“Good-sized _polypus_ in season, Should be boiled—to roast them’s treason, But if early, and not big, Roast them; boiled ar’n’t worth a fig.” Alexis, in his “Pseudypobolemæus,” writes:— Take the stiff feelers of the _polypus_, And with them you shall find some modest liver And cutlets of wild goats, which you shall eat. The eggs of the octopus and sepia were also regarded as dainties. Hegemon of Thasos thus refers to them in his “Philuma:”— Go quickly! buy me of that _polypus_, And fry the _roe_, and give it us to eat. But to fry octopus was not, by some, considered good cooking. Nicostratus of Philetærus says, in the “Antyllus:”— I never again will venture to eat cuttle-fish which has been dressed in a frying-pan. They ate heartily at breakfast in those times, it seems, for Epicharmus tells us in “The Sirens:”— In the morning early, at the break of day, We roasted plump anchovies, Cutlets of well-fed pork and _polypi_; And then we drank sweet wine. Philoxenus, the poet of Cythera, is reported to have been a very greedy man. He wished that he had a throat three cubits long, that he might drink as long as possible, and that his food might all at once delight him. Machon, the comic poet, relates how his fondness for well-cooked octopus and his insatiate gluttony caused his death:— They say Philoxenus, the ancient poet Of Dithyrambics, was so wonderfully Attached to fish, that once at Syracuse He bought a polypus two cubits long, Then dress’d it, and then ate it up himself, All but the head—and afterwards fell sick, Seized with a sharp attack of indigestion. Then when some doctor came to him to see him Who saw that he was greatly out of order; “If,” said the doctor, “you have any business Not well arranged, do not delay to settle it, For you will die before six hours are over!” Philoxenus replied, “All my affairs, O Doctor, are well ended and arranged Long, long ago; but now, since deadly fate Calls me away, who can’t be disobeyed, That I may go below with all my goods, _Bring me the relics of that polypus!_” We learn something of the most approved methods of cooking the “cuttle-fishes” and “squids” from the following passages. Sotades, in his play entitled “The Shut-up Women,” introduces a cook, who makes a speech in which these molluscs are mentioned:— A fine dish is the squill, when carefully cook’d, But the rich cuttle-fish is eaten plain; Though I did stuff them all with a rich forced-meat Of almost every kind of herb and flower. Alexis, in his “Wicked Woman,” also introduces a cook, who speaks as follows:—