THE DAIRY. 269 



poets, philosophers, and historians of Greece. But the Greeks, 

 living in the country of the olive, made no use of butter, 

 and became only acquainted with it from those whom, in the 

 arrogance of their hearts, they chose to style barbarians. 

 Aristotle says of milk, that it consists of two parts, the 

 cheesy and the watery ; and it is only in another place that 

 he refers, incidentally as it were, to the oily matter which 

 rises to the surface. Hippocrates, who wrote in the fifth 

 century before Christ, speaking of the Scythians, says, that 

 they poured the milk of their mares into wooden vessels, 

 and agitated it violently, which caused the fat part, which 

 was light, to rise to the surface, becoming what they call 

 butter; and Herodotus, who was contemporary with him, 

 mentions, that they placed the milk in deep wooden vessels, 

 and caused it to be agitated by their slaves. Both writers 

 manifestly speak of something which was new to their own 

 customs ; and, for many centuries afterwards, we know that 

 the Greeks made use of cheese and oil, but not of butter. 

 Dioscorides, who wrote thirty-one years before Christ, seems 

 to have been the first of the Greeks who suggested to his 

 countrymen that this food of the barbarians might be used 

 for diet. He says, that it might be melted, and poured 

 over pulse and other vegetables, instead of oil ; but ages 

 elapsed before the Greeks adopted the customs, in this re- 

 spect, of the nations they despised. 



The Romans, in like manner, although they made large 

 use of cheese, were ignorant of the use of butter, until they 

 had extended their conquests among the Gauls, Germans, 

 and Britons ; and it was not until the age of the empire, 

 that they began to make use of it as an ointment in their 

 baths, and ultimately as food. They lived in the land of the 

 olive and the vine ; and their rustic writers, while they treat 

 largely of milk, cheese, and oil, say nothing of the prepara- 

 tion of butter. On the other hand, we learn, from many of 

 their writers, that it was familiar to the Gothic and Celtic 

 nations of Northern Europe. Pliny affirms that the barbar- 



