Galen and Serapion say that millet and panic being devoid of oily matter are desiccative, and therefore useful in defluxions of the belly. Simeon Seth says that the millet is of difficult digestion, and not nutritious. Rhases directs panic to be eaten with fresh milk, butter, and sugar. Pliny mentions a sweet species of bread prepared from millet. Galen says that it is not possessed of much nourishment. He says it was only used for bread in times of scarcity. The panic was merely a variety of the millet, i. e. of the _panicum Italicum_. It was looked upon as inferior to the common millet. The maza, as Zeunius explains it, consisted of the flour of toasted barley pounded with some liquor, such as water, oil, milk, oxycrate, oxymel, or honied water. Galen calls it flatulent and unwholesome food. Hesiod recommends the maza, or cake prepared with milk, as an article of food during the heat of the dog-days. (Opera et Dies, 588.) In the _Prytoneum_ or House of Refuge, at Athens, persons were fed on it. (Athen. Deipnos. iv.) The bellaria, called also placentæ, liba, and crustulæ, by the Romans, and by the Greeks πέμματα, ἴτρια, and πλάκουντες, were cakes of various kinds, prepared with flour, water, oil, honey, and sometimes fruits. See Athenæus (Deipnos. xiv.) They were served up towards the conclusion of a banquet, as appears evident from Matron’s Parody, (in Athenæus iv. 5.) The _obelius panis_, mentioned by him in the 3d book, is supposed by Ludovicus Nonnius to have been a species of pastry. According to Schweighäuser the French _oublie_ is derived from it. (Ad Athen. iii, 76.) The _bucellatum_, mentioned by Ammianus Marcellinus and Ælius Spartianus, was a species of bread used by the Roman soldiers, and appears to have resembled our ship-biscuit. (See Not. Gronovii, in Amm. Marcell. xvii, 8.) This kind of bread was called δίπυρος by the Greeks (see Hesychius), that is to say, _bis coctus_, and hence the English biscuit. SECT. LXXIX.—ON PULSE.