The business of the confectioner was in scarcely less request, or less profitable, than that of the baker himself. In most cases, perhaps, the finer kinds of pastry were made by women,[458] whose taste and skill enabled them to gratify the lovers of delicacies with an infinite variety of sweetmeats. The vocabulary connected with this division of the art culinary is singularly rich, but, in many cases, conveys to our minds very little precise information. It may be inferred, however, with something like certainty, that the stock of an Athenian confectioner contained most of those delicious trifles now to be found in the establishments of their successors in London or Paris. It will, consequently, be impossible to enumerate them, or to specify the several ingredients which entered into their composition. It has already, I believe, been observed, in speaking of wine, that the ancients were exceedingly partial to sweets, which, in the making of their confectionary, led them to the constant employment of honey. Most of their favourite cakes contained some portion of this ingredient,[459] sometimes, indeed, found in company with other articles apparently little calculated to combine with it. Wine, too, and cheese, and milk, and seeds, and the juices of vegetables, entered into the composition of various sweetmeats, which were occasionally made to keep long, as when intended for exportation; occasionally to be consumed at the moment, as they issued hot from the oven or the fryingpan. To this latter class belonged those delicate pancakes, the paste of which was poured liquid into the fryingpan, then flooded atop with fresh honey, and sprinkled with sesame and grated cheese.[460] The taste for the _catillus ornatus_ the Greeks appear to have borrowed from the Romans. This was a rich cake, composed of fine flour, kneaded with lard and the juice of lettuces, pounded in a mortar with wine, seasoned with pepper, and fried in boiling oil.[461] Among their pastry was a sort of pie made of vine-birds[462] and beccaficoes,[463] the undercrust of which, kneaded with honey, was sometimes moistened at table in chicken-broth.[464] ----- Footnote 458: Poll. iii. 41. Footnote 459: Athen. xiv. 51, sqq. Footnote 460: Athen. xiv. 55. Footnote 461: Id. xiv. 57. Footnote 462: Ἀμπελίδες ἅς νῦν ἀμπελιῶνας καλοῦσιν. Poll. vi. 52. Footnote 463: Συκαλίδες. Aristot. Hist. Anim. viii. 3. ix. 49. Footnote 464: Poll. vi. 77. ----- These cakes and sweetmeats were sometimes fashioned into very extraordinary forms; one sort, for example, representing the female breast,[465] another a perfect sphere,[466] a third the head and horns of an ox,[467] while others were wrought into mystical figures, and appropriated to certain festivals of the Pagan calendar. The cake called Chærinè, made with the flour of parched wheat and honey, was bestowed as a prize on those who, during the Pannuchia, remained awake all night.[468] ----- Footnote 465: