PEAS.
Green peas, we are sorry to say, were not appreciated as they deserved to be by the Romans.[VIII_26] It was reserved principally for our century to discover their value, to cultivate them with care, and to force nature to give them to us before the appointed time. This plant was hardly known in 1550. Since that period, the gardener, Michaux, undertook to bring it into repute. For some time in France it was called only by the name of this worthy man.[VIII_27]
Before that it was an unappreciated vegetable; it came forth, blossomed, and disappeared, without utility and without renown.
It was not thus with grey peas (pois chiche), which flourished at a very remote period, and are mentioned in the sacred writings.[VIII_28] The common people of Rome and Greece made them their ordinary food. They ate them boiled or fried; a rather disagreeable dish, according to the caustic Martial,[VIII_29] who, however, speaks with disdain of every kind of peas, in whatsoever manner they may be prepared.
Nevertheless, the satirical humour of this celebrated poet did not prevent this vegetable from being universally sold; and men, women, and children regaled, and even gorged, themselves, with fried grey peas,[VIII_30] or ram peas (cicer arietinum), a singular name, for which they were indebted to the slight asperity remarkable in each of the grains.[VIII_31]
At the Circus, and in the theatres, they were sold at a low price to the spectators, whom it seemed impossible to satiate with this delicacy, although it has so little attraction for us.[VIII_32] In short, the nation of kings had so decided a taste for grey peas, that those who coveted public employment did not fail to distribute them gratuitously to the people, in order to obtain their suffrages.[VIII_33] We must acknowledge that in those days votes were obtained at a very cheap rate.