Chap. 21.] 
CAPEIFICATIOK. 
313 
in the interior. The juice, when the fruit is ripening, has the 
taste of milk, and when dead ripe, that of honey. If left on 
the tree they will grow old ; and when in that state, they 
distil a liquid that flows in tears like gum. Those that are 
more highly esteemed are kept for drying, and the most ap- 
proved kinds are put away for keeping in baskets. The figs 
of the island of Ebusus ^® are the best as well as the largest, 
and next to them are those of Marrucinum.^''' "Where figs are 
in great abundance, as in Asia, for instance, huge jars^^ 
are filled with them, and at Euspina, a city of Africa, we find 
casks used for a similar purpose : here, in a dry state, they 
are extensively used instead of bread,^^ and indeed as a general 
article of provision.^^ Cato,^^ when laying down certain defi- 
nite i^egulations for the support of labourers employed in agri- 
culture, recommends that their supply of food should be 
lessened just at the time when the fig is ripening : it has 
been a plan adopted in more recent times, to find a substitute 
for salt with cheese, by eating fresh figs. To this class of 
fruit belong, as we have already mentioned,^* the cottana and 
the carica, together with the cavnea,^^ which was productive of 
so bad an omen to M. Crassus at the moment when he was 
embarking ^ for his expedition against the Parthians, a dealer 
happening to be crying them just at that very moment. L. 
Vitellius, who was more recentlj^ appointed to the censor- 
ship,^'^ introduced all these varieties from Syria at his- country- 
seat at Alba,^^ having acted as legatus in that province in the 
latter years of the reign of Tiberius Caesar. 
A mixture of the sugar of the fruit with the milky juice of the tree, 
which is a species of caoutchouc. Capsis. 
See B. iii. c. 11. The Balearic Isles still produce great quantities of 
excellent dried figs. See B. iii. c. 17. 
88 Orc«. 89 Cadi. 
Ground, perhaps, into a kind of flour. 
9^ Opsonii vicem. " Opsonium " was anything eaten with bread, such as 
vegetables, meat, and fish, for instance, 
92 De Re Hust. c. 56. 
^3 Because they would be sure, under any circumstances, to eat plenty of 
them. 91 See B. xiii. c. 10. 
95 These were so called from Caunus, a city of Caria, famous for its dried 
figs. Pronounced " Cavneas," it would sound to the superstitious, " Cave 
lie eas," " Take care that you go not." 
96 At Brundisium. 9? ^,u.c. 801. 
S8 Alba Longa. See B. iii. c. 9. 
