delicate; next to these, the eggs of the chenalopex bergander, or Egyptian goose, and, lastly, those of the hen. This, at least, is the opinion of Epicrates and Heracleides, of Syracuse, in their treatises on cookery.[652] ----- Footnote 646: Hesiod. Oper. et Dies, 41. ed. Gœttling. Aristoph. Plut. 543. Brunck.—Lobeck. Aglaoph. p. 899. Footnote 647: