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CHAPTER VI.

ENTERTAINMENTS.

We

THE man upon the creations of whose art the principal enjoyments of Greek gourmands were based was the cook,' whose character and achievements ought not perhaps to be entirely passed over. are, indeed, chiefly indebted for our information to the comic poets; but, in spite of some little exaggeration, the likeness they have bequeathed to us is probably upon the whole pretty exact.

The Athenian cook was a singularly heterogeneous being, something between the parasite and the professed jester; he was usually a poor citizen, with all the pride of autochthoneïty about him, who considered it indispensable to acquire, besides his culinary lore, a smattering of many other kinds of knowledge, not only for the purpose of improving his soups or ragouts, but in order, by the orations he pronounced in praise of himself, to dazzle and allure such persons as came to the agora in search of an artist of his class. Of course the principal source of his oratory lay among pots and fryingpans, and the wonders effected by his art. Philemon hits off with great felicity one of these worthies, who desires to convey a lofty opinion of himself,

"How strong is my desire 'fore earth and heaven,
To tell how daintily I cooked his dinner

'Gainst his return! By all Athena's owls!

1 On famous Cooks see Max. Tyr. Dissert. v. 60.83. Pollux, vi. 70, seq. Athen. iii. 60.

'Tis no unpleasant thing to hit the mark

On all occasions. What a fish had I—

And ah! how nicely fried! Not all bedevilled
With cheese, or browned atop, but though well done,
Looking alive, in its rare beauty dressed.
With skill so exquisite the fire I tempered,
It seemed a joke to say that it was cooked.
And then, just fancy now you see a hen
Gobbling a morsel much too big to swallow;
With bill uplifted round and round she runs
Half choking; while the rest are at her heels
Clucking for shares. Just so 'twas with my soldiers;
The first who touched the dish upstarted he
Whirling round in a circle like the hen,
Eating and running; but his jolly comrades,
Each a fish worshiper, soon joined the dance,
Laughing and shouting, snatching some a bit,
Some missing, till like smoke the whole had vanished.
Yet were they merely mud-fed river dabs:
But had some splendid scaros graced my pan,
Or Attic glaucisk, or, O saviour Zeus!
Kapros from Argos, or the conger eel,
Which old Poseidon exports to Olympos,
To be the food of gods, why then my guests
Had rivalled those above. I have, in fact,
The power to lavish immortality

On whom I please, or, by my potent art,

To raise the dead, if they but snuff my dishes! "1

This honest fellow, in the opinion of Athenæus, exceeded in boasting even that Menecrates of Syracuse, who for his pride obtained the surname of Zeus; he was a physician, and used vauntingly to call himself the arbiter of life to mankind. He is supposed to have possessed some specific against epilepsy; but being afflicted with a vanity at least equal to his skill, he would undertake no one's cure unless he first entered into an agreement to follow him round the country ever after as his slave, which great numbers actually did. Nicos

tratos, of Argos, one of the persons so restored, travelled in his train habited and equipped like Heracles; others personated Asclepios, and Apollo, while Menecrates himself enacted in this fantastic

1 Athen. vii. 32.

masquerade the part of Zeus; and, as the actors say, he dressed the character well, wearing a purple robe, a golden crown upon his head, sandals of the most magnificent description, and bearing a sceptre in his hand.1

But whatever might have been the conceit of our Syracusan physician, there were those among the cooking race, who certainly lagged not far behind him. They usually stunned such as came to hire them with reciting their own praises, laying claim to as much science and philosophy as would have sufficed to set up two or three sophists. In fact, to take them at their word, there was nothing which they did not know, nothing which they could not do. Painting they professed to comprehend as profound connoisseurs, and, no doubt, the soles they fried tasted all the better for the accomplishment. In astronomy, medicine, and geometry, they appear to have made a still greater proficiency than Hudibras, notwithstanding that

"In mathematics he was greater

Than Tycho Brahe, or Erra Pater;
For he by geometric scale.

Could take the size of pots of ale;
Discern by sines and tangents strait
If bread and butter wanted weight;
And wisely tell what hour o' the day
The clock does strike by algebra."

In all this he was a fool to the Athenian cooks; for, by the help of astronomy, they could tell when mackerel was in season, and at what time of the year a haddock is better than a salmon. From geometry they borrowed the art of laying out a kitchen to the best advantage, and how to hang up the gridiron in one place, and the porridge-pot in another. To medicine it is easy to see how deeply they must have been indebted, since it not only taught them what meats are wholesome, and

1 Athen. vii. 33.

what not, but also enabled them by some sleight of art to diminish the appetite of those voracious parasites, who when they dined out appeared to have stomachs equal in capacity to the great tun of Heidelberg.'

Many individuals, half guests, half parasites, used to extract considerable matter for merriment out of the dinner materials, that they might render themselves agreeable, and be invited again. Thus Charmos, the Syracusan, used to convert every dish served at table into an occasion for reciting poetical quotations or old proverbs, and sometimes, perhaps, suffered the fish to cool while he was displaying his erudition. He had always civil things to say both to shell-fish and tripe, so that a person fond of flattery might have coveted to be roasted, in order that his shade might be soothed with this kind of incense, which even Socrates allowed was not an illiberal enjoyment. It was, however, a common custom among parasites to make extracts from the poets and carry them in portfolios to the tables of their patrons, where they recited all such as appeared to be à propos. In this way the above Charmos obtained among the people of Messina the reputation of a learned man, and Calliphanes, son of Parabrycon, succeeded no less ingeniously by copying out the first verses of various poems, and reciting them, so that it might be supposed he knew the whole.

3

2

Cleanthes, of Tarentum, always spoke at table in verse, so likewise did the Sicilian Pamphilos; and these parasites, travelling about with wallets of poetry on their backs, were everywhere welcomed and entertained, which might with great

1 Athen. vii. 87.

2 Suidas in v. t. i. p. 1361. c. 3 Athen. i. 6. "Sic ut apaσιτος, et παραμασήτης vel παραpaouvrns convivam denotat in"vocatum, qui absque symbola

"ad convivium venit; sic nomen

66

“ mapappikar (a verbo Bpixw, "mordeo, rodo, deglutio) eum"dem habet significatum." Scheigh. Animadv. t. vi. p. 54.

1

propriety have been adduced by Ilgen among his other proofs of the imaginative character of the Greeks.

2

Archestratos, the Syracusan, belonged no doubt to this class. He composed an epic poem on good eating, which commenced with recommending that no company, assembled for convivial enjoyment, should ever exceed four, or at most five, otherwise he said. they would rather resemble a troop of banditti than gentlemen. It had probably escaped him, that there were twenty-eight guests at Plato's banquet. Antiphanes, after observing that the parasites had lynx's eyes to discover a good dinner though never invited, immediately adds, that the republic ought to get up an entertainment for them, upon the same principle that during the games an ox3 was slaughtered some distance from the course at Olympia, to feast the flies, and prevent them from devouring the spec

tators.

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4

Besides Archestratos, there were several other celebrated gastronomers among the ancients. Of these the principal were Timachidas, of Rhodes, who wrote a poem in eleven books on good eating, Noumenios, of Heraclea, pupil to the physician Dieuches, Metreas, of Pitana, the parodist Hegemon, of Thasos, surnamed the Lentil, by some reckoned among the poets of the old comedy, Philoxenos, of Leucadia, and a second Philoxenos, of Cythera, who composed his work in hexameter verse. The former, after chaunting the eulogium of the kettle, comes nevertheless to the conclusion at last, that superior merit belongs to the fryingpan. He earnestly recommended truffles to lovers, but would not have them touch the