300 The Honey-Makers 



phanes, who gives the following interesting catalogue of the 

 ingredients used to prepare a certain dish : — 



" Dried grapes, and salt, and eke new wine 

 Newly boiled down, and asafcetida, 

 And cheese, and thyme, and sesame. 

 And nitre too, and cummin seed. 

 And sumach, honey, and marjoram, 

 And herbs and vinegar and oil 

 And sauce of onions, mustard and capers mixed, 

 And parsley, capers too, and eggs. 

 And lime, and cardamums, and th' acid juice 

 Which comes from the green fig-tree, besides laurel 

 And eggs and honey and flour wrapped in fig-leaves. 

 And all compounded in one savory forcemeat." 



The onion as served by these epicurean cooks was a pa- 

 trician and costly vegetable, vying with the sumptuous 

 forcemeat ball just described ; and Athenseus, quoting 

 Philemon, assures us, — 



"Now, if you want an onion just consider 

 What great expense it takes to make it good : 

 You must have cheese, and honey, and sesame, 

 Oil, leeks, and vinegar, and asafostida, 

 To dress it up with ; for by itself the onion 

 Is bitter and unpleasant to the taste." 



Lettuce was treated to a yet more remarkable and ex- 

 travagant dressing by a certain epicure, — 



" But Aristoxenus, the philosopher of Cyrene, a real 

 devotee of the philosophy of his country (from whom 

 hams cured in a particular way are called Aristoxeni), out 

 of his prodigious luxury used to syringe the lettuces which 

 grew in his garden with mead in the evening, and then, 

 when he picked them in the morning, he would say that he 

 was eating green cheesecakes which were sent up to him 

 by the earth.'' 



A certain very luxurious dish of the Lydians our author 



