Such is, to use an original expression of Rabelais, “_toute l’artillerie de gueule_,” which the cook can master. It is the sum total of what has been bequeathed to us by some great men, whose scattered instructions, lying here and there in books of morality and philosophy--there are numerous analogies between the act of eating and the art of living well--have been collected with scrupulous care, classed with all the attention we can command, and will serve, we hope, to beguile the studious leisure of the lovers of antiquity and the culinary science. Mankind had long obeyed that imperious and periodical necessity which has been called hunger, when it announces its presence with its brutal exigencies, before any one thought to form a code of doctrine calculated to guide a sensation which, by its energy and duration, procures us the most thrilling and lasting pleasures. The primitive nations no doubt gave themselves up to their native gluttony. They eat much, but they fed badly. They did not yet possess gastronomy; and, consequently, they had no cooks, in the serious and complete acceptation of the word. The heroes of Homer prepared their repasts with their own hands,--and what repasts, gods of taste!--and prided themselves on their culinary talents. _Où la vanité va-t-elle se nicher?_ Ulysses surpassed all others in the art of lighting the fire, and laying the cloth.[XXII-8] Patroclus drew the wine, and Achilles very carefully turned the spit.[XXII-9] The conquerors of Troy shone more in the combat than under the tent which served them as kitchen. At length the aurora of the magiric ages began to dawn: it is not a revolution, it is a creation which is preparing to appear. Man has only known hunger; he shall now become acquainted with the charms of an appetite. The King of Sidon learns how to eat, and it is Cadmus, the grandfather of Bacchus, the future founder of Thebes, who takes upon himself to instruct this august mouth.[XXII-10] And since that time how many illustrious followers have descended into the arena, how many glorious names will not culinary annals have to register! Somebody will, perhaps, one day publish a chronological history of celebrated cooks. In the meantime, it may not be amiss to recall to memory a few illustrious men, whose services and genius an ungrateful posterity has too soon forgotten. Thimbron, among the Greeks, took the culinary art from its cradle: he watched devoutedly over its development, and only descended into the tomb after having won the heart of the whole of Greece,[XXII-11] for his favourite science. Timachidas of Rhodes, cook and poet of the highest renown, composed an epopee on the art which he professed, in the midst of emanations from the stoves and the spit.[XXII-12] His verses, glowing with the sacred fire which inspired him, lighted up the magiric vein of several of his disciples, among whom Numenius, Hegemon, and Metreas, are still cited.[XXII-13]