160 



BUTTER. 



Butter, crates, they might no doubt have heard of, and sup- 

 posed to correspond to the Hebrew word heinae. 

 That they meant, however, no more than cream by 

 the term /Salfgon, is highly probable. . No doubt, the 

 common translation of the passage already quoted 

 from the Proverbs, may be thought to prove clearly 

 that the making of butter by churning was well 

 known among the Hebrews. But the original words 

 abn X^W, meetz hdcb, signify to squeeze or press ; 

 and might have been as well translated " the pressing 

 of the milker bringeth forth milk." And this ac- 

 cords better with what immediately follows, viz. 

 " and the wringing of the nose bringeth forth 

 blood." 



It was late before the Greeks appear to have had 

 any knowledge of butter. No mention is made of it 

 by any of their early poets. Homer, Theocritus, 

 and Euripides, though they frequently speak of milk 

 and cheese, say nothing of butter : and Aristotle, in 

 his History of Animals, at first assigns to milk only 

 two component parts, viz. the serous and the caseous; 

 though afterwards he remarks, as it were by the bye, 

 that there is likewise found in milk a fat substance, 

 which, under certain circumstances, is like oil. Hip- 

 pocrates, as we have already remarked, is the first 

 Greek writer who mentions butter ; and he frequent- 

 ly prescribes it as an external application under ano- 

 ther name, viz. Trtx-i^ov. But Galen, who wrote in 

 the end of the second century, does not use this term. 

 It seems to have been of Phrygian extraction. The 

 poet Anaxandrides, who flourished a short time after 

 Hippocrates, describing the wedding of Iphicrates, 

 who married the daughter of Cotys king of Thrace, 

 and the Thracian entertainments given on that occa- 

 sion, mentions the use of butter for food among these 

 people as a matter of curiosity ; a sure proof that it 

 was not so employed among the Greeks. 



Strabo, who flourished about thirty years before 

 the Christian era, says the Lusitanians and Ethio- 

 pians used butter instead of oil. And JEAian, who 

 lived in the end of the first century, says that the In- 

 dians employed butter to anoint the wounds of their 

 elephants. Plutarch, who was his cotemporary, 

 speaks of a visit paid by a Lacedaemonian lady to Be- 

 renice the wife of Deiotarus, which, according to 

 him, seems not to have been mutually agreeable ; for 

 he says the one smelled so much of butter, and the 

 other of perfume, that neither of them could endure 

 the other. , 



Dioscorides .(B. C. 33,) is the first author who re- 

 commends butter as an article of diet, and says it 

 might be melted fresh, and poured over pulse and 

 other vegetables instead of oil, and used in pastry. 

 He also recommends it for medicinal purposes. Bat 

 Galen, who wrote at Romp ubout ,200 years later, is 

 much more full on the healiag virtues of butter. He 

 is surprised that Dioscorides should have said it was 

 made of sheep's and goat's milk, for he lu'mself had 

 seen it made of cow's milk.; and such butter, he af- 

 firms, was always the fattest and best, and had from 

 thence, he believes, derived its came. He says it 

 may be used instead of oil in mollifying leather, and 

 that in cold countries which did not produce oil, but- 

 ter was used in the baths, and was evidently a real 

 fat, because, when poured over burning coals, it rea- 



dily caught fire. From all this it is evident, that but- Butter. 

 ter in his time must have been very little known to ' 

 the Greeks and Romans. 



Strabo, speaking of the ancient Britons, says, that 

 though they had abundance of milk, some of them 

 were so ignorant that they did not know how to make 

 a cheese. But Pliny, on the other hand, affirms, that 

 " the barbarous nations," by which he usually means 

 the Germans and Britons, not only made cheese, but 

 likewise butter, which they used as a most agreeable 

 food ; and the use of this food was a distinguishing 

 mark betwixt the rich and the poor. To these na- 

 tions he ascribes the invention of butter, and says they 

 made it from the milk of the goat, the sheep, and the 

 cow ; most commonly from the latter, but that the 

 milk of the ewe produced the fattest butter. He 

 likewise describes the form of the vessel employed by 

 the barbarians in making it, which seems to have been 

 not very different from what we now use. It was 

 covered, he says, and had holes in the lid. He is the 

 first Latin writer who mentions the word Luturum, 

 though Vosaius thinks it is to be found in Columella. 

 Whether Tacitus by lac concretum, which he affirms 

 to have been the most common food of the Germans, 

 means cheese or butter, it is impossible to determine. 



The Greeks, then, seem to have derived their first 

 acquaintance with butter from the Thracians or the 

 Scythians, and the Romans from the Germans. Nor 

 did either of them, after learning its nature, employ 

 it as an article of food, but only as an ointment in 

 their baths, and in medicine. Their agricultural 

 writers, who treat largely of milk, cheese, and oil, 

 as food, take no notice of butter, nor is it mention- 

 ed by Apicius. The suggestion of Dioscorides, 

 therefore, formerly mentioned, that butter might be 

 conveniently used in cookery, seems not to have been 

 attended to. Fourcroy thinks, that the effect of 

 agitation in separating butter from milk, must have 

 been accidentally made by the Scythians or other 

 wandering tribes while transporting their milk from 

 place to place in skins or other vessels. 



Sidonius Apollinaris informs us, that the ancient 

 Burgundians were accustomed to besmear their hair 

 with butter ; and Clemens Alexandrinus says, that 

 the ancient Christians of Egypt burned butter in 

 their lamps at their altars instead of oil ; a practice 

 somewhat similar to which has been retained by the 

 Abyssinians. In the Roman Catholic churches, it 

 was anciently allowed, during Christmas time, to use 

 butteranstead of oil, on account of the great con- 

 sumption of this in other ways. This accounts for 

 the name '* butter tower," which we find in some 

 places, as at Rouen, Notre Dame, and others. In 

 1500, George d'Amboise, Archbishop of Rouen, 

 finding the oil fail in his diocese during Lent, per- 

 mitted the use of butter in their lamps, on condi- 

 tion that each person should pay six deniers for 

 the indulgence, with which sum this tower was e- 

 rected. 



From all the accounts of the method of making 

 butter transmitted to us by the ancients, we have 

 reason to think that they were unacquainted with 

 the art of giving it that firmness and consistence 

 which is so valuable a quality of modern butter. 

 They always speak of it as a liquid substance. With 



