The various genera of cuttle-fishes were held in high estimation by the ancients; and it was a custom of the Greeks to send them out as presents on the fifth day after the birth of a child, and before giving it a name. At the nuptial feast of Iphicrates, who married the daughter of Cotys, King of Thrace, a hundred polypi and sepiæ were served. The Greek epicures prized them most when they contained “roe,” and had them cooked with highly seasoned sauces. The Lacedæmonians boiled them entire, and were not disgusted by the black froth formed by their inky liquor diffusing itself in the water. In “The Deipnosophists” of Athenæus are numerous quotations from older writers relating to the use, as food, of the various kinds of cuttle-fishes. Athenæus, who was an Egyptian, born in Naucratis, a town on the left side of the Canopic mouth of the Nile, lived and wrote in the first half of the third century. He appears to have been imbued with a great love of learning, in the pursuit of which he indulged in the most extensive and multifarious reading. His “common-place book” must have been a marvel of industrious annotation and careful record, for he has saved from oblivion, by his extracts from their writings, many authors whose works have been long ago lost, and of whose existence future generations would have been unaware, if he, by his faithful and pains-taking acknowledgment of his indebtedness to them, had not handed them down to posterity. He devotes many chapters to the history of festive entertainments, and the dishes served at banquets of the old Romans and Greeks; and by his collection from numerous authors of passages, some of which contain but a few words, and were probably regarded by their contemporaries as of fugitive interest, has given us an insight of the elaborate preparations made for dinner-parties, and the appreciation of artistic cookery by _gourmets_ in those days. Some of our household cooks in this nineteenth century would “give warning” instantly if asked to get ready for table for their master’s friends such a profuse variety of dishes. Course followed course in skilfully arranged sequence, all intended to tempt the palate, or supposed to possess some medicinal or stomachic virtue, and presenting, in their combination, a feast compared with which our lord mayor’s dinners are unrefined in their mere plenty. In all important entertainments, public or private, the cuttle-fishes of the Mediterranean were highly esteemed as delicacies, and were as well known and regularly looked for in the _menu_ as are salmon and turbot at similar gatherings now. In the following extracts from the notebook of Athenæus, by the “polypus” is meant the _Octopus_, by the “cuttle-fish” the _Sepia_, and by the “squid” or “squill,” the genus represented by our _Loligo_. Plato, the comic poet, mentioning in his “Phaon” the banquet of Philoxenus the Leucadian, says:—