The seed of the pepper-wort,[442] also, was sprinkled over cakes. Among the Thracians, about the river Strymon, they made bread from the flour of the water-caltron,[443] a prickly root of a triangular form, which abounds in the lagoons about Venice, where it is sold commonly in the market-places, and roasted for the table in hot embers.[444] The root of the dragon-wort,[445] eaten both raw and cooked in Greece, was, in the Balearic isles, served up fried with honey at banquets instead of cakes. They gathered it in harvest time, and, having roasted, cut it in slices, which were then strung on a cord and dried in the shade for keeping. The seeds of the garden poppy were used in bread-making, perhaps like carraway-seeds with us, as were those of the wild poppy for medicinal purposes in honeycakes, and certain kinds of sweetmeats.[446] They had in Syria a kind of bread made of mulberries, which caused the hair of those who habitually fed on it to fall off.[447] ----- Footnote 442: Μελανθίον. Id. iii. 93. Footnote 443: Τριβόλος. Id. iv. 15. Footnote 444: Mathée, Notes sur Dioscoride, p. 348. Footnote 445: Δρακόντιον. Dioscorid. ii. 196. Footnote 446: Id. iv. 65. Footnote 447: Athen. iii. 83. ----- Although in the establishments of the wealthy bread was usually made by the women of the family, whether servile or free, the art of the baker seems early to have been practised as a separate business,[448] frequently at Athens by foreigners. The Lydian bakers, for example,[449] like those of France and Germany among us, enjoyed considerable celebrity, as did likewise the Cappadocians and Phœnicians, the art of the last having been able, it is said, to vary the qualities of the loaf every day in the year.[450] ----- Footnote 448: Lucian. Demon. §§ 23. 63. Footnote 449: Athen. iii. 77. At present Greek bakers are in most request throughout the Levant. Wolf, Mission. Research. p. 12. Antiphanes, too, in his Omphalè celebrates the Athenian bakers. Athen. iii. 78. And Plato in the Gorgias, t. iii. p. 154, commemorates Thearion, who excelled in this art. On ancient bread-bags, Casaub. ad Theoph. Char. 297. Footnote 450: Athen. iii. 77. -----