3 6 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



King Philip's edict against his Protestant subjects and thus caused the 

 revolt of the Netherlands, and the historical eel-pie that extinguished 

 the house of the Medici aided the cause of the Reformation more than 

 all the armies of Sweden and Brandenburg. Mohammed II., the con- 

 queror of Constantinople, we learn from Raumer's history, had an 

 attack of gastritis after finishing a highly seasoned dish of broiled liver. 

 As a matter of course the responsible cook was put to death at once, 

 but the pains and the rage of the Sultan were not appeased, and with 

 his own hand he stabbed Demetrius Phranza, his beautiful favorite, son 

 of the late chief minister of the fallen Greek Empire. By this barbar- 

 ous act he alienated the hearts of his Christian subjects for ever, and 

 planted the seeds of that hatred which perhaps at this moment bears 

 its harvest on the battle-field of Bulgaria. That dish of sour milk and 

 rye-bread which Charles II. had to eat in his haystack after the battle of 

 Worcester seems never to have been digested by the house of Stuart, 

 though it might have imparted a lesson more useful to the " merry mon- 

 arch " than any precept of the Scotch Covenanters. 



Frederick the Great, who proved himself the master spirit of Europe 

 by such incontrovertible arguments, was himself mastered by his fond- 

 ness for certain French-made dishes, which, according to Dr. Zimmermann, 

 shortened his life by at least ten years. One of his odes, addressed to 

 Monsieur Noel, his caterer-en-chef dwells rapturously on the merits of a 

 peculiar partridge-pie. " Not, though, as if I doubted that such pies 

 will send me and you d Venfer" Frederick added in prose after reading 

 this production to Noel himself. " I would follow your majesty even 

 there," returned the courteous cook, " and it is a consoling circumstance 

 that neither of us two is afraid of fire." 



We have no Roman Pollios who chopped up a couple of young slaves 

 every week to improve the flavor of their carps ; but it is said of the 

 Empress Elizabeth of Russia that during her residence in Moscow she 

 caused the death of more than one courier, who had to bring in oysters 

 and fresh sea-fish from the coast within a specified time. Domitian, the 

 impulsive Imperator, once actually assembled the Roman Senate in spe- 

 cial session to vote on the merits of a new sauce which he desired to 

 try on a fat specimen of JRhombus maximus, the Mediterranean turbot ! 

 ^Elius Verus, whose administration of Asia Minor had drained the 

 wretched province of all its available cash, spent the produce of his ra- 

 pacity in less than four years in his voluptuous retreat of Daphne, or in 

 the riots of Antioch, where it is said that a single entertainment, to 

 which only about a dozen guests were invited, cost above six million 

 sesterces, or nearly $240,500. 



A cook in those times could of ten earn a talent ($1,200) a day, which 

 sum, Petronius remarks, would have sufficed to hire a dozen philoso- 

 phers for a year. It was the age of complete degeneration of the once 

 so frugal Romans, who now tolerated men like Pyttilus, who got an as- 

 bestos sheath fitted to his tongue to enable him to swallow the hottest 



