merate and describe, since fashion appears to have been constantly varying the materials, the forms, and the appellations, of loaves. Upon the whole, however, the bread sold in the market-place of Athens was esteemed the whitest and most delicious in Greece; for the Rhodians, speaking partially of the produce of their own ovens, supposed they were. bestowing on it the highest compliment when they said it was not inferior to that of Athens. The dimensions of loaves depended, of course, on the object of the baker, and varied from those of the smallest roll, prepared for people of delicate appetites, to those of the enormous obeliæ, sometimes containing upwards of three bushels of flour, borne in procession at the festival of Dionysos. 2 3 The business of the confectioner was in scarcely less request, or less profitable, than that of the baker himself. In most cases, perhaps, the finer kinds of pastry were made by women, whose taste and skill enabled them to gratify the lovers of delicacies with an infinite variety of sweetmeats. The vocabulary connected with this division of the art culinary is singularly rich, but, in many cases, conveys to our minds very little precise information. It may be inferred, however, with something like certainty, that the stock of an Athenian confectioner contained most of those delicious trifles now to be found in the establishments of their successors in London or Paris. It will, consequently, be impossible to enumerate them, or to specify the several ingredients which entered into their composition. It has already, I believe, been observed, in speaking of wine, that the ancients were exceedingly partial to sweets, which, in the making of their confectionary, led them to the constant employment of honey. Most of their favourite cakes contained some portion of this ingredient, sometimes, indeed, 1 Athen. iii. 74. 2 Poll. vi. 75. Tzetz. Chiliad. vii. 770. 3 Poll. iii. 41. 4 Athen. xiv. 51, sqq. found in company with other articles apparently little calculated to combine with it. Wine, too, and cheese, and milk, and seeds, and the juices of vegetables, entered into the composition of various sweetmeats, which were occasionally made to keep long, as when intended for exportation; occasionally to be consumed at the moment, as they issued hot from the oven or the fryingpan. To this latter class belonged those delicate pancakes, the paste of which was poured liquid into the fryingpan, then flooded atop with fresh honey, and sprinkled with sesame and grated cheese.' The taste for the catillus ornatus the Greeks appear to have borrowed from the Romans. This was a rich cake, composed of fine flour, kneaded with lard and the juice of lettuces, pounded in a mortar with wine, seasoned with pepper, and fried in boiling oil. Among their pastry was a sort of pie made of vine-birds and beccaficoes,* the undercrust of which, kneaded with honey, was sometimes moistened at table in chicken-broth.5 3 These cakes and sweetmeats were sometimes fashioned into very extraordinary forms; one sort, for example, representing the female breast, another a perfect sphere, a third the head and horns of an ox, while others were wrought into mystical figures, and appropriated to certain festivals of the Pagan calendar. The cake called Chærinè, made with the flour of parched wheat and honey, was bestowed as a prize on those who, during the Pannuchia, remained awake all night.9 The trade of the butcher 10 was carried on at Athens by citizens," whose shops in the Agora 1 Athen. xiv. 55. 2 Id. xiv. 57. 3 ̓Αμπελίδες ἃς νῦν αμπε λιῶνας καλοῦσιν. Poll vi. 52. 4 Συκαλίδες. Aristot. Hist. Anim. viii. 3. ix. 49. 5 Poll. vi. 77. 6 Athen. xiv. 55. 7 Athen. xiv. 56. 9 Athen. xiv. 56. 10 Κρεοπώλης. Butchers were also called μαγείροι κρεωδαίτας and KpEouрyol. Poll. vii. 25. 11 Athen. xiii. 43. would seem to have been extremely well furnished, containing every variety of meat, from the chine of a prize ox,' to the hind quarter of an ass.2 Sheep's and kids' heads were commonly sought to be rendered more attractive by having a branch of myrtle stuck between the teeth, whence one of the hetaire was compared to a goat's head, because she often walked the street with a sprig of myrtle in her mouth.3 The information which antiquity has left us respecting butchers' shops and implements is extremely imperfect. We are told simply, that they had chopping-blocks and cleavers, large axes with which animals were felled in the slaughter-houses, flaying knives, hooks whereon to suspend and display their stock, with scales for weighing meat.* A very curious anecdote is related of a Milesian butcher: there was a man named Killicon, who betrayed his native city Miletos, to the Prienians. Among his countrymen, who on this occasion became fugitives, was a butcher. This man fled to Samos, where he carried on his old business.5 Some time after Killicon himself came to that island, and going into the market to buy provisions, by chance addressed himself to the Milesian butcher, whose name was Theagenes. The man remembered the traitor, and when he would have bought of him a 66 66 66 gentlemen killed their own meat. piece of meat, desired Killicon to lay hold of the part he wanted, while he severed it from the carcase; then taking up an axe he smote off his hand, saying, "With that hand, at least, you shall never "again betray your country." 1 The vintners and tavern-keepers, who were tolerably numerous in Greece, appear to have acquired much the same reputation as they enjoy in modern times. It was regarded as a matter of some difficulty to discover a jar of pure wine beneath their roofs; and, indeed, the honest vine-growers of the country are accused of having understood the art of making Bacchos acquainted with the nymphs on his way to the city. In other words they sold from their waggons in the Agora3 a certain quantity of the Ilissos, mingled with the juice of the grape. The tavern-keepers, however, stood in very little need of their assistance, since they were not merely adepts in watering and doctoring their wines, but were skilful at giving short measure; and yet understood various contrivances for alluring people to their houses. Thus one of them, for example, used to present a club that dined at his tavern with a kid, reckoning upon paying himself by the profits of the wine. However, when an opulent and delicate company honoured them with their presence, they could, doubtless, supply wines of the finest flavour; and to render them still more delicious, they were accustomed in summer to plunge the flagons into snow, or, occasionally, to mingle it with the wine, as is still the fashion at Naples and in Sicily. Taverns, therefore, were furnished with ice-cellars, where snow could be kept during the hottest weather. Alexander1 found means of carrying along with him a quantity of this article of luxury into India, where he probably treated Taxilos and Poros with iced wines. This achievement was imitated many ages after by the Khalif Mahadi, who on his pilgrimage to Mecca traversed the desert accompanied by a numerous train of camels laden with ice and snow, the first, according to Oriental historians, ever beheld in the Holy Cities. In the island of Cimolos, people made use, as coolers, of deep pits, in which jars of soft and tepid water, and, doubtless, wine also, were refrigerated.3 The wine was laid up in jars, skins, and flasks, which, like the oil-flasks of Florence and Lucca, were cased with fine basket-work. The measures in use were numerous, and somewhat difficult to be reduced with exactness to those of modern times: the metretes (ten gallons two pints) contained twelve choes; the chous (about six pints) six xestæ; the xestes (one pint) two cotylæ; the cotyla (half-pint) two tetarti; the tetarton (one quartern) two oxybapha; the oxybaphon, one cyathus and a-half; 1 Athen. iii. 97. • Σῆμος δὲ ὁ Δήλιος ἐν δευτέρῳ Νησιάδος, ἐν Κιμώλῳ τῇ νήσῳ φησὶ ψυχεῖα κατεσκευάσθαι θέ ρους ὀρυκτὰ, ἔνθα χλιεροῦ ὕδατος πλήρη κεράμια καταθένα τες, ὕστερον κομίζονται χιόνος οὐδὲν διάφορα. Athen. iii. 96. These coolers are rendered necessary by the entire lack of springs in the island, whose inhabitants wholly depend for water on what they can preserve in pits and cisterns. Tournefort, t. i. p. 170. 3 But see Beckmann, iii. 327. flasks were in later times called 15. |